Vernadsky, Moscow 1884

      Editing these two examples of Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky’s writings through three and more readings has been a most interesting and rewarding experience. Vernadsky’s writings are such an enjoyable read because there are several kinds of insights that one may gain from these two works.

      There are insights into the status of Earth science and biology during the end of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, which was Vernadsky’s time – and there are several insights into Vernadsky himself.

      He displayed the personality of a scientist almost from the beginning of his life. He was a truly great historian of science. He possessed a unique philosophical mind-set. He was an innovator in his field of geology and a formulator of new sciences. He had a captivating view of the future and especially of the role of humans in Earth’s geochemistry and biosphere.

      During the 1880s, Vernadsky was associating with several great Russian scientists (as Academician Alexander Yanshin describes in his introduction), especially the renowned chemist, Dmitri Mendeleyev (discoverer of the Periodic Table of the Elements) and Vasilii V. Dokuchaev (the founder of soil science). Thus Vernadsky was on the cutting edge of late nineteenth century science. In 1922, after a number of moves and involvement with the revolution (he resigned from his party in 1918, feeling himself “morally incapable of participating in the civil war”), Vernadsky and his family moved via Prague to Paris, where he wrote most of The Biosphere (Biosfera), which was published in 1926 in Russian and in 1929 in French (La Biosphère). Upon arriving in France in 1922, he was asked to lecture (winter of 1922–23) on geochemistry. It is clear from the Essays on Geochemistry that much of the actual writing was done in 1933, but he must have begun his notes in 1922; presumably, the Essays were developing during this eleven-year period.

      The third edition of Biosfera (the edition included here in translation) was published in 1965. When did Vernadsky prepare this third edition? Vernadsky begins his essay on the noösphere, which was new in the third edition, by noting that he was writing in 1944 during World War II. The noösphere could stand alone, and because its sections are numbered starting with #1, Vernadsky might well have expected it to stand alone. It is a logical conclusion to Biosfera, however, and also provides a most appropriate ending for this Synergetic Press volume. Because the third edition contains a considerable amount of material not in the 1926 or the 1929 editions, and because Vernadsky was writing the noösphere during World War II, we can assume that he did much editing of the 1926/1929 editions until at least 1944 and possibly until shortly before his death in 1945.

      There are two aspects to the insights on the status of science during the end of the nineteenth century and the first third of the twentieth century: the facts and numbers themselves, and what Vernadsky thought about them. Let’s consider the facts. Science has certainly progressed and changed during the past three quarters of a century. Thus, one impression during my first reading concerned how many things had changed; that is, I noted the “mistakes” and changes in viewpoint – how much Vernadsky and his contemporaries did not know. I’m afraid that I tended to be a bit critical of the facts and numbers presented in these two works. On the second reading, however, I was overwhelmed by the vast amount of knowledge of Earth’s geochemistry and the biosphere that was known in Vernadsky’s time; how much they did know! And I was especially overwhelmed by how much Vernadsky knew. The breadth of his knowledge of the science of his time is truly amazing – how could one person have so much information at his fingertips?

      Nevertheless, one should be careful in reading these two volumes. One should not assume that the presented “facts” and especially the numbers would be the same today (e.g., the amount of some given element in the Earth’s crust, in the biosphere, or in the hydrosphere or atmosphere). As Vernadsky was well aware and often states, his facts and numbers were estimates of the time and would likely improve and change in response to further research. I recommend that one should be deeply impressed by the sheer quantity of information of this type that was available back then – and with Vernadsky’s ability to bring it together in these two volumes. His summary of the fields is truly a tour de force. But one should be wary of the details.

      Of course, as a plant physiologist with a now out-of-date minor in geochemistry, for the most part, I could only be aware of mistakes relating to my own field. In several cases, I added footnotes pertaining to some topic that interested me (and often led me to research other sources) – or to some of Vernadsky’s terms and usages (and/or those of the translator) that I found difficult to understand, requiring much cogitation and digging into dictionaries. In addition to my footnotes (labeled with “Ed.”), the Russian editor of the third edition of The Biosphere added a number of footnotes, labeled with (Comment of the editor of the third edition). Vernadsky also added several footnotes (no label).

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