The doctrine of the biosphere: origins

Almost any educated person, no matter in whatever sphere of public activity he exerted his efforts, heard the somewhat mysterious word "noosphere". It is considered a special novelty of the XX century, such as the theory of evolution was in the previous century. Let us try once again to understand this semi-mysterious idea, which is the doctrine of the biosphere and noosphere, so closely associated with the name and scientific and philosophical heritage of Vernadsky.

Firstly, the year of its birth and its author are known precisely.

Back in 1875, the term "biosphere" was first introduced into the scientific revolution by the Austrian geologist Eduard Suess. But he did not define the concept, did not designate his scientific objectness, so for a long time the word "biosphere" was used in a variety of meanings.

For the first time this category was used as a science in the walls of the College de France - the famous Parisian educational institution, famous for its highly intellectual level of teaching, at lectures in 1927. The author of the term was the philosopher and mathematician Edward Leroy. It is interesting to note that the co-author of the noospheric concept was Leroi's peer, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. But these two scientists directly send their listeners and readers to the biosphere representations of the Russian scientist V. Vernadsky, who lectured at the Sorbonne.

Vladimir Ivanovich, having formulated the doctrine of the biosphere, continued his reflections on the basis of the biogeochemical approach to it. Since the 30-ies of the twentieth century, the entire energy of the optimistic worldview of the scientist has been drawing to the noospheric idea.

But let's return to the origins for a while, to Leroy and Teilhard de Chardin. What was the essence of their ideas? The emergence of the human species in a series of ascending forms means, in their opinion, that evolution passes to the use of other means, exclusively of psychic properties. Scientists argued that evolution created in the human form a fundamentally new means of its own development - a special spiritual and psychic ability, such as before in nature did not exist at all. Chardin himself also defined the distinctive properties of this phenomenon-man: the presence of reflective reason, self-awareness and the ability, therefore, to know oneself, then to creatively reproduce all forms of being.

In a later work, The Place of Man in Nature, he considered the question of the origin and life, and its essence, placing man in the general series of the cosmic process of complicating matter.

It is interesting that the young Vladimir Ivanovich, while still a student at the university, wrote a remarkable thought in his diary, which leads the doctrine of the biosphere to a philosophical situation. In particular, he argued that the history of the Earth in planetary consideration can be represented as a history of the change of matter. At the same time, all these changes are not spontaneous and chaotic, but on the basis of a very clear regularity of the universal level.

In this statement, the author of the doctrine of the biosphere leads to the idea that where matter seems to us to be "dead", it is in fact not dead, but only "lifelong," life in it is present as a potency. This phenomenon Vernadsky calls hominization, a kind of jump in planetary development at the cosmic level, as the revitalization (vitality) of matter. In a word, the doctrine of the biosphere considers the appearance of man, neither more nor less, as a fact of a further, qualitatively new unfolding of the biosphere itself, and after it and the entire cosmic process. Bound in this way with the evolutionary succession of life, the person, at the same time, is the original whole. On the basis of this thesis, the creators and devotees of the doctrine of the noosphere are inclined to regard man not as a separate representative of a biological species, nor as a "crown" of nature, but only as a representative of the order of a new reality that acts as an independent new "sphere" in relation to the biosphere.

Homification is the way through which this new sphere develops, gradually rising above the animal biosphere.

The human sphere located behind it is characterized by the properties of reflection, the individual's capacity for free and conscious choice and creativity. This is the sphere of the mind - the noosphere. That is, in this movement of Vernadsky's thought we see the desire to present the doctrine of the biosphere as a theory of preliminary investigation of a phenomenon of a higher order - the theory of the noosphere.