Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
In all geological periods, the chemical influence of living matter
on the surrounding environment has not changed significantly;
the same processes of superficial weathering have functioned on
the Earth's surface during this whole time, and the average chemi-
cal composition of both living matter and the Earth's crust have
been approximately the same as they are today.
Thus, in looking at rocks through time, as far as Vernadsky could see,
the influence of life on Earth's surface had remained about the same.
This led him to conclude, somewhat later in the text:
The phenomena of superficial weathering clearly show that free
oxygen played the same role in the Archean Era that it plays
now. . . . The realm of photosynthesizers in those distant times was
the source of free oxygen, the mass of which was of the same order
as it is now.
hen I first read these passages, I did a double take. This is the first
account, of which I am aware, of the history of atmospheric oxygen
through time. It's not very detailed for sure, and as we proceed in our
discussions, we may not agree with Vernadsky's conclusion. But that
doesn't really matter. hat does matter is that he imagined the history
of atmospheric oxygen was an addressable scientific problem, he deter-
mined what evidence could be used to address it, and he did so within
the limits of the observations available at the time. Pretty cool, I think.
hile Vernadsky is a scientific hero in Russia, he is, sadly, barely
known in the West.
2
Part of the problem is that the first English transla-
tion of
The Biosphere
was finished only in 1977, and perhaps even more
significantly, the post-WWII “Iron Curtain” and Cold War consider-
ably limited scientific exchange between the Soviet Bloc countries and
the West. As for myself, I first learned of Vernadsky some 10 years ago
and only read
The Biosphere
rather recently. It was clear while reading it,
though, that Vernadsky was speaking a language I understood. Indeed,
many of his ideas fit well within our current understanding of how the
biosphere and the geosphere are coupled.
How could Vernadsky sound so familiar if he had been so overlooked
by western science? One explanation is that if scientific ideas are truly
