The idea of ​​evolution, that is, the gradual change and development of the living world, is perhaps one of the most powerful and great ideas in the history of mankind. It gave the key to understanding the origin of the endless diversity of living beings and, ultimately, the emergence and formation of man himself as a biological species.

Today, any schoolchild, when asked who created the theory of evolution, will name Charles Darwin. Without detracting from the merits of the great English scientist, we note that the origins of the evolutionary idea can already be traced in the works of outstanding thinkers of antiquity. The baton was picked up by French encyclopedists of the 18th century. and, above all, Jean Baptiste Lamarck.

Lamarck's system of views was undoubtedly a huge step forward compared to the views that existed in his time. He was the first to turn the evolutionary idea into a coherent doctrine, which had a huge influence on the further development of biology.

However, at one time Lamarck was “silenced”. He died at the age of 85, blind. There was no one to look after the grave, and it was not preserved. In 1909, 100 years after the publication of Lamarck’s main work, Philosophy of Zoology, a monument to the creator of the first evolutionary theory was unveiled in Paris. The daughter’s words were engraved on the pedestal: “Posterity will admire you...”.

The first “evolutionary essay” published in the journal from the future book of the famous scientist and historian of science V. N. Soifer is dedicated to the great Lamarck and his concept of the evolution of living beings

“To observe nature, study its works, study general and particular relationships expressed in their properties, and finally, try to understand the order imposed in everything by nature, as well as its course, its laws, its infinitely varied means aimed at maintaining this order - in this, in my opinion, lies the opportunity for us to acquire at our disposal the only positive knowledge, the only one in addition to its undoubted usefulness; this is also the guarantee of the highest pleasures, most capable of rewarding us for the inevitable sorrows of life.”

Lamarck. Philosophy of Zoology, T. 1. M.;L., 1935, p. 12

The idea of ​​evolution, that is, the gradual change and development of the living world, is perhaps one of the most powerful and great ideas in the history of mankind. It gave the key to understanding the origin of the endless diversity of living beings and, ultimately, to the emergence and formation of man himself as a biological species. Today, any schoolchild, when asked about the creator of evolutionary theory, will name Charles Darwin. Without detracting from the merits of the great English scientist, it should be noted that the origins of the evolutionary idea can already be traced in the works of outstanding thinkers of antiquity. The baton was picked up by French scientists and encyclopedists of the 18th century, first of all, Jean Baptiste Lamarck, who was the first to translate the idea into a coherent evolutionary doctrine, which had a huge impact on the further development of biology. The first of a series of “evolutionary essays” published in our journal from the future book of the famous scientist and historian of science V.N. Soifer “Lamarckism, Darwinism, genetics and biological discussions in the first third of the twentieth century” is dedicated to the Lamarckian concept of the evolution of living beings.

In the works of ancient Greek thinkers, the idea of ​​self-development of the living world was of a natural philosophical nature. For example, Xenophanes of Colophon (6th–5th centuries BC) and Democritus (c. 460–c. 370 BC) did not talk about changes in species and not about their sequential transformation into each other over a long period, but about spontaneous generation.

In the same way, Aristotle (384-322 BC), who believed that living organisms arose by the will of the Higher Powers, does not have a complete evolutionary idea of ​​​​the transition from simpler forms to more complex ones. In his opinion, the Supreme God maintains the established order, monitors the emergence of species and their timely death, but does not create them, like God in the Jewish religion. However, a step forward was his assumption about the gradual complication of the forms of living beings in nature. According to Aristotle, God is the mover, although not the creator. In this understanding of God, he disagreed with Plato, who viewed God precisely as a creator.

The treatises of medieval philosophers, often simply retelling the ideas of Greek thinkers, did not even contain the rudiments of evolutionary teaching in the sense of indicating the possibility of the origin of some animal or plant species from other species.

Only at the end of the 17th century. English scientists Ray and Willoughby formulated the definition of “species” and described the species of animals known to them, omitting any mention of fantastic creatures that invariably appeared in the tomes of the Middle Ages.

From Linnaeus to Mirabeau

The great taxonomist Swede Carl Linnaeus introduced an essentially precise method into the classification of living beings when he substantiated the need to use for these purposes “numeros et nomina” - “numbers and names” (for plants - the number of stamens and pistils of a flower, monoecy and dioecy etc.; for all living beings, the so-called binary nomenclature is a combination of generic and species names). Linnaeus divided all living things into classes, orders, genera, species and varieties in his seminal work Systema Naturae, first published in 1735; reprinted 12 times during the author’s lifetime. He processed all the material available at that time, which included all known species of animals and plants. Linnaeus himself gave the first descriptions of one and a half thousand plant species.

Essentially, Linnaeus created a scientific classification of living things that remains unchanged in its main parts to this day. However, he did not pose the problem of the evolution of creatures, but completely agreed with the Bible that “we number as many species as were originally created” (“tot numeramus species, quat abinitio sunt creatae”). Towards the end of his life, Linnaeus somewhat modified his point of view, and admitted that God may have created such a number of forms that corresponds to the current number of genera, and then, by crossing with each other, modern species appeared, but this cautious recognition did not at all reject the role of the Creator.

From the middle of the 18th century. Many scientists tried to improve Linnaeus' classification, including the French Buffon, Bernard de Jussier and his son, Michel Adanson and others. Aristotle's idea of ​​the gradual replacement of some forms by others, now called the “ladder of beings,” became popular again. The widespread recognition of the idea of ​​gradualism was facilitated by the works of G. W. Leibniz (1646-1716), his “law of continuity.”

The idea of ​​the “ladder of beings” was presented in the most detail by the Swiss scientist Charles Bonnet (1720-1793) in his book “Contemplation of Nature.” He was an excellent naturalist, the first to give detailed descriptions of arthropods, polyps and worms. He discovered the phenomenon of parthenogenesis in aphids (the development of individuals from unfertilized female reproductive cells without the participation of males). He also studied the movement of juices along plant stems and tried to explain the functions of leaves.

