¶ … exchange occurs between magma and surface environments of Earth?
According to Chapters 1-7 the book Gaia: The Practical Science of Planetary Medicine, perhaps the most spectacular type of exchange that occurs between the inner magma of the earth's core and the surface environment of the earth is that of a volcanic explosion. Magma is the molten rock that rises to the earth's surface from the mantle. (Lovelock, 200, 45-47) The overall science of the movement of the earth's plates, however, also involves at times the slower seepage of magma to the face of the earth, which results in mineral encroachment from the inner sphere of the earth onto the earth's surface.
Thus, the author James Lovelock characterizes the earth as kind of a unicellular creature, whereby certain inner parts rise to the surface of the creature's skin or outer layer. Magma is the inner juice or part of the biochemistry of this cell that forms a transmitting fluid layer between core and epidermal earth skin. This is not bad, however, although the residents of Pompeii may disagree, when viewed holistically -- as an organism earth strives to remain in a state of epidermal equilibrium, despite these eruptions of magma from the core, according to the author. (Lovelock, 2000) Despite such attempts, occasional intrusions such as the eruption of magma do occur, but the mineral exchange is often positive for the overall environment. In the author's view, although human beings may view, for instance, volcanic eruptions as monumentally disturbing to human's own special lifestyle needs and desire for personal equilibrium upon the surface, Gaia, the earth her/itself, views humanity's own much more permanent intrusions upon her epidermal level in a far more parasitic fashion than the occasional seeping of magma over the relatively natural process of the movement of the earth's plates.
Earth's atmosphere is an exercise in improbability and accident in its ability to support humans, which Lovelock, in an effort to transform human's anthropocentric view of the environment and the universe, portrays as kind of a parasitic or viral intrusion upon the earth's core. Unlike the incursions of magma, which change the earth's biosphere in natural, unpredictable, but ultimately arbitrary and unselfish ways, the incursions of human life upon the surface have not been nearly as beneficial for Gaia.
