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to the Earth as a set of simplest forms, later on it rapidly covered all the surface of the
Earth and created the biosphere. Afterwards, the living substance only developed
morphologically, while neither its mass nor its average chemical composition underwent
any change during all geological history of the Earth. In this connection, V. I. Vernadsky
supposed that the Archean rock-weathering and soil-forming processes were identical to
those in the contemporary epoch. He assessed the technological activities of the mankind
as a huge geological and geochemical force alien to the biosphere and superimposed upon
its permanent existence.
F. T. Yanshina in her monograph The Evolution of V. I. Vernadsky’s Views on the
Biosphere and the Development of the Noosphere Doctrine (1996) has shown that V. I.
Vernadsky had given up these concepts (certainly erroneous from the contemporary
viewpoint) resolutely since the mid-1930s. This fact had not been taken into account by the
earlier investigations of V. I. Vernadsky’s heritage.
To the mid-1930s, the chemists of many countries learned to obtain the various
compounds (aminoacids, ketones, porphyrines) artificially from a mixture of carbon
dioxide, marsh-gas, and ammonium hydrate, acting upon this mixture by slow heating or
electric current. These experiments destroyed the impassable barrier between the living
and non-living substances. This fact changed V. I. Vernadsky’s views abruptly.
F. T. Yanshina showed (in the above-mentioned monograph) that in V. I.
Vernadsky’s works written after the mid-1930s the idea of the eternity of life is rejected.
He recognized the appearance of life on the Earth by means of abiogenesis, which latently
is going on even nowadays. He came to a conclusion that during the geological history the
mass of the living substance increased and its average chemical composition repeatedly
changed. In other words, in the mid-1930s V. I. Vernadsky acknowledged the evolution of
all components of the biosphere. His biosphere doctrine only benefited by this and became
more perfect.
Having accepted the idea of the evolution of the biosphere, V. I. Vernadsky also
changed his viewpoint upon the technological activities of the mankind. He came to
consider them as a law
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