In addition, Bonnet had the gift of an excellent storyteller; he mastered the word like a real writer. “Contemplation of Nature” was not his first book, and he tried to write it in such a fascinating language that it was an unprecedented success. In places the presentation turned into a hymn to the Creator, who created all kinds of matter so intelligently. At the base of the “ladder” - on the first step - he placed what he called “Finer Matters”. Then came fire, air, water, earth, sulfur, semi-metals, metals, salts, crystals, stones, slates, gypsum, talc, asbestos, and only then began a new flight of stairs - “Living Creatures” - from the simplest to the most complex, up to person. It is characteristic that Bonnet did not limit the staircase to man, but continued it, placing the “Ladder of the Worlds” above man, even higher – “Supernatural beings” - members of the heavenly hierarchy, the ranks of angels (angels, archangels, etc.), completing the entire construction of the highest step - God. The book was translated into Italian, German, and English. In 1789, the already elderly Bonnet was visited by the Russian writer N.M. Karamzin, who promised to translate the book into Russian, which was done later, however, without Karamzin’s participation. Bonnet's ideas found not only enthusiastic admirers, but also harsh critics, for example, Voltaire and Kant. Others found it necessary to transform the “ladder” into a tree (Pallas) or into a kind of network (C. Linnaeus, I. Hermann).

“...The animal ladder, in my opinion, begins with at least two special branches, that along its length some branches seem to break it off in certain places.
This series begins in two branches with the most imperfect animals: the first organisms of both branches arise solely on the basis of direct or spontaneous generation.
A great obstacle to the recognition of the successive changes that have caused the diversity of animals known to us and brought them to their present state is that we have never been direct witnesses of such changes. We have to see the finished result, and not the action itself, and therefore we tend to believe in the immutability of things rather than allow their gradual formation.”

Lamarck. Philosophy of Zoology. T. 1. M.; L., 1935. S. 289-290

In the middle of the 18th century. treatises appeared in which the role of the Creator was denied and the belief was expressed that the development of nature could proceed through the internal interactions of “parts of the world” - atoms, molecules, leading to the gradual emergence of increasingly complex formations. At the end of the 18th century. Diderot, in “Thoughts on the Interpretation of Nature,” carefully attacked the authority of Holy Scripture.

P. Holbach was completely categorical, who in 1770, under the pseudonym Mirabeau, published the book “System of Nature,” in which the role of the Creator was rejected completely and without any doubts inherent in Diderot. Holbach's book was immediately banned. Many of the then rulers of minds rebelled against her, especially as it related to the atheistic views of the author, and Voltaire was the loudest of all. But the idea of ​​​​the variability of the living had already taken root and was fueled by the words (especially forbidden) of Holbach. And yet it was still not the idea of ​​the evolutionary development of living beings, as we understand it now.

Philosopher from Nature

For the first time, the idea of ​​the kinship of all organisms, their emergence due to gradual change and transformation into each other, was expressed in the introductory lecture to a zoology course in 1800 by Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier (or knight) de La Marck (1744-1829), whose name is enshrined in history as Jean Baptiste Lamarck. It took him 9 years to write and publish the huge two-volume work “Philosophy of Zoology” (1809). In it he systematically presented his views.

Unlike his predecessors, Lamarck did not simply distribute all organisms along the “ladder of creatures”, but considered that higher-ranking species descended from lower ones. Thus, he introduced the principle of historical continuity, or the principle of evolution, into the description of species. The staircase appeared in his work as a “movable” structure.

“...The extremely small size of most invertebrates, their limited abilities, the more distant relation of their organization to the organization of man - all this earned them a kind of contempt among the masses and - down to the present day - earned them very mediocre interest from most naturalists.
<...>Several years of careful study of these amazing creatures forced us to admit that the study of them should be viewed as one of the most interesting in the eyes of a naturalist and philosopher: it sheds such light on many natural-historical problems and on the physical properties of animals, which would be difficult to obtain in any way. some other way."

Lamarck. Philosophy of Zoology. T. 1. M.; L., 1935. S. 24-25

In the Philosophy of Zoology, Lamarck did not limit himself to presenting this idea as a bare diagram. He was an outstanding specialist, possessed a lot of information, not only about the species of animals and plants contemporary to him, but was also the recognized founder of invertebrate paleontology. By the time he formulated the idea of ​​​​the evolution of living beings, he was 56 years old. And therefore, his book was not the fruit of the immature thoughts of an excited young man, but contained “all the scientific material of its time,” as the outstanding Russian researcher of evolutionary theory Yu. A. Filipchenko emphasized.

Is it a coincidence that at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries. Was Lamarck the creator of this doctrine? It was in the 18th century. After the works of Carl Linnaeus, the study of species diversity became systematic and popular. In about half a century (1748-1805), the number of described species increased 15 times, and by the middle of the 19th century. – another 6.5 times, exceeding one hundred thousand!

A characteristic feature of the 18th century. It was also the case that during this century, not only information about different species was accumulated, but intensive theoretical work was underway to create systems for classifying living beings. At the beginning of the century, in quite respectable works, one could still find Aristotle’s system, dividing animals into those who have blood (in his opinion, viviparous and oviparous quadrupeds, fish and birds), and those who do not have blood (molluscs, crustaceans, craniodermals, insects). After Linnaeus, no one would have taken this seriously.

“Is it really true that only generally accepted ones should be considered valid opinions? But experience shows quite clearly that individuals with a very developed mind, with a huge store of knowledge, constitute at all times an extremely insignificant minority. At the same time, one cannot but agree that authorities in the field of knowledge should be established not by counting votes, but by merit, even if such an assessment was very difficult.
<...>Be that as it may, by surrendering to the observations that served as the source for the thoughts expressed in this work, I received both the joy of knowing that my views were similar to the truth, and the reward for the work incurred in studying and thinking.”

Lamarck. Philosophy of Zoology. T. 1. M.; L., 1935. pp. 16-17

The main work on the classification of living beings was carried out in the second half of the 18th century. And at this time, Lamarck’s contribution to the division of animals into different systematic categories was enormous, although still not sufficiently recognized. In the spring of 1794, none other than Lamarck introduced the division of animals into vertebrates and invertebrates. This fact alone would be enough to write his name in golden letters in the annals of natural science.

In 1795, he was the first to divide invertebrates into mollusks, insects, worms, echinoderms and polyps, later expanding the class of echinoderms to include jellyfish and a number of other species (at that moment he renamed echinoderms to radiata). Lamarck in 1799 isolated crustaceans, which at the same time Cuvier placed among insects. Then, in 1800, Lamarck identified arachnids as a special class, and in 1802, ringlets. In 1807, he gave a completely modern system of invertebrates, supplementing it with another innovation - separating ciliates into a special group, etc.

