The Study of Life and the New Physics

This is the first English translation of this revolutionary essay by Vladimir I. Vernadsky, the great Russian-Ukrainian biogeochemist. It was first published in 1930 in French in the Revue générale des sciences pures et appliquées. In it, Vernadsky makes a powerful and provocative argument for the need to develop what he calls “a new physics,” something he felt was clearly necessitated by the implications of the groundbreaking work of Louis Pasteur among few others, but also something that was required to free science from the long-lasting effects of the work of Isaac Newton, most notably.

For hundreds of years, science had developed in a direction which became increasingly detached from the breakthroughs made in the study of life and the natural sciences, detached even from human life itself, and committed reductionists and small-minded scientists were resolved to the fact that ultimately all would be reduced to “the old physics.” The scientific revolution of Einstein was a step in the right direction, but here Vernadsky insists that there is more progress to be made. He makes a bold call for a new physics, taking into account, and fundamentally based upon, the striking anomalies of life and human life.

Published by 21st Century Science & Technology