Geochemistry and the Biosphere. Vladimir I. Vernadsky

which he dealt. The scope of his scientific generalization is enormous. In order to embrace with his mind the specific role of living organisms in changing the Earth’s crust, which he had already comprehended in general, he had to abstract himself from the specific functions of millions of animal species, and see only the one common function involved in changing the surrounding non-living nature – a function that could not be seen by botanists, zoologists, nor microbiologists. He saw this in the geologically generalized property of all living organisms – in their capacity to transform the energy and matter of the upper envelopes of the planet. It was then that the new, large-scale notion of “living matter” appeared to denote this generalized bearer of the generalized function of living organisms.

      Being a geologist, Vernadsky could not do without this notion of his newly realized geological power of living organisms, comparing it with the classical tectonic processes: volcanism, water and wind erosion, and other traditionally known geological causes of change of the planet’s face in its geological history. This newly discovered geological force has turned out to be much more powerful than the natural elemental forces, and it is of cosmic essence, since it is brought into action by the energy of cosmic and solar radiation.

      These new notions and terms in science each have a different degree of significance. The notion of living matter has invaded the very structure of natural sciences. It has made the vast world of living organisms, the world of botanists, zoologists, and microbiologists, an object of a quite different geological science. Geology has drawn from biology a new geological factor that had never been included into its competence, and which is, as it has turned out, the crucial one among the other, traditional, geological factors changing the planet’s face. Now, botanists and zoologists as well as microbiologists are able to consider their objects from a different standpoint, that of their geochemical function in the biosphere.

      Vernadsky circa 1911

      Vernadsky’s work on the role of living matter in Earth’s history did not stop at this point. With his mind’s eye he managed to see the part of living matter that, though relatively small, was extremely important from the standpoint of geology: the living matter of humans. Before civilizations appeared, the human population of the Earth had not differed from the whole mass of higher organisms in its biogeochemical role. But it began to manifest itself as an essentially new natural force in Mesopotamia, Chaldea, and Athens, in the school of Plato, in the philosophy of Democritus, Aristotle, and Socrates, in the teachings of Ptolemy, and then, with an increasing crescendo, in the teachings of Copernicus, Bruno, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein. I should add Vernadsky to the list, too. Of course this list is quite relative, and intended only to illustrate Vernadsky’s thought that such a small part of the biosphere generated and is still generating a qualitatively new factor in the development of the biosphere: the rapidly increasing sum of scientific knowledge about the biosphere, about the direction and volume of humans’ productive activity, which had reached the scale of a new geological force.

      This empirical fact brought forth another generalization unprecedented in the history of science, but characteristic of the scope of Vernadsky’s mind. As in the case of the global notion of “living matter,” he abstracted the essence from the specific content of the countless specific scientific facts in the numerous particular scientific disciplines. In this vast multitude of scientific data he saw a certain general essence and called it “scientific thought.” All the diversity of science of all times and nations was generalized into “scientific thought,” like all the diversity of life into “living matter.” By this name he denoted this qualitatively new and, again, geologically significant product of biosphere development as a generalized and independent force on a geological scale, this time produced by an extremely small quantity of the planet’s living matter – that of humans.

      In his notion of “scientific thought” or “scientific mind” he saw not an encyclopedia of science, but a generalized, average motion of human thought as part of the planet’s development – its geological history. That is why he collected his unpublished notes under the title “Scientific Thought as a Planetary Phenomenon,” which he failed to complete although he considered it his principal book. These notes were later published under the same title (Mysl, 1991).

      Taking into consideration the rapid increase of human activities affecting the biosphere, and the anticipation of their further increase, Vernadsky came to a conclusion about the appearance of a new qualitative state of the biosphere, in which “scientific thought” increasingly becomes the main factor determining its further state and evolution, and is already an independent factor of the biosphere determining and directing the practical activities of humanity in nature and society. He named this new stage of the biosphere’s development the “noösphere,” which means the sphere of science-based intellect, of a new attitude of humanity towards its environment. He believed that the humans of his time had already entered or were entering this new state of the biosphere.

      It has been noticed that Vernadsky avoided introducing new terms into science. If necessary, he found them in the scientific literature, which he knew very well. This happened also with the term “noösphere,” which was suggested by the French mathematician and philosopher Le Roy in 1927. Vernadsky used Le Roy’s term in his paper, although he attached to it a more comprehensive meaning.

      The creation of the teaching of the biosphere coincided with the situation of that time in traditional geology, when the increasing influence of Man upon Nature had reached the level of a geologic force. That is why the geologists had to find a proper designation for the contemporary stage of the planet’s development in terms of conventional geochronology. Since our school years, we have known that the development of life on Earth passed through long geological eras quite different in content: the Paleozoic (and now, as we have come to know, earlier eras as well), Mesozoic, and Cenozoic eras. The latter formally is expanded to our time, but it also embraces the last millions of years in the Earth’s development when some ancestors of contemporary Man appeared, separate centers of primeval human society were springing up slowly but inevitably, and the first centers of civilization arose, later blending into the allhuman civilization that has embraced the planet from pole to pole.

      To designate the contemporary stage of the Earth’s geological history, the term “anthropogenic era” was suggested in 1922 by the geologist A. P. Pavlov, one of Vernadsky’s teachers. Another term for the same purpose, Psychozoic Era, was suggested by the American geologist Charles Schuchert. In both variants the main factor, the backbone of the contemporary geological epoch, was Man. No doubt, the present and future history of the biosphere’s evolution will be written by humankind, though this part of the planet’s “living matter” (biomass) is insignificant in its percentage of the total biomass. I cannot say how it will act on our long-suffering biosphere. Maybe ichthyosauruses will not be the last once powerful but now extinct species of Earth’s inhabitants.

      Vernadsky could have meant this when he wrote as early as 1902 about the great responsibility of scientists for their activities: “At present in the field of exact knowledge, we are standing on the border, on the verge of great discoveries…. Cannot the forces discovered by nature be used to do evil and harm?” Later, in 1922, he put it more definitely:

      We are approaching a great revolution in humanity’s life, which cannot be compared to anything in the past. The time is coming when Man will be able to control atom energy, a source of power that will give him an opportunity to build his life as he pleases…. Will he be able to use this power, to direct it to food, not to self-destruction? Is he mature enough to manage this power which is inevitably to be given to him by science?

      The reader will understand the power of Vernadsky’s anticipation, taking into account that these words were written when physicists, including Niels Bohr’s “brain center,” did not even think about the actual use of atomic energy.

      Vernadsky on vacation in Peterhof, 1931

      But let us return to geochronology, with which we were discussing the name of our current geological era. In the literature, one can