Of course, one must realize that all these additions and selections were not made with just the stroke of a pen and not on the basis of random insight. Behind each such proposal was a lot of work comparing the characteristics of different species, analyzing their external and internal structure, distribution, characteristics of reproduction, development, behavior, etc. Lamarck’s pen included several dozen volumes of works, starting from “Flora of France” in 3- volume edition of 1778 (4-volume edition of 1805 and 5-volume edition of 1815), “Encyclopedia of Botanical Methods” (1783-1789) - also in several volumes, books describing new plant species (editions of 1784, 1785, 1788, 1789, 1790. 1791), “Illustrated description of plant characteristics” (2 volumes of descriptions, 3 volumes of illustrations), etc., books on physics, chemistry, meteorology.

“Posterity will admire you!”

Surely, a significant role was also played by the fact that he was never the darling of fate, but rather, on the contrary - all his life he had to endure blows that would have knocked down a less powerful nature. The eleventh child in the family of a poor nobleman, he was sent to a Jesuit theological school to prepare for the priesthood, but as a sixteen-year-old youth, left without a father by this time, he decided to serve in the army, distinguished himself in battles against the British (the Seven Years' War was ending) and was promoted to to officers. After the war, he was in the army for another 5 years, but already during these years he became addicted to collecting plants. He had to say goodbye to military service against his own will: suddenly Lamarck fell seriously ill (inflammation of the lymphatic system began), and it took a year for treatment.

After recovery, Lamarck faced a new complication: his pension as a military man was meager, and he was not trained in anything else. I had to go work for pennies in a banker's office. He found solace in music, the pursuit of which was so serious that at one time he thought about the possibility of earning his living by playing music.

“Apparently, whenever a person observes some new fact, he is doomed to constantly fall into error in explaining its cause: so fertile is man’s imagination in creating ideas and so great is his disregard for the totality of data offered to him to guide observation and other established facts!

Lamarck. Philosophy of Zoology. T. 1. M.; L., 1935. P. 52

However, Lamarck did not become a musician. Once again he accepted the challenge of fate and entered the medical faculty. In 4 years he completed it, receiving a medical degree. But even then he did not abandon his passion for collecting and identifying plants. He met Jean-Jacques Rousseau, also a passionate herbarium collector, and on his advice began preparing a huge book, “Flora of France.” In 1778, the book was published at the expense of the state, it made Lamarck widely known, and the 35-year-old botanist, until then unknown to anyone, was elected academician. This did not bring money, but the honor was great, and Lamarck decides to prefer the career of a doctor (and the wealth it brings) to the career of a scientist (naturally, which promises nothing but poverty).

He is quickly rising to the ranks of outstanding botanists. Diderot and D'Alembert invite him to collaborate as editor of the botanical section of the Encyclopedia. Lamarck devotes all his time to this enormous work, which took almost 10 years of his life. He took his first more or less tolerable position only 10 years after his election to academicianship: in 1789 he received a modest salary as the curator of the herbarium in the Royal Garden.

He did not confine himself only to the framework of a narrow specialty, which was well written about later by Georges Cuvier, who did not like him and spoiled his nerves a lot (Cuvier did not recognize the correctness of Lamarck’s idea of ​​evolution and developed his own hypothesis of the simultaneous changes of all living beings at once as a result of worldwide “catastrophes” and creation by God, instead of destroyed forms, of new creatures with a structure different from previously existing organisms). Despite his open antipathy towards Lamarck both during his life and after his death, Cuvier was forced to admit:

“During the 30 years that elapsed since the peace of 1763, not all of his time was spent on botany: during the long solitude to which his cramped situation condemned him, all the great questions that for centuries had captivated the attention of mankind took possession of his mind . He reflected on general questions of physics and chemistry, on atmospheric phenomena, on phenomena in living bodies, on the origin of the globe and its changes. Psychology, even high metaphysics, did not remain completely alien to him, and about all these subjects he formed certain, original ideas, formed by the power of his own mind...”

During the Great French Revolution, not only the old order was destroyed, not only was royal power overthrown, but almost all previously existing scientific institutions were closed. Lamarck was left without work. Soon, however, the “Museum of Natural History” was formed, where he was invited to work as a professor. But a new trouble awaited him: all three botanical departments were distributed among friends of the museum organizers, and the unemployed Lamarck had to go to the department of “Insects and Worms” for a piece of bread, that is, to radically change his specialization. However, this time he proved how strong his spirit is. He became not just a zoologist, but a brilliant specialist, the best zoologist of his time. It has already been said about the great contribution that the creator of invertebrate zoology left behind.

Since 1799, simultaneously with his work on the taxonomy of living beings, Lamarck agreed to take on another job: the French government decided to organize a network of meteorological stations throughout the country in order to predict the weather by collecting the necessary data. Even today, in the age of space and giant computers, with their memory and speed of calculations, this problem remains insufficiently successfully solved. What could one expect from forecasts at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries?! And yet, the eternal hard worker and enthusiast, Academician Lamarck, agreed to head the forecast service.

He had several weather stations around the country at his disposal. They were equipped with barometers, devices for measuring wind speed, precipitation, temperature and humidity. Thanks to the works of B. Franklin (1706-1790), the principles of meteorology had already been formulated, and nevertheless, the creation of the world's first effective weather service was a very risky business. But even from his time in the army, Lamarck was interested in physics and meteorology. Even his first scientific work was “A Treatise on the Fundamental Phenomena of the Atmosphere,” written and read publicly in 1776, but which remained unpublished. And although Lamarck began this work with ardor, the weather, as one would expect, did not want to obey the scientists’ calculations, and all the blame for the discrepancy between forecasts and realities fell on the head of poor Lamarck, the main enthusiast and organizer of a network of weather stations.

“...If I perceive that nature itself produces all the above miracles; that she created an organization, a life, and even a feeling; that she has multiplied and diversified, within the limits known to us, the organs and faculties of organized bodies, the life of which she supports and continues; that she created in animals - solely through need, establishing and directing habits - the source of all actions and all abilities, from the simplest to those that constitute instinct, industry and, finally, reason - should I not recognize in this the power of nature, in other words, in the order of existing things, fulfilling the will of her supreme Creator, who, perhaps, wanted to impart this power to her?
And is it really because the Creator was pleased to predetermine the general order of things that I will be less surprised by the greatness of the power of this first cause of everything than if he, constantly participating in the acts of creation, was constantly occupied with the details of all private creations, all changes, all developments and improvements, all destruction and restoration - in a word, all the changes that generally take place in existing things?
But I hope to prove that nature has all the necessary means and abilities to independently produce everything that we marvel at in it.”

