Geochemistry and the Biosphere. Vladimir I. Vernadsky

the key to the past – that the processes going on at present are the same processes that went on during geological history, accounting for the Earth as we see it now. But Vernadsky’s substantive uniformitarianism holds that things have always been the same: that the geology of the Earth has always been the same and that life has always existed on Earth – although he was willing to admit that it has changed by evolutionary processes over geologic time. He holds this view of Earth’s history to be one of his important empirical generalizations, but it was probably this view that caused him to overlook the evidence for the oxygen revolution.²

      This view meant that he strongly opposed the suggestions of his countryman, A. I. Oparin, who in the early 1920s was proposing that life originated on an Earth with a reducing atmosphere (an idea that in modified form is now widely accepted); for Vernadsky, life simply always existed! In Vernadsky’s writings just before his death, he did accept the concept of an origin of life, but that idea does not appear in these two works.

      Unfortunately, the late Alexander Yanshin at first oversold me on Vernadsky as an innovator in his field of geology and as a formulator of the “new sciences” of geochemistry and biogeochemistry. Yanshin claimed so much for Vernadsky that it put me slightly on the defensive. In the process, it made me aware of the incredible number of contributions of Vernadsky’s contemporaries and predecessors. Vernadsky quotes dozens, probably hundreds of papers on geochemistry and even biogeochemistry: estimates of the quantity of some elements in the Earth’s crust, atmosphere, or biosphere, for example. Such studies are pure geochemistry and biogeochemistry. My thought then was, how can we say that Vernadsky founded the sciences of geochemistry and biogeochemistry when this vast amount of work in these fields had already been done? Clearly, Yanshin gave Vernadsky credit for his synthesis of the ideas of these fields. This synthesis was indeed a highly original and significant contribution. (Yanshin mentions a number of other sciences as examples of Vernadsky’s synthesis; my familiarity with Vernadsky’s works – his many, many publications – is not sufficient for me to judge his contributions to those sciences.)

      As Yanshin points out, Vernadsky seldom claimed that he was the first to develop a field. He gives credit for the concept of the biosphere to Eduard Suess, who published the term in 1875.³ My geochemistry textbook published in 1952 gives Vernadsky credit for the term biogeochemistry but says: “The concept of the biosphere was introduced by Lamarck [near the end of the eighteenth century]….”⁴ Vernadsky also mentions Lamarck as the originator of the concept but not the term. In short, for some time there have been those who realized that Earth’s organisms and the physical environment with which they are closely associated should be recognized as a very special part of this planet, but it was Vernadsky’s concept of living matter, a term that he uses over and over, that strongly emphasized the effects of life on the Earth. We only have to think of Mars and Venus to realize the impact of the biosphere on our orb.

      Incidentally, I found it interesting that Vernadsky seldom if ever referred to his own laboratory or field work. He must have done much “hands-on” science, but his approach in these two volumes is that of the observer, the synthesizer, who bases most of his synthesis on the work of others.

      In any case, it is clear from Yanshin’s introduction, if not from the texts themselves, that Vernadsky’s influence was great, particularly in his Russia, even as this influence was slow to penetrate to the Western world.

      One of Vernadsky’s most fascinating concepts encountered near the ends of both The Essays on Geochemistry and The Biosphere, is his view of the future and especially of the role of humans in the Earth’s geochemistry and biosphere. Humans, with their science and technology, have changed and are continuing to change the nature of the biosphere. The end result will be the noösphere (from the Greek: noó(s), mind). As with the term biosphere, Vernadsky credits another author, Edouard Le Roy, with the term noösphere. Another source says that Vernadsky, Teilhard de Chardin, and Le Roy jointly invented the term in 1924. In any case, the concept of the impact of the human mind on Earth seems obvious to us and has probably been obvious to some extent to many others, especially during these years of industrialization and technology, but Vernadsky says it particularly well.

      some notes on editing these manuscripts

      In attempting to copy edit these manuscripts, it has not been difficult to correct matters of grammar, punctuation, and style. This was done according to established rules outlined in various style manuals. But because the manuscript with which I was asked to work was a translation, and I did not have access to the Russian original, many special problems arose. Often a word or a sentence did not sound correct to the ear of a native English speaker. Sometimes in such cases of confusion, I left the translator’s word because it sounded a bit more Russian but was still appropriate enough for easy understanding. After all, Vernadsky wrote in Russian!⁵

      In some cases, I referred to the 1926/1929 version of The Biosphere translated by Langmuir, who was a native English speaker who also had an excellent command of Russian, French, and science. His choice of words was often very helpful to me. Mark McMenamin’s annotations in the Margulis edition were often helpful because they explained Vernadsky’s ideas or clarified various scientific ideas – sometimes confirming and sometimes rejecting my suspicions about changes that should be made in Barash’s translation. However, the 1967 Russian edition (from which the present version was translated) had many additions to the 1926 version, and sometimes my problems were in a portion of the text that did not appear in the 1926 version. Also, I had no access to another English version of The Essays on Geochemistry save for Barash’s translation.

      Langmuir states that his revision of the Russian/French version was “a rather drastic one.” That is, he probably took more liberties with the language than did Barash. Hence, this version, in spite of my editing, is probably a more literal translation than is the Margulis edition – which nevertheless accurately preserved Vernadsky’s meaning, according to Langmuir.

      A good example of the problems of editing a translation by a nonnative English speaker is the use of the articles “a,” “an,” and “the.” These articles do not exist in Russian, so a Russian translator translating into English must insert them where needed – a very difficult task. Hence, I considered them “fair game” – to add or delete as seemed appropriate to my ear. The rules for placement of the articles in English are tricky to say the least. Although such rules do exist, they are not easy to apply. Yet a native speaker whose ear is attuned to the language seldom uses them improperly. In my editing of this translation, I must have removed a few hundred definite articles (“the”), mostly before plural words (e.g., solar rays) or compound nouns (e.g., green living matter). I also had to add quite a few definite and indefinite articles when it seemed appropriate. I apologize if these additions or deletions were not always what they should have been.

      Having just read the page proofs (my fourth time through!), I continue to be deeply impressed with the two volumes, especially for two reasons. I am still amazed by what was known by the first third of the twentieth century. Most of the important geochemical and ecological themes being discussed now are foreshadowed in these volumes. One example: I thought that perhaps Vernadsky’s time had not been aware of the potential problems, particularly global warming, posed by the rapid increase in carbon dioxide thanks to burning of fossil fuels. But there it is on pages 189-190 where Vernadsky considers the views of Arrhenius.

      The breadth of Vernadsky’s knowledge of the literature of geology, geochemistry, the biosphere, the kinds of living organisms, and many other topics is simply mind boggling. I began to wonder: Could anyone alive today duplicate Vernadsky’s feat, but this time incorporating all the information that has been added to and expanded upon what was known in his time?

      This work has been enjoyable as well as challenging, and it was made possible by Deborah Parrish Snyder of Synergetic Press. She has been a wonderful help and a joy to work with.

      Frank B. Salisbury

      Professor Emeritus of Plant Physiology

      Utah State University, Salt Lake City

      Vernadsky, Moscow 1940