Abstract
Vernadsky and his concept of the biosphere—From biocenose to ecosystem: the establishment of ecology as a science—The 1920s: the arrival of mathematical methods in ecology—The hydrobiologists’ contribution—The ecosystem: birth of a term—Biogeocenose as cell of the biosphere – Nikolay Timofeyev-Resovsky: the biosphere as a factory, manufacturing the environment – James Lovelock and the “Gaia Hypothesis”—Strong and weak points of the Gaia Hypothesis and criticism from evolutionary biologists.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Which, by the way, one might attribute to his not winning the Nobel Prize. He entirely could have shared the prize won by his younger colleague Max Delbruk, with whom, at one time in early 1930s Germany, he carried out the work of determining the size of a gene.
References
Eigen, M., & Schuster, P. (1979). The hypercycle: A principle of natural self-organization. Berlin: Springer.
Elton, C. S. (1946). The ecology of animals. London: Methuen.
Lindeman, R. L. (1942). The trophic-dynamic aspect of ecology. Ecology, 23, 399–418.
Lotka, A. J. (1925). Elements of physical biology (p. 460). Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins.
Lovelock, J. E. (1991). Gaia: The practical science of planetary medicine. London: Gaia Book Limited.
Odum, E. (1983). Basic ecology. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders.
Reymers, N. F. (1990). Prirodopolzovanie. Dictionary-reference. Moscow: Mysl. [in Russian].
Schwartzman, D. W., & Volk, T. (1989). Biotic enhancement of weathering and the habitability of earth. Nature, 340, 457–460.
Timofeyev-Resovsky, N. V. (1996). The biosphere and humanity. In A. N. Tyuryukanov & V. M. Fedorov N. V. Timofeyev-Resovsky; Thoughts on the biosphere. Thoughts on the biosphere. Moscow: RAEN. [in Russian].
Vernadsky, V. I. (1988). Philoshophical thoughts of a naturalist (p. 519). Moscow: Nauka. [in Russian].
Vernadsky, V. (1998). The biosphere: Complete annotated edition, translated by D. Langmuir. New York: Springer-Verlag/Copernicus Books.
Zavarzin, G. A. (2004). Lectures on microbiology in the context of natural history. Moscow: Nauka. [in Russian].
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Danilov-Danil’yan, V.I., Reyf, I.E. (2018). The Path to a Systemic Understanding of the Biosphere. In: The Biosphere and Civilization: In the Throes of a Global Crisis. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67193-2_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67193-2_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-67192-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-67193-2
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)