Lamarck. Philosophy of Zoology. T. 1. M.; L., 1935. S. 66-67

Ridicule and even accusations of charlatanism were heard not only from among the hot and noisy Parisian common people, but also from the lips of luminaries: Laplace’s reviews were imbued with sarcasm, numerous forecast errors were methodically discussed in the Journal of Physics (of course, the botanist took away their bread, so and the result!). Finally, in 1810, Napoleon created a real obstruction for Lamarck at a reception of scientists, declaring that studying meteorology “will dishonor your old age” (Buonaparte himself, probably, at that moment considered himself almost a saint: the bitter losses of the battles and the fiasco of 1812 were still ahead ).

Napoleon, who imagined himself the ruler of the world, shouted at the great scientist, and old Lamarck was unable to even insert words in his defense and, standing with a book outstretched in his hand, burst into tears. The emperor did not want to take the book, and only the adjutant accepted it. And this book in Lamarck’s hand was a work that brought great glory to France - “Philosophy of Zoology”!

At the end of his life, the scientist went blind. But even as a blind man, he found the strength to continue his scientific work. He dictated new works to his daughters and published books. He made a huge contribution to the formation of comparative psychology, and in 1823 he published the results of studies of fossil shells.

He died on December 18, 1829, 85 years old. The heirs quickly sold his library, manuscripts, and collections. They did not have time to look after the grave, and it was not preserved. In 1909, 100 years after the publication of his main work, a monument to Lamarck was unveiled in Paris. The words of Lamarck’s daughter were engraved on the pedestal: “Posterity will admire you, they will avenge you, my father.”

First evolutionary

What are the ideas that Lamarck put forward in the Philosophy of Zoology?

The main one, as already mentioned, was the rejection of the principle of constancy of species - the preservation of unchanged characteristics in all creatures on earth: “I intend to challenge this assumption alone,” wrote Lamarck, “because the evidence drawn from observations clearly indicates that it is unfounded." In contrast, he proclaimed the evolution of living beings - the gradual complication of the structure of organisms, the specialization of their organs, the emergence of feelings in animals and, finally, the emergence of intelligence. This process, the scientist believed, was long: “In relation to living bodies, nature produced everything little by little and consistently: there is no longer any doubt about this.” The reason for the need for evolution is a change in the environment: “...breeds change in their parts as significant changes occur in the circumstances affecting them. Very many facts convince us that as the individuals of one of our species have to change location, climate, mode of life or habits, they are exposed to influences that little by little change the condition and proportion of their parts, their form, their abilities, even their organization... How many examples could I give from the animal and plant kingdoms to confirm this position.” True, it must be admitted that Lamarck’s idea of ​​the inheritance of acquired characteristics, as later studies showed, turned out to be exaggerated.

He structured his book in such a way that in the first part he outlined the basic principles of the new teaching, and in the second and third parts there were examples that supported these principles. Perhaps this was the reason for the rooting of one misconception - the opinion about the relatively weak evidence of his arguments. They say that Lamarck did nothing but proclaim the principles and did not support his assumptions with anything serious.

This opinion about the work is incorrect; it arises mainly due to the fact that critics did not take the trouble to read the author’s voluminous book to the end, but limited themselves mainly to its first part. But there were also examples given there. He talked about the gradual change in wheat cultivated by man, cabbage, and domestic animals. “And how many very different breeds have we obtained among your domestic chickens and pigeons by raising them in different conditions and in different countries,” he wrote. He also pointed out the changes in ducks and geese domesticated by humans, the rapid changes occurring in the bodies of birds caught in the wild and imprisoned in cages, and the huge variety of dog breeds: “Where can you find these Great Danes, greyhounds, poodles, bulldogs, lapdogs, etc. ... - breeds that represent sharper differences among themselves than those that we accept as species...?” He also pointed to another powerful factor contributing to changes in characteristics - the crossing of organisms that differ in properties with each other: “... through crossing... all currently known breeds could consistently arise.”

Of course, when proposing a hypothesis about the evolution of living beings, Lamarck understood that it would be difficult to convince readers just by pointing out numerous cases, which is why he wrote about this at the beginning of the book: “... the power of old ideas over new ones, arising for the first time, favors... prejudice... As a result it turns out: no matter how much effort it takes to discover new truths in the study of nature, even greater difficulties lie in achieving their recognition.” Therefore, it was necessary to explain why organisms change and how changes are consolidated in generations. He believed that the whole point was the repetition of similar actions necessary for the exercise of organs (“Multiple repetition... strengthens, enlarges, develops and even creates the necessary organs”) and examines this assumption in detail using many examples (in the sections “Degradation and simplification of organization” and "The influence of external circumstances"). His conclusion is that “frequent use of an organ... increases the powers of that organ, develops the organ itself, and causes it to acquire a size and strength not found in animals that exercise it less.”

He also thinks about the question that has become central to biology a century later: how can changes take hold in subsequent generations? One cannot help but be amazed that at the beginning of the 19th century, when the problem of heredity had not yet been posed, Lamarck understood its importance and wrote down:

“... In the interests of teaching... I need my students, without getting bogged down for the time being in details on particular issues, to give them, first of all, what is common to all animals, to show them the subject as a whole, along with the main views of that the same order, and only after that decompose this whole into its main parts in order to compare the latter with each other and better familiarize yourself with each separately.<...>At the end of all these investigations, an attempt is made to draw consequences from them, and little by little the philosophy of science is established, straightened and improved.
This is the only way for the human mind to acquire the most extensive, the most durable, the most coherent knowledge in any science; only by this analytical method is true success in the sciences, strict discrimination and perfect knowledge of their subjects achieved.
Unfortunately, it has not yet become common practice to use this method in the study of natural history. The universally recognized necessity of careful observation of particular facts has given rise to the habit of limiting oneself only to them and their small details, so that for most naturalists they have become the main goal of study. But this state of affairs must inevitably lead to stagnation in the natural sciences...”

