Taking the Gaia hypothesis at face value

The interest in understanding the climate-life system that has fostered the Gaia hypothesis (GH) has resulted in multiple explanatory theories, making its status unclear and controversial. This work seeks to bring some clarity to the debates surrounding the GH with the aim to make it amenable to scientific scrutiny. We discuss what it means to take the GH at face value and its implications for a potential research programme we call 'functional climatology'.