杏吧原创

The Biosphere by Vladimir Vernadsky, Copernicus, 拢19/$30, ISBN
038798268X

EVER heard of Vladimir Vernadsky? Probably not. Like the inventor of the
periodic table Dmitri Mendeleyev, crop biodiversity pioneer Nikolai Vavilov and
numerous top Soviet scientists, he fell into the black hole created by the Cold
War. Yet, following the thaw, Vernadsky is increasingly regarded as a figure as
important as Charles Darwin for our understanding of the evolution of life on
Earth.

The Biosphere, his seminal text, is only now published in a full
English translation. Its resonance with modern thinking in the environmental
sciences makes it hard to believe that it was written more than 70 years ago, in
1926.

The term 鈥渂iosphere鈥� was invented by the Austrian geologist Eduard Seuss in
the 19th century to describe the 鈥渢hin green smear鈥� in which we live. But it was
Vernadsky who conceived of the biosphere as a dynamic zone in which life shapes
geology. It has taken more than half a century for this to become our modern
perception.

In the past, scientists have regarded life as a passive inhabitant of a world
framed by geology. But, for Vernadsky, life from the beginning took a firm hold
over its surroundings. He defined the biosphere as the area of the Earth鈥檚 crust
occupied by 鈥渢ransformers that convert cosmic radiations into active energy in
electrical, chemical, mechanical, thermal and other forms鈥�. In the words of the
foreword to this admirably translated and annotated volume, 鈥渓ife is not merely
a geological force, it is the geological force鈥�.

For reductionists from the Victorian era to this day, this is heresy. Geology
is for geologists, they say. But Vernadsky鈥檚 new vision has permeated widely. It
provided the unseen intellectual backdrop to UNESCO鈥檚 Man and Biosphere
programme, to Biosphere 2 (the closed life-support system built in the Arizona
desert), and most of all to Gaia, the notion of the Earth as a living organism
invented by British scientist James Lovelock.

It was Vernadsky who first noticed that 鈥渢he gases of the biosphere are
identical to those created by the gaseous exchange of living organisms. This
cannot be an accident鈥�the breathing of organisms has primary importance in the
gaseous system of the biosphere; in other words, it must be a planetary
phenomenon.鈥� An Earth without life would be an entirely different place, he
said, 鈥渁 chemical calm鈥� very unlike the dynamic environment in which we
live.

Such observations set the scene for today鈥檚 research into the flows of
carbon, sulphur, nitrogen and other elements through the
biosphere鈥攔esearch that underpins our understanding of how humans have
taken the dominant role in many planetary processes.

Vernadsky provides what Jacques Grinevald, the Swiss historian of Gaia, calls
鈥渢he intellectual prehistory of Gaia鈥�. Lovelock describes Vernadsky as his 鈥渕ost
illustrious predecessor鈥�, but admits that he only came across the Russian鈥檚 work
long after Gaia was on the world鈥檚 bookshelves.

Such ignorance about Vernadsky鈥檚 work was deepest in the West, but common too
in his home country. He wrote The Biosphere when more than 60 years
old, an unfashionable age for revolutionary insights. And by then he had left
Paris to return to Stalin鈥檚 Soviet Union, where he lived out the final 20 years
of his life. There his views were often derided as quasi-religious (a charge
still levelled at Lovelock鈥檚 Gaia today).

With the rise of glasnost, Vernadsky was posthumously embraced by
the Russian scientific establishment. Suddenly he was a hero. He was quoted by
Mikhail Gorbachev, appeared on stamps and coins, and had a mineral, several
mountains, a Siberian mine, a street in Moscow and even a crater on the Moon
named after him. Now we too can read the words of the invisible man of the
biosphere in a surprisingly readable translation.