Lamarck. Philosophy of Zoology. T. 1. M.; L., 1935. S. 26-27

“Any change in any organ, a change caused by a fairly habitual use of this organ, is inherited by the younger generation, if only this change is inherent in both individuals who mutually contributed to the reproduction of their species during fertilization. This change is transmitted further and thus passes on to all descendants placed in the same conditions, but the latter already have to acquire it in the same way as it was acquired by their ancestors.”

Thus, Lamarck showed that he clearly understood the role of both partners taking part in the formation of the zygote. His belief in the role of repeated exercise in changing heredity turned out to be incorrect, however, he realized the importance of the process of introducing changes into the hereditary apparatus of organisms. Amazingly, Lamarck even gave the changed individuals a name - mutations, anticipating the introduction of the same term by de Vries a century later.

And yet, being ahead of his time in understanding the main thing - the recognition of the evolutionary process, he remained a man of the 18th century, which prevented him from giving a correct idea of ​​the laws governing the progress of the progressive development of living beings. However, he was far ahead of his contemporaries when he speculated about what the mechanism underlying the change in heredity could be (“After all... whatever the circumstances, they do not directly produce any change in the form and organization of animals”).

Lamarck states that irritation caused by long-term changes in the external environment affects parts of the cells in lower forms that do not have a nervous system, forces them to grow more or less, and if similar environmental changes persist long enough, the structure of the cells gradually changes. In animals with a nervous system, such long-term changes in the environment affect primarily the nervous system, which in turn affects the behavior of the animal, its habits and, as a result, “breeds change in their parts as significant changes occur in the circumstances affecting them "

He describes the process of changes in the nature of plants as follows: “In plants, where there are no actions at all (hence, no habits in the proper sense of the word), major changes in external circumstances lead to no less significant differences in the development of their parts... But here everything happens by changing the nutrition of plants, in its processes of absorption and excretion, in the amount of heat, light, air and moisture they usually receive...”

Consistently pursuing this idea about changes in species under the influence of changes in the environment, Lamarck comes to the generalization that everything in nature arose through gradual complication (gradation, as he wrote) from the simplest to the most complex forms, believing that “... deep-rooted prejudices prevent us from recognizing that nature itself has the ability and by all means to give existence to so many different creatures, to continuously, albeit slowly, change their breeds and everywhere maintain the general order that we observe.”

He noted the process of increasing complexity not only in the external signs of organisms, but also in their behavior and even their ability to think. In the initial section of the book in “Preliminary Remarks,” he wrote that “in their source, the physical and the moral are undoubtedly the same,” and further developed this idea: “...nature has all the necessary means and abilities to independently produce everything that we are surprised at her. ...To form judgments..., to think - all this is not only the greatest miracle that the power of nature could achieve, but also a direct indication that nature, which does not create anything at once, spent a lot of time on it.”

“I had the opportunity to significantly expand this work, developing each chapter to the extent of the interesting material included in it. But I chose to limit my presentation to only what is strictly necessary for a satisfactory understanding of my views. In this way I managed to save the time of my readers without the risk of remaining misunderstood by them.
My purpose will be achieved if lovers of natural science find in this work several views and principles useful to themselves; if the observations given here, which belong to me personally, are confirmed and approved by persons who have had the opportunity to deal with the same subjects; if the ideas arising from these observations - whatever they may be - advance our knowledge or put us on the path to the discovery of unknown truths"

Lamarck. Philosophy of Zoology. T. 1. M.; L., 1935. P. 18

Of all these statements, later materialists made in the 20th century. the conclusion is that Lamarck was at heart a materialist. Indeed, his admiration for the power of the forces of nature was sincere. But still, there is no reason to speak unequivocally about his atheistic thinking, since in other places in the same “Philosophy of Zoology” he demonstrated his commitment to the thesis that nature cannot be excluded from God’s creations.

Therefore, it is more correct, in our opinion, to talk about Lamarck’s desire to consistently pursue the idea that the creation of the world was God’s providence, but by creating living things, God provided him with the opportunity to develop, improve and prosper. “Of course, everything has existence only by the will of the Supreme Creator,” he writes at the beginning of the book and continues in the middle of it: “...for both animals and plants there is one single order, planted by the Supreme Creator of all things.

Nature itself is nothing more than a general and immutable order established by the Supreme Creator - a set of general and particular laws governing this order. Constantly using the means received from the Creator, nature gave and continues to constantly give being to its works; it continuously changes and renews them, and as a result, the natural order of living bodies is completely preserved.”

Lamarck's system of views was undoubtedly a step forward compared to the views that existed in his time. He himself understood this well. More than once in the book, he repeated that those who know the nature and types of organisms first-hand, and who are themselves involved in the classification of plants and animals, will understand his arguments and agree with his conclusions: “The facts I present are very numerous and reliable; the consequences drawn from them, in my opinion, are correct and inevitable; Thus, I am convinced that replacing them with better ones will not be easy.”

But something else happened. Lamarck fell silent. Many of those who worked in science simultaneously with him (like J. Cuvier) or after him read Lamarck’s work, but could not rise to the level of his thinking, or casually, without arguments and scientific polemics, tried to get rid of his outstanding idea about evolution of living things with absurd objections or even ridicule.

His theory of evolution as a whole was ahead of its time and, as one of the founders of Russian genetics Yu. A. Filipchenko noted: “Each fruit must ripen before it falls from the branch and becomes edible for humans - and this is just as true for each new ideas..., and at the time of the appearance of “Philosophy of Zoology” most minds were not yet prepared to perceive the evolutionary idea.”

An important role in the silence of Lamarck’s ideas was played by the position of those who, like Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), who was very prominent in scientific circles at that time, propagated their own hypotheses, opposite to Lamarck’s. Cuvier unshakably believed in the correctness of his hypothesis of worldwide catastrophes, according to which the Higher Power periodically changed the general structure of living beings on Earth, removing old forms and planting new ones.

The perception of the idea of ​​evolution could not but be influenced by a completely understandable transformation of public views. After the triumph of the encyclopedists, although they publicly held views on the inviolability of faith in God, but by their deeds propagated atheism, after the collapse of the French Revolution, which reflected the general disappointment with the behavior of the leaders of the revolution in 1789-1794, to power (naturally, not without the sympathy of the bulk of the people ) other forces have returned. In 1795, the Paris Commune was dissolved, the Jacobin Club was closed, brutal executions “in the name of the Revolution” stopped, in 1799 the Directory took power, and in 1814 the Empire was established again.

