|
Arabic
Bengali
Chinese
English
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Malay
Polish
Portuguese
Spanish
Turkish
Ukrainian
Vietnamese|
MOST IMPORTANT SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES
Biosphere. History and essence of scientific discovery
Directory / The most important scientific discoveries The author of the new doctrine - Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky in his "Essays on Geochemistry" notes that ideas about the meaning of life as a cumulatively acting phenomenon that affects the course of planetary processes appear already in the works of natural scientists of the XNUMXth century, in particular, X. Huygens. Zh.L. de Buffon, F. Vic d'Azire and J. Lamarck. Thus, Lamarck's "Hydrogeology" contains an attempt at a natural scientific description of life as a planetary phenomenon. Further, Vernadsky highlights the theory of the Neptunists: "Life, closely connected with water, had its place of honor in the creation of the nature around us. Life for the Neptunists was a huge force, and not an accidental phenomenon in the history of the planet." The forerunner of the natural-scientific approach in the description of the biosphere can rightfully be considered A. Humboldt one of the greatest naturalists of the XNUMXth century. Both in his early works and in his later synthetic work Cosmos, he summarized the understanding that "... living matter is an inseparable and regular part of the planet's surface, inseparable from its chemical environment." The Austrian geologist E. Suess, who drew well and endowed with a powerful imagination, mentally saw our planet from space, highlighting special areas: the hydrosphere (natural waters), the lithosphere - the earth's crust, the biosphere. In his understanding, the biosphere is the face of the Earth, earthly landscapes. The meaning of this term in the works of Suess is rather metaphorical. It has not received deep scientific development here. Perhaps, the English oceanologist J. Murray at the beginning of our century characterized the geospheres most logically: “At present, natural scientists designate the term “biosphere” as the cover of living matter that covers the globe wherever the atmosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere come into contact and mix. On land, living beings do not rise too high above its surface and do not penetrate very deep inside it. In the ocean, the situation is different. Life exists everywhere, in the entire mass of oceanic waters - from the equator to the poles and from the surface to the very bottom ... " Murray's thoughts became the starting point for the Russian scientist Vernadsky, the beginning of the doctrine that living matter and the living environment form a single whole - the biosphere. Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (1863–1945) was born in St. Petersburg in the family of a professor of economics and history I.V. Vernadsky. The house of his father, a prominent economist and historian of St. Petersburg University, was one of those places where the luminaries of Russian science gathered. From the third grade, Vladimir studied at the St. Petersburg classical gymnasium - one of the best in Russia. Then he entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University. During his student years, Vernadsky was greatly influenced by the teacher of mineralogy V.V. Dokuchaev. Dokuchaev and invited his student to study mineralogy and crystallography. A few years later, Vladimir's first works about mud volcanoes and oil appeared, and then philosophical articles. In 1885, Vladimir graduated from the university and was left in it to conduct scientific work. Then Vernadsky leaves for two years on a business trip abroad (Italy, Germany, France, England, Switzerland). He works in chemical and crystallographic laboratories, makes geological expeditions, gets acquainted with the latest scientific and philosophical literature. Returning to Russia, Vernadsky became assistant professor of mineralogy at Moscow University. Having successfully defended his master's thesis, he begins lecturing. In 1897, the turn came to defend his doctoral dissertation ("Phenomena of sliding of crystalline matter"). Soon Vernadsky was invited to Moscow University to head the department of mineralogy and crystallography. Here, for many years, Vladimir Ivanovich lectured and conducted many of the scientific studies that glorified him. In 1906, Vernadsky was elected a member of the State Council from Moscow University. Two years later, he becomes an extraordinary academic. From 1906 to 1918, separate parts of his fundamental work "Experience in Descriptive Mineralogy" were published. Vernadsky approached mineralogy from a completely new point of view: he put forward the idea of the evolution of all minerals and thereby set new tasks for mineralogy, much broader and deeper than the previous ones. The main goal of mineralogy, according to Vernadsky, is the study of the history of minerals in the earth's crust. One of the first university professors, Vernadsky began working at the Higher Women's Courses that opened in Moscow. However, in 1911, his activities within the walls of the university were interrupted: together with the largest scientists of that time, the professor of mineralogy left Moscow University, protesting against the police regime that the Minister of Education Kasso tried to introduce in Russian educational institutions. He moves to Petersburg. Here Vernadsky became director of the Geological and Mineralogical Museum of the Academy of Sciences. On the initiative and under the chairmanship of Vladimir Ivanovich, in 1915 a Commission for the Study of the Natural Productive Forces of Russia was created at the Academy of Sciences (KEPS). Vladimir Ivanovich, elected in 1916 as chairman of the scientific council under the Ministry of Agriculture, continued his scientific research, publishing articles on mineralogy, geochemistry, minerals, the history of natural science, the organization of science, and meteoritics. In 1917, Vernadsky's health deteriorated. