This article appears in the November 18, 2022 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
NOVEMBER 12 CONFERENCE
Vernadsky’s Living Legacy:
Develop the Universe!
[Print version of this article]
Nov. 12—Today, the Schiller Institute convened an international online symposium titled, “The Physical Economy of the Noösphere: Reviving the Heritage of Vladimir Vernadsky.” Dedicated to reviving the name, method, and mission of the great Russian-Ukrainian scientist Vladimir Vernadsky (1863-1945), its purpose, as the invitation stated, was to support scientists and inspire citizens, especially young people the world over, to confer, “to improve the condition of mankind—to develop the noösphere.” The exciting seven-hour, two-panel event featured presentations by 17 scientists, engineers and policymakers, with live discussion, including questions from the world audience. The speakers represented six nations—the U.S., Russia, Italy, Germany, South Africa, and Egypt, with viewership numbering in the hundreds live, and fast on the way to multiple thousands since.
The first presentations were grouped under Panel 1, titled: “Vernadsky’s Revolution in Science and Thought.” The second panel was titled, “Physical Economy: Developing the Noösphere.”
Vernadsky and Lyndon LaRouche
Panel 1 moderator Dennis Speed, of the Schiller Institute, opened the morning panel, identifying that Vladimir Vernadsky’s concept of the “noösphere” concerns the dynamic of how fundamental breakthroughs in mankind’s thought and practices, when implemented in the productive process, enhance the power and numbers of humanity in the biosphere. Thus, human thought is itself a geological force shaping the physical domain.
This concept is profoundly coherent with the methodology of statesman-economist Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., (1922-2019) who did much to make known Vernadsky’s contributions, especially among a taskforce of young people working in science, two of whom participated in the Nov. 12 symposium. LaRouche wrote two books of special note, in the shared outlook with Vernadsky: The Economics of the Noösphere (2001), and Earth’s Next 50 Years (2005), and also, many articles.
To open the symposium, a video clip was shown of LaRouche addressing a May 2001 seminar of scientists and economists in Germany, on the idea of the noösphere, and on deliberate, interventionist development of Earth. LaRouche spoke of “corridors of development” to span Eurasia, which he stressed are not to be thought of as “railroad” or even “silk road” corridors: They are much more, and building them across “Central and North Asia” should be regarded as one of the “greatest opportunities for development” yet seen in the history of man, and could be done over the next 25 years. He spoke of deploying the “science of water management, the science of reforestation … the science of atmosphere and weather.” We should be “changing the biosphere of Central and North Asia.”
Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder and leader of the Schiller Institute made the observation during the discussion period, that it is “remarkable, 20 years later, the [Eurasian] continent is integrating” and developing in exactly the way that Vernadsky and LaRouche discussed. Zepp-LaRouche reported on the momentum for development underway by the Belt and Road Initiative, the BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), and concrete projects changing the economic space of Eurasia. She asked, should our time now be called, the “noӧ-stage of civilization” or maybe the time of “noӧ-society?”
The biography and influence of Vernadsky was given in the opening presentation, “Vernadsky’s Promethean Concept of Scientific Thought as a Geological Force,” by William Jones, political historian and the Washington, D.C. correspondent for the EIR News Service. The other speakers were: Dr. Vladimir Voeikov, Doctor of Biological Sciences, M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University on “Vernadsky’s Concept of Living Substance, with Emphasis on the Fundamental Role of Water in its Existence, Properties, and Development”; Dr. Nicola Scafetta, Associate Professor, University of Naples Frederico II, Naples, Italy, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Physics Department, Duke University, Durham, N.C.; Prof. Sergey Pulinets, Principal Research Scientist, Space Research Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow—“A Journey Through Vernadsky’s Universe”; Prof. Alberto Prestininzi, Professor, Sapienza University, Rome, and Director of the Center for Earthquake Research and Information (CERI) on “Climate Change and the Galaxy”; Jason Ross, Executive Director, The LaRouche Organization, on “Vernadsky’s Economic Space and Time: The Anti-Entropy of the Noosphere”; and Prof. Franco Prodi, Professor of General Physics, University of Ferrara, Italy.
Corridors of Development
The nature and management of water, and nuclear power, were featured in the presentations of the second panel, moderated by Rachel Brown of the Schiller Institute, with an exciting focus on Africa, provided by three of the five speakers, who addressed the Nile River Basin, the Congo and Chad Basins, and the importance of nuclear power for Africa.
Dr. Farouk el-Baz, speaking on “Egypt’s Development Corridor,” showed how “new” economic space—with level land, water, rail, and other necessities—can be created in a corridor parallel to, and just west of the Nile River, to accommodate millions of Egyptians away from the Nile, where they are currently “on top of each other!” The Egyptian population is 104 million and growing. Moreover, this corridor concept can be run from Egypt all the way southward into South Africa, which route El-Baz showed on a map.