Conservative views again acquired an attractive force, and under these conditions, Lamarck’s work lost the support from the rulers of public policy, which he needed and thanks to which he would probably have found recognition more easily. Had his work appeared a quarter of a century earlier or a quarter of a century later, it would have been easier for him to become the focus of society's interests.

Literature

Karpov Vl. Lamarck, historical essay // Lamarck J. B. Philosophy of Zoology. M., 1911

Lamarck J. B. Philosophy of Zoology / Transl. from French S. V. Sapozhnikova. T. 1. M.; L., Biomedgiz., 1935. 330 pp.; T. 2. M.; L., Biomedgiz., 1937. 483 p.

Filipchenko Yu. A. Evolutionary idea in biology: Historical review of evolutionary teachings of the 19th century. Lomonosov Library. Ed. M. and S. Sabashnikov. 1928. 288 p.

The editors thank K.I. n. N. A. Kopaneva (Russian National Library, St. Petersburg), Ph.D. n. N. P. Kopanev (St. Petersburg branch of the RAS Archive), Ph.D. n. A. G. Kireychuk (Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow), O. Lantyukhov (L’Université Paris-Dauphine), B. S. Elepov (State Public Library for Science and Technology SB RAS, Novosibirsk) for help in preparing the illustrative material

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The idea of ​​the development of living nature - the idea of ​​evolution - can be traced in the works of ancient materialists in India, China, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece. At the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. e. In India, there were philosophical schools that defended the ideas of the development of the material world (including the organic) from “primordial matter.” Even more ancient texts of the Ayur-Veda claim that man descended from monkeys who lived about 18 million years ago (when translated into modern chronology on the continent that united Hindustan and southeast Asia. About 4 million years ago, the ancestors of modern people, supposedly switched to collective food acquisition, which gave them the opportunity to stock up. Modern man, according to these ideas, appeared a little less than 1 million years ago. Of course, these were only brilliant guesses based on excellent knowledge of the anatomy of humans and animals.

In China 2 thousand years BC. e. selection of cattle, horses and ornamental plants was carried out. At the end of the 1st millennium BC. e. there was a classification of plants (stone fruits, legumes, succulents, creeping plants, shrubs, etc.). At the same time, teachings about the possibility of transforming some living beings into others during the process of evolution were widespread in China. The close ties of the countries of the Ancient World made this knowledge the property of philosophers in the Mediterranean countries, where it was further developed. In Aristotle (IV century BC) we already encounter a coherent system of views on the development of living nature, based on an analysis of the general plan of the structure of higher animals, homology and correlation of organs. Aristotle's fundamental works “On the Parts of Animals”, “History of Animals”, “On the Origin of Animals” had a great influence on the subsequent development of biology.

However, despite the external similarity of the ancient and our ideas, the views of the ancient thinkers had the character of abstract speculative doctrines.

Decline of knowledge in the Middle Ages.

After almost two thousand years of development of knowledge in the Ancient World - China, India, Egypt, Greece - the dark Middle Ages, the “dark night for natural science,” began in Europe for many centuries. People were burned at the stake not only for expressing the idea of ​​​​the development of nature, but also for reading the books of ancient naturalists and philosophers. The forced introduction of faith into science turns the latter into an appendage of religion.

Church teachings allotted about 6 thousand years for the entire development of the world; for centuries it has been preserved as the official point of view about the creation of the world by the Lord God in 4004 BC. e. The study of nature was effectively prohibited; hundreds of talented scientists, thousands and thousands of ancient books were destroyed during this time. In Spain alone, about 35 thousand people were burned at the stake of the Inquisition and more than 300 thousand were tortured. The last official fire of the Inquisition burned in 1826. Of course, during these years there was an accumulation of natural science knowledge (in monasteries and universities).

The spread of the ideas of evolutionism during the Renaissance and Enlightenment.

The Middle Ages are replaced by the Renaissance (XV-XVI centuries). With its onset, the works of ancient naturalists began to spread again. The books of Aristotle and other ancient authors come to European countries from North Africa and Spain in translations from Arabic. As a result of the development of trade and navigation, knowledge about the diversity of the organic world is rapidly growing, and an inventory of flora and fauna is taking place. In the 16th century the first multi-volume descriptions of the animal and plant world appear, anatomy achieves brilliant successes, in the 17th century. W. Harvey creates the doctrine of blood circulation, and R. Hooke, M. Malpighi and others lay the foundations of microscopy and the study of the cellular structure of organisms. Growing natural science knowledge needed systematization and generalization. The first stage of the process of systematization of biological knowledge ends in the 18th century. the works of the great Swedish naturalist C. Linnaeus (1707-1778).

The ideas of evolution are beginning to be seen more and more clearly in the works of naturalists and philosophers. Even G. Leibniz (1646-1716) proclaimed the principle of gradation of living beings and predicted the existence of transitional forms between plants and animals. The principle of gradation was further developed in the idea of ​​a “ladder of creatures,” which for some became an expression of ideal continuity in structure, and for others - proof of the transformation, evolution of living nature. In 1749, the multi-volume “Natural History” by J. Buffon began to be published, in which he substantiates the hypothesis about the past development of the Earth. In his opinion, it covers 80-90 thousand years, but only in recent periods have living organisms appeared on Earth from inorganic substances: first plants, then animals and humans. J. Buffon saw evidence of unity of origin in terms of the structure of animals and explained the similarity of close forms by their origin from common ancestors.

The idea of ​​evolution is also embedded in the works of the encyclopedist D. Diderot (1713-1784): minor changes in all creatures and the length of time the Earth existed can explain the emergence of diversity in the organic world. P. Maupertuis (1698-1759) expressed brilliant guesses about the corpuscular nature of heredity, the evolutionary role of the destruction of forms not adapted to existence, and the significance of isolation in the development of new forms. C. Darwin's grandfather E. Darwin (1731 -1802) in poetic form affirms the principle of the unity of origin of all living beings and indicates that the organic world has developed over millions of years. In the last years of his life, K. Linnaeus also came to accept evolution, believing that close species within the genus developed naturally, without the participation of divine power.