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis. In the summer he left for Ukraine. The turbulent events of the Civil War found him in Kyiv. Here he actively participates in the creation of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and is elected its president. But the main thing for Vernadsky remained scientific and theoretical work. During his stay in Kyiv, Poltava, Staroselye (at the biological station), Kharkov, then in Rostov, Novorossiysk, Yalta, Simferopol, he developed the foundations of the doctrine of the geochemical activity of living matter. Vernadsky in 1919 publishes an article "On the tasks of the geochemical study of the Sea of \uXNUMXb\uXNUMXbAzov". A deep study of the geochemistry of the sea helped him in creating the doctrine of the biosphere. In this article, the scientist has never mentioned the term "biosphere", as if not attaching great importance to it. But in the next article, the situation changes. It is called "On Nickel and Cobalt in the Biosphere". One way or another, but in 1921 Vernadsky moved from the geochemical analysis of living matter to the knowledge of the environment of life, which includes living matter and inanimate (inert) that are in interaction. In 1922, Vernadsky completed his work "Living Matter". Vladimir Ivanovich was well aware that this theoretical work opens up a new area of knowledge at the intersection of biological and geological sciences. Prior to this work, there was an unbridgeable gulf between the biological sciences, which study living organisms, and the geological sciences, which are concerned with the knowledge of the earth, rocks and minerals, topography and geological structures. Vernadsky showed here for the first time that life is a planetary phenomenon. The totality of organisms - living matter - is part of the planet Earth and can be considered as a geological object. Living matter is a special geochemical force that actively participates in all processes occurring in the area of life - the biosphere. "Anyone who has ever tried with open eyes and with a free mind and heart to be alone, outside the artificial environment of a city or estate, among nature - at least that sharply changed by man that surrounds our cities and villages - clearly and clearly felt this its inseparable connection with the rest of the animal and plant world.In the silence of the night, when the special framework of the external environment created by man freezes, among the steppe or the ocean, at the height of the mountains, this feeling, inherent in it for centuries, embraces a person inseparably.It is especially strong in the condensations of living matter - on the coast of the sea or ocean, in a forest, on a great river, or among at least a shallow pond or lake far from settlements ... " Vernadsky draws a conclusion that is very important for the science of the Earth and life: "The organism is inseparably connected with the earth's crust and must be studied in close connection with its study. An autonomous organism does not really exist in nature without connection with the earth's crust." V.P. Kaznacheev writes: “V.I. Vernadsky, unlike his predecessors, filled the concept of the “biosphere” with deep, systematically substantiated scientific content. Firstly, in the biogeochemical aspect, this is the Earth’s shell, within which life is widespread. The biosphere is a planetary-cosmic natural phenomenon, its living substance is a new geological force in the evolution of the planet. Note that the concept of the biosphere is not equivalent to the concept of the geographical envelope, which in the literature is understood as a heterogeneous natural complex of the planet's surface, based on the interactions of the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and affecting living organisms. The biosphere, on the other hand, is a specific natural phenomenon, an integral self-developing system in which the activity of living matter is put forward in the first place. The biosphere, according to Vernadsky's definition, is "a natural manifestation of the mechanism of the planet, its upper shell - the earth's crust." When characterizing the biosphere, the scientist emphasized the importance of cosmic factors. "On the one hand, we have here a natural laboratory dominated by the sharp effects of various forms of cosmic energy... on the other hand, an area of the planet that continuously for billions of years receives a continuous influx of cosmic matter and energy, which was formed under conditions alien to our planet..." The substance of the biosphere, according to the scientist, is complex and has several components. Among them, the scientist identifies the following: 1) the totality of living organisms - living matter; 2) a substance created and processed by living organisms - a biogenic substance (coal, bitumen, limestone, oil, etc.); 3) inert matter formed by processes in which living matter does not participate (solid, liquid, gaseous, etc.); 4) bioinert matter, which is created simultaneously by living organisms and inert processes, representing the dynamic balance of the system of both (almost all the water of the biosphere, oil, soil, weathering crust, etc.) - Organisms play a leading role in them; 5) a substance in the process of radioactive decay; 6) scattered atoms, which are continuously created from various types of terrestrial matter under the influence of cosmic radiation, the streams of which continuously enter the near-Earth space. Their physical composition requires further research; 7) a substance of cosmic origin, which includes individual atoms and molecules entering the ionosphere from the electromagnetic field of the Sun, penetrating from outer space. Defining the biosphere as a natural phenomenon, Vernadsky sees at the heart of it, first of all, the process - the cosmoplanetary evolution of the Earth and the role of living matter in this evolution as the main system-forming factor of the biosphere. The biosphere under the conditions of the Earth is a kind of receptacle for living matter, it includes it as a basis. In this regard, the biosphere itself appears as a complex self-regulating cosmoplacetic system, a new shell of the Earth. Vernadsky was the first to feel and comprehend the unity of living matter in the biosphere. In those years when Vernadsky's ideas were only just entering science, they looked purely theoretical, not connected with the urgent needs of people. Today, the doctrine of the biosphere is the scientific basis for all human activities aimed at transforming nature. It becomes the basis of many global and regional ecological transformations and forecasts; many studies of comparative planetology, space ecology and anthropoecology are based on it. Author: Samin D.K.
Artificial leather for touch emulation
15.04.2024 Petgugu Global cat litter
15.04.2024 The attractiveness of caring men
14.04.2024
▪ An effective way to dye your hair ▪ Floating robot to explore a volcano after an eruption ▪ Global Positioning and Navigation System GNSS ▪ New isolated ISO 1050 CAN transceiver ▪ Newman K2S Tablet Phone with MediaTek MT6592 Octa-Core Processor
▪ radio section of the website. Article selection ▪ article by Thomas Carlyle. Famous aphorisms ▪ article What is the difference from a regular ballpoint pen for astronauts? Detailed answer ▪ article bird cherry. Legends, cultivation, methods of application ▪ article 1 + 1 is not always equal to two. Focus secret
Home page | Library | Articles | Website map | Site Reviews
www.diagram.com.ua |
We recommend interesting articles Section 
See other articles Section 
Latest news of science and technology, new electronics:
All languages of this page