What is the Gaia hypothesis?

The planet is a single organism and maintains itself accordingly. This concept was introduced by James Lovelock in the 1960's. Gaia is suggestive of the idea of Mother Earth who nurtures life through birth and rebirth. The regenerative force or energy that is gaia is an intercourse of physical, biological, chemical, and geological processes that is a cycle of birth, sickness, healing, sickness, healing, sickness, death, rebirth.
Lovelock's concept is in sync with the ancient concepts of creation such has the Satya Yuga of Lord Brahma, and other mythical concepts.
The word Gaia itself is adapted from the Greek Earth goddess Ge or Gaia. Ge could be extremely cruel and showed very little compassion to anyone who crossed her yet she could be fully compassionate and nurturing to a friend. Her name Ge or Earth is also the foundation or derivative for words such as geography, geology, and genocide.

In Lovelocks' hypothesis the biosphere, oceans, and soil all come into play. This is also in sync with the Hopi myths of creation which involve the elements of fire, wind, water, and earth.

There are others who have comtemplated the Gaia concept before Lovelock. The father of geology, James Hutton, described the Earth in terms of a superorganism.

In a very ancient world, in a time before the philosopher Plato, science and theology were one and the same and they reflected a soulful relationship between the organism and the creator. The poet Homer who preceded Plato by several centuries wrote of a time when the Earth had a spirit. Plato and the Greek alphabet opened up the way for school to replicate themselves at will due to the ease by which knowledge could be transferred. Science somehow lost it's holistic meaning in this transfer.

The question that seems to be echoing through the lightspeed tech world of today is whether the intellects and not so intellects of this organism have insulted Gaia so much to incur her torturous wrath.

We are definitely more aware of our environment and there are volumes being written on holistic methods of recovery. But are they simply words for if they are then we should all go listen and memorize every word of the poet Walt Whitman, "The Earth never lies".