In the second half of the 18th century. The Age of Enlightenment reaches Russia: in one form or another, evolutionary views are characteristic of such naturalists as M.V. Lomonosov, K.F. Wolf, P.S. Pallas, A.N. Radishchev. M.V. Lomonosov in his treatise “On the Layers of the Earth” (1763) wrote: “... in vain many people think that everything as we see was first created by the creator...”.

Characterizing the development of evolutionary thought in this era, we can say that at this time there was an intensive accumulation of natural scientific material. The most insightful researchers are trying to move from a simple description of the material available in nature to an explanation of the emergence of various forms. In the 18th century There is an ever-increasing struggle between the old ideas of creationism (as the concept of the creation of the world) and new - evolutionary ideas.

Anaximander. We know about Anaximander’s scheme from the historian of the 1st century BC. e. Diodorus Siculus. In his account, when the young Earth was illuminated by the Sun, its surface first hardened and then fermented, and rot arose, covered with thin shells. In these shells all kinds of animal breeds were born. Man supposedly arose from a fish or a fish-like animal. Despite the originality, Anaximander's reasoning is purely speculative and not supported by observations. Another ancient thinker, Xenophanes, paid more attention to observations. So, he identified the fossils that he found in the mountains with the imprints of ancient plants and animals: laurel, mollusk shells, fish, seals. From this he concluded that the land once sank into the sea, bringing death to land animals and people, and turned into mud, and when it rose, the prints dried up. Heraclitus, despite his metaphysics being imbued with the idea of ​​constant development and eternal formation, did not create any evolutionary concepts. Although some authors still attribute him to the first evolutionists.

The only author in whom one can find the idea of ​​gradual change in organisms was Plato. In his dialogue "The State" he put forward the infamous proposal: improving the breed of people by selecting the best representatives. Without a doubt, this proposal was based on the well-known fact of selection of sires in animal husbandry. In the modern era, the unfounded application of these ideas to human society developed into the doctrine of eugenics, which underpinned the racial policies of the Third Reich.

Middle Ages and Renaissance

With the rise of scientific knowledge after the “Dark Ages” of the early Middle Ages, evolutionary ideas again begin to creep into the works of scientists, theologians and philosophers. Albertus Magnus was the first to note the spontaneous variability of plants, leading to the emergence of new species. Examples once given by Theophrastus he characterized as transmutation one type to another. The term itself was apparently taken by him from alchemy. In the 16th century, fossil organisms were rediscovered, but only towards the end of the 17th century the idea that this was not a “play of nature”, not stones in the shape of bones or shells, but the remains of ancient animals and plants, finally took hold of minds. In his work of the year, “Noah’s Ark, Its Shape and Capacity,” Johann Buteo cited calculations that showed that the ark could not contain all the species of known animals. In the year Bernard Palissy organized an exhibition of fossils in Paris, where he for the first time compared them with living ones. In the year he published in print the idea that since everything in nature is “in eternal transmutation,” many fossil remains of fish and shellfish belong to extinct species

Evolutionary ideas of the New Age

As we see, things did not go further than expressing scattered ideas about the variability of species. The same trend continued with the advent of modern times. So Francis Bacon, politician and philosopher, suggested that species can change by accumulating “errors of nature.” This thesis again, as in the case of Empedocles, echoes the principle of natural selection, but there is no word yet about a general theory. Oddly enough, the first book on evolution can be considered a treatise by Matthew Hale. Matthew Hale) "The Primitive Origin of Mankind Considered and Examined According to the Light of Nature." This may seem strange already because Hale himself was not a naturalist or even a philosopher, he was a lawyer, theologian and financier, and he wrote his treatise during a forced vacation on his estate. In it, he wrote that one should not assume that all species were created in their modern form; on the contrary, only archetypes were created, and all the diversity of life developed from them under the influence of numerous circumstances. Hale also foreshadows many of the controversies about randomness that arose after the establishment of Darwinism. In the same treatise, the term “evolution” in the biological sense was first mentioned.

Ideas of limited evolutionism like Hale's arose constantly, and can be found in the writings of John Ray, Robert Hooke, Gottfried Leibniz, and even in the later work of Carl Linnaeus. They are expressed more clearly by Georges Louis Buffon. Observing the deposition of sediments from water, he came to the conclusion that the 6 thousand years allotted for the history of the Earth by natural theology were not enough for the formation of sedimentary rocks. The age of the Earth calculated by Buffon was 75 thousand years. Describing the species of animals and plants, Buffon noted that, along with useful characteristics, they also have those to which it is impossible to attribute any usefulness. This again contradicted natural theology, which asserted that every hair on the body of an animal was created for the benefit of it or man. Buffon came to the conclusion that this contradiction can be eliminated by accepting the creation of only a general plan, which varies in specific incarnations. Applying Leibniz's “law of continuity” to systematics, he spoke out against the existence of discrete species in 2010, considering species to be the fruit of the imagination of taxonomists (in this one can see the origins of his ongoing polemics with Linnaeus and the antipathy of these scientists towards each other).

Lamarck's theory

A step towards combining the transformist and systematic approaches was made by the natural scientist and philosopher Jean Baptiste Lamarck. As a proponent of species change and a deist, he recognized the Creator and believed that the Supreme Creator created only matter and nature; all other inanimate and living objects arose from matter under the influence of nature. Lamarck emphasized that “all living bodies come from one another, and not through sequential development from previous embryos.” Thus, he opposed the concept of preformationism as autogenetic, and his follower Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772-1844) defended the idea of ​​​​the unity of the structural plan of animals of various types. Lamarck’s evolutionary ideas are most fully presented in “Philosophy of Zoology” (1809), although Lamarck formulated many of the provisions of his evolutionary theory in introductory lectures to a zoology course back in 1800-1802. Lamarck believed that the stages of evolution do not lie on a straight line, as followed from the “ladder of creatures” by the Swiss natural philosopher C. Bonnet, but have many branches and deviations at the level of species and genera. This introduction set the stage for future “family trees.” Lamarck also proposed the term “biology” in its modern sense. However, the zoological works of Lamarck - the creator of the first evolutionary doctrine - contained many factual inaccuracies and speculative constructions, which is especially evident when comparing his works with the works of his contemporary, rival and critic, the creator of comparative anatomy and paleontology, Georges Cuvier (1769-1832). Lamarck believed that the driving factor of evolution could be the “exercise” or “non-exercise” of organs, depending on the adequate direct influence of the environment. Some naivety of the argumentation of Lamarck and Saint-Hilaire largely contributed to the anti-evolutionary reaction to transformism of the early 19th century, and provoked absolutely factual criticism from the creationist Georges Cuvier and his school.

