The Earth System: A Physiological Perspective

A little over thirty years ago mankind had the first opportunity to view planet Earth directly from the Moon. It can be argued that this represented a major turning point in how we have regarded our home planet ever since. Seen from the Moon, several aspects of the Earth, each of which was known in an intellectual way previously, became strongly imprinted on our consciousnesses. Viewing Earth from the Moon strongly reinforced the idea that our planet must be seen and studied as a whole, and not split into component parts, as has been done previously in most academic research. Further, the isolation of the earth in the vast-ness of space was made abundantly clear. In addition, the obvious dominance of the oceans in terms of coverage relative to land led to the idea that the Earth should really have been called ‘Ocean’. Finally, the blue oceans, green/brown land, and white clouds all looked very different from the colouring of the other planets we can see using telescopes from Earth.