The Life of Plants by Emanuele Coccia

Author:Emanuele Coccia
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781509531523
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Published: 2019-02-11T00:00:00+00:00

We do not inhabit the Earth, we inhabit the air through the atmosphere. We are immersed in it exactly as the fish is immersed in the sea. And what we call breathing is nothing but the agriculture of atmosphere.

To try and join the two movements—the one that goes from living beings to the environment and the one that goes from the environment to living beings—means to think of the atmosphere as a system or a space for the circulation of life, matter, and energy. This is the radical approach of the Russian naturalist Vladimir Vernadsky. He recognized that “atmosphere is not an independent region of life”9 but is also an expression of life. In effect, green plants have created a new, transparent medium for life—atmosphere:10 “Life creates both the free oxygen in the Earth’s crust, and also the ozone that protects the biosphere from the harmful short-wavelength radiation of celestial bodies.”11 At the other end, life constitutes itself starting from atmosphere: “Living matter builds bodies of organisms out of atmospheric gases such as oxygen, carbon dioxide, and water, together with compounds of nitrogen and sulfur, converting these gases into liquid and solid combustibles that collect the cosmic energy of the sun.”12 Vernadsky calls the biosphere “the exterior crust of the Earth,” considering it not only as a material region but especially as “a place of transformation of the planet by external cosmic forces. These forces mold and transform the faces of the earth and, as a result, the history of the biosphere is sharply distinguished from that of the rest of the planet.”13

The principal source of this region is what Vernadsky calls living matter: the collection of organisms and living bodies that are responsible for the creation of new compounds14 and that “exert a powerful permanent and continuous disturbing effect on the chemical stability of the surface of our planet.” It is living matter that

creates the colors and forms of nature, the associations of animals and plants, and the creative labor of civilized humanity, and also becomes a part of the diverse chemical processes of the Earth’s crust. There is no substantial chemical equilibrium on the crust in which the influence of life is not evident and in which chemistry does not display life’s work. Life is therefore not an external or accidental phenomenon of the Earth’s crust. It is closely bound to the structure of the crust, forms part of its mechanism, and fulfills functions of prime importance to the existence of this mechanism. Without life, the crustal mechanism of the Earth would not exist.15

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