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ISSN number: 1746-4757

  

The Biosphere and the Noösphere

Drew Whitworth

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NOTE: This essay is a shortened and slightly modified version of a paper delivered at the Political Studies Association annual conference, in Aberdeen, Scotland, in April 2002. The original version of the paper is available online in PDF format.

1. The biosphere.

In this month's feature essay, we propose that political analysis of cyberspace often fails to place that realm in its proper context. This supplementary essay describes a model of reality which would help in such a task. It explores the idea that the realm of life on Earth can be thought of as global spheres, the biosphere and noösphere. The essay also considers, at a very basic level, how these may be used in the analysis of politics and society. Note that no direct reference is made to ICT in this essay: for that the reader is directed to the feature essay.

Of the Earth's spheres, three are inert and broadly correspond to the three states of matter:

  • the lithosphere: the solid sphere of rock, magma, tectonic plates etc.
  • the hydrosphere: Earth's water (much of which is stored in solid or gaseous form as well)
  • the atmosphere: the envelope of gases.

Already it should be apparent that the divisions between these spheres are far from clear. Are clouds part of the atmosphere, or the hydrosphere, for instance? We will return to this question later. (Note that these three spheres are sometimes bracketed together as a single entity, the geosphere.)

The remaining two spheres are not inert, and herein lies a puzzle. Biology seems to be out of step with the other natural sciences of physics and chemistry. These disciplines are governed by entropy: matter's irreversible tendency to lose energy, structure and form, as expressed in the laws of thermodynamics which dominate the physical processes of the universe. It is entropy which means, for instance, that hot food left out on a worktop will gradually cool to room temperature (but no further). More importantly, entropy fuels the fires of the Sun. Yet the energy which is a by-product of this gradual decay is harnessed on Earth to fuel the evolution of the realm of life. At this (astronomically) local scale, there is not decay, but growth, structure and consciousness.

The illusion that life flouts fundamental laws of the universe was strong enough to provoke investigations into the nature of life as a planetary phenomenon. The Austrian geologist Eduard Suess recognised that "life on Earth" could from some perspectives be viewed as a sphere of planetary dimensions, just like the other three spheres mentioned above. He coined the term the biosphere to refer to the realm of life. This idea was then taken forward by the Russian geologist, Vladimir Vernadsky, whose name is now most closely associated with it. [1].

The great soil scientist, Dokuchaev, was another significant influence on Vernadsky's early investigations [2]. Soil is an excellent example of Vernadsky's central idea: life not only transforming matter and energy to shape itself, but through doing so, shaping the planet. Soil is a complex mix of minerals, nutrients and organisms such as earthworms and bacteria (and note again how this is an symbiosis or interaction of at least two of the planetary spheres). Even rocks, such as chalk, and minerals like coal and oil have been formed by prehistoric life. Consider also at the atmosphere. Advances in climatic science have dismissed the old idea that the atmosphere is merely a collection of gases attracted to the Earth by gravity. Rather, "it is more consistent in composition with a mixture of gases contrived for some specific purpose" [3]. (The word "purpose" can imply some godlike guiding hand or ultimate aim of this process. This is a significant criticism - I will return to it below.) Oxygen's appearance in the air is not coincidental, but is the direct result of two billion years of photosynthesis.

Through insights such as these Vernadsky proposed that life is not just a geological force, it is the prime geological force, and its influence becomes more extensive over time. Life exerts pressure on environments; it can colonise and re-colonise barren regions. In the short term this leads to results familiar to any gardener struggling to keep a patio free of weeds. In the long term, entire environments can be changed by the pressure of life through a process of dynamic exchange between life and its environment. Life is not simply at the mercy of the environment, but is actively engaged in shaping that environment as a byproduct of its own self-perpetuation and enhancement.

The level of pressure is a function of a species' biomass (literally, the collective mass of a species) and its speed of dispersal through the biosphere. Bacteria spread through an environment very quickly, elephants very slowly. Vernadsky is not referring simply to movement through an environment, but its colonisation: therefore, what has a "speed" is the transmission of genetic information. Though this over-simplifies a very complex process (and one that is not yet fully understood), the medium for storing and transmitting information within the biosphere is the gene, and the agent of transmission is reproduction (or more specifically heredity). Through mutation and subsequent evolution, life adapts itself to environments and adapts environments to life. Different environments also require the life within them to have different genetic structures in order to succeed. The diversity of environmental "niches" within the biosphere gives rise to genetic diversity. The evolutionist Theodosis Dobzhansky recognised that diversity gave the biosphere the necessary "plasticity" (or flexibility) to adapt to environmental changes [4]. The concept of diversity is very important and we will return to it later.

The biosphere does not complete the list of the Earth's spheres, however. As I will suggest on the next page, genes and heredity are inadequate when considering how humanity acts upon the Earth. Our impact on the biosphere far outweighs our biomass, or physical presence as a species. We are responsible for using or changing nearly 40% of the Earth's production of organic matter, notwithstanding that 90% of our energy needs are met by exploiting remnants of earlier ecosystems (fossil fuels) [5]. The question of how humanity can "punch above its weight" ecologically is the subject of the next page.

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Footnotes

1. Vernadsky, Vladimir I. (1998 [Russian original in 1926]). The Biosphere. Translated by D. B. Langmuir, revised and annotated by M. A. S. McMenamin. New York: Copernicus. return

2. see Bailes, Kendall E. (1990). Science and Russian Culture in an Age of Revolutions: V. I. Vernadsky and His Scientific School 1863-1945. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 19-20. return

3. Lovelock, James E. (1972). Gaia as seen through the atmosphere. Letter to the editors, Atmospheric Environment, pp. 579-80. return

4. Dobzhansky, Theodosius (1956). The Biological Basis of Human Freedom. New York: Columbia University Press. return.

5. Diamond, J. M. (1987). Human use of world resources. Nature 328, pp. 479-80. return