Dr. El-Baz, a planetary geologist, has advised successive Egyptian governments. He is Research Professor and Director of the Center for Remote Sensing, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts and Adjunct Professor of Geology at the Faculty of Science, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt. He was a leading geologist in the NASA moon project.
Eng. Andrea Mangano’s topic was, “The Transaqua Project,” a massive economic and transport corridor, including a series of hydroelectric dams, to develop production and livelihoods in both the Congo and Lake Chad river basins, including the transfer of water to drier areas. Mangano showed other depleted basins, where manmade intervention would succeed in literally creating new “natural” resources. Mangano is a veteran at Bonifica, the Italian engineering team which developed the Transaqua concept for Central Africa in the 1970s.
Gaopalelwe “GP” Santswere, a nuclear physicist, who is a Senior Scientist at the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation, Pretoria, and President, African Young Generation in Nuclear (AYGN), spoke on “Africa’s Need for Nuclear Power and Nuclear Medicine.”
An illustrated update on prospects for harnessing fusion power for space propulsion and a report on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project in France, was given by Michael Paluszek, President of Princeton Satellite Systems, Plainsboro, N.J.
The final speaker was Prof. Gerald Pollack, on “The Fourth Phase of Water, and Life.” He is Professor of Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle, and founder of the Annual Conference on the Physics, Chemistry, and Biology of Water.
Follow-On: Optimism of Truth
One obvious significance of this Vernadsky symposium is that it happens to have occurred just at the time of the COP27 conference in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, and the contents of the Schiller Institute panels refute all the anti-development, so-called science and economics premises of the UN Climate Change Conference, formed in 1992, now having its 27th meeting, and now reduced to promoting the dangerous disinformation that CO2 emissions are causing an emergency, and that shifting the world to low grade energy and reducing population are desirable.
As Dennis Speed said at the beginning, both Vernadsky and LaRouche had an “anti-Malthusian conception, not a limits-to-growth construct.”
Two of the speakers at the Schiller Conference are part of a group of Italian scientists who recently released a book, Dialogue on Climate (in Italian), based on an excellent series of briefings they held over the past year, to refute the anti-growth science frauds about global warming.
Also coming in during the discussion period was Joel Dejean, an electrical engineer, who had just run as a LaRouche Independent on an anti-thermonuclear war platform for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas’ newly created 38th Congressional District. Dejean’s campaign featured an Oct. 19 webcast on Vernadsky. Dejean reminded the audience that “CO2 has nothing to do with climate change. Unless we’re going to ban water, all our measures to limit CO2 will have zero effect on the climate. The whole intent of the man-made climate change extremists is to kill people, to reduce the world’s population down to 1 billion, by getting people to commit suicide by limiting their energy use.”
Another, profound dimension of the importance of the Vernadsky symposium is that the proposals and initiatives presented add to the momentum of institutions in motion for a new world architecture of development. Many speakers commented on having an action perspective. As Jason Ross put it, “Anti-entropy growth is our mission.” Professor Pulinets stated matter-of-factly that this symposium must be the beginning of more meetings of scientists and economists, to get things done.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche, in her remarks about the symposium, made the point that the “cultural optimism which comes from the work of Vernadsky and LaRouche” is proof that the Malthusians are wrong.” We can look forward to the work of making the future bright.
Videos of both conference panels are available here on the Schiller Institute’s website. EIR will be publishing selected presentations in upcoming issues.
Preview the issue here and see the full table of contents.
The Schiller Institute has just released Volume 2, No. 1, of its new journal Leonore, which opens with the following from Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.’s October 20, 2002, article, “The Historical Individual:”
“The principal cause for the doom of any culture, is that mental disorder typical of popular opinion, which is to assume the validity of any assumptions currently adopted by a learned profession, or religious teaching, or more crudely adopted as ‘generally accepted popular opinion.’”
The 88-page issue, contains eleven articles, including the first English translation of one of the last letters by the 15th century scientific and political genius, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, which has been called his “religious last will,” and an original translation of Friedrich Schiller’s “On the Sublime,” described as “perhaps his most refined discussion of the process of the development of the soul.”
The preview includes the ground-breaking article by Jason Ross, “Vernadskian Time: Time for Humanity,” which addresses “the paradoxes posed by Vernadsky’s scientific work,” which open the way to a an entirely new set of definitions of space, time and matter, taken from the standpoint of the human mind.
The journal is yours as a monthly Schiller Institute contributing member. Memberships start at $5/month. Sign up here.
