Once more, we see the central role of the “cycle of life” motif in
Vinogradskii’s entire approach to nature. Trained in St. Petersburg
under Famintsyn, his key goal was “to investigate the physiological
roles microbes played in the economy of nature by analyzing their
nutritional and respiratory processes as dynamic transformations
of matter and energy” (p. 57). If in some sense, species are Platonic
forms or, in Christian natural theology “ideas in the mind of God,”
then for Vinogradskii “God’s key idea” was not what each looked
like, but what role each played in the cycle of life.