Catastrophism and transformism

Cuvier's ideal was Linnaeus. Cuvier divided animals into four “branches,” each of which is characterized by a common structural plan. For these “branches,” his follower A. Blainville proposed the concept of type, which fully corresponded to Cuvier’s “branches.” A phylum is not simply the highest taxon in the animal kingdom. There are not and cannot be transitional forms between the four identified types of animals. All animals belonging to the same type are characterized by a common structure plan. This most important position of Cuvier is extremely significant even today. Although the number of types has significantly exceeded the number 4, all biologists speaking about type proceed from a fundamental idea that gives much concern to the promoters of gradualism in evolution - the idea of ​​​​the isolation of the structural plans of each type. Cuvier fully accepted the Linnaean hierarchy of the system and built his system in the form of a branching tree. But this was not a family tree, but a tree of similarities between organisms. As rightly noted by A.A. Borisyak, “having built a system on ... a comprehensive account of the similarities and differences of organisms, he thereby opened the door to the evolutionary doctrine that he fought against.” Cuvier's system was apparently the first system of organic nature in which modern forms were considered side by side with fossils. Cuvier is rightfully considered a significant figure in the development of paleontology, biostratigraphy and historical geology as sciences. The theoretical basis for identifying the boundaries between layers was Cuvier’s idea of ​​catastrophic extinctions of faunas and floras at the boundaries of periods and eras. He also developed the doctrine of correlations (italics by N.N. Vorontsov), thanks to which he restored the appearance of the skull as a whole, the skeleton as a whole, and, finally, provided a reconstruction of the external appearance of a fossil animal. Together with Cuvier, his French colleague paleontologist and geologist A. Brongniard (1770-1847) made his contribution to stratigraphy, and, independently of them, the English surveyor and mining engineer William Smith (1769-1839). The term for the study of the form of organisms - morphology - was introduced into biological science by Goethe, and the doctrine itself arose at the end of the 18th century. For creationists of that time, the concept of unity of body plan meant a search for similarity, but not relatedness, of organisms. The task of comparative anatomy was seen as an attempt to understand by what plan the Supreme Being created all the diversity of animals that we observe on Earth. Evolutionary classics call this period in the development of biology “idealistic morphology.” This direction was also developed by the opponent of transformism, the English anatomist and paleontologist Richard Owen (1804-1892). By the way, it was he who proposed, in relation to structures that perform similar functions, to apply the now well-known analogy or homology, depending on whether the animals being compared belong to the same structural plan or to different ones (to the same type of animal or to different types).

Evolutionists - Darwin's contemporaries

In 1831, the English forester Patrick Matthew (1790-1874) published the monograph “Ship logging and tree planting.” The phenomenon of uneven growth of trees of the same age, the selective death of some and the survival of others has long been known to foresters. Matthew suggested that selection not only ensures the survival of the fittest trees, but can also lead to changes in species during historical development. Thus, the struggle for existence and natural selection were known to him. At the same time, he believed that the acceleration of the evolutionary process depends on the will of the organism (Lamarckism). For Matthew, the principle of the struggle for existence coexisted with the recognition of the existence of catastrophes: after upheavals, a few primitive forms survive; in the absence of competition after the revolution, the evolutionary process proceeds at a high pace. Matthew's evolutionary ideas went unnoticed for three decades. But in 1868, after the publication of On the Origin of Species, he republished his evolutionary pages. After this, Darwin familiarized himself with the works of his predecessor and noted Matthew’s achievements in the historical review of the 3rd edition of his work.

Charles Lyell (1797-1875) was a major figure of his time. He brought back to life the concept of actualism (“Fundamentals of Geology”, 1830-1833), coming from ancient authors, as well as from such significant personalities in human history as Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Lomonosov (1711-1765), James Hutton (England, Hutton, 1726-1797) and, finally, Lamarck. Lyell's acceptance of the concept of knowledge of the past through the study of modernity meant the creation of the first holistic theory of the evolution of the face of the Earth. The English philosopher and historian of science William Whewell (1794-1866) in 1832 put forward the term uniformitarianism in relation to the assessment of Lyell's theory. Lyell spoke about the invariability of the action of geological factors over time. Uniformitarianism was the complete antithesis of Cuvier's catastrophism. “The teaching of Lyell now prevails as much,” wrote the anthropologist and evolutionist I. Ranke, “as the teaching of Cuvier once dominated. At the same time, it is often forgotten that the doctrine of catastrophes could hardly have provided a satisfactory schematic explanation of geological facts for so long in the eyes of the best researchers and thinkers if it had not been based on a certain amount of positive observations. The truth here also lies between the extremes of theory.” As modern biologists admit, “Cuvier’s catastrophism was a necessary stage in the development of historical geology and paleontology. Without catastrophism, the development of biostratigraphy would hardly have progressed so quickly.”

Scotsman Robert Chambers (1802-1871), a book publisher and popularizer of science, published in London “Traces of the Natural History of Creation” (1844), in which he anonymously promoted the ideas of Lamarck, spoke about the duration of the evolutionary process and about evolutionary development from simply organized ancestors to more complex forms . The book was designed for a wide readership and over 10 years went through 10 editions with a circulation of at least 15 thousand copies (which in itself is impressive for that time). Controversy has flared up around a book by an anonymous author. Always very reserved and cautious, Darwin stood aloof from the debate that was unfolding in England, but carefully observed how criticism of particular inaccuracies turned into criticism of the very idea of ​​mutability of species, so as not to repeat such mistakes. Chambers, after the publication of Darwin's book, immediately joined the ranks of supporters of the new teaching.

In the 20th century, people remembered Edward Blyth (1810-1873), an English zoologist and researcher of the fauna of Australia. In 1835 and 1837 he published two articles in the English Journal of Natural History in which he said that in conditions of fierce competition and lack of resources, only the strongest have a chance of leaving offspring.

Thus, even before the publication of the famous work, the entire course of development of natural science had already prepared the ground for the acceptance of the doctrine of the variability of species and selection.

Darwin's works

A new stage in the development of evolutionary theory came in 1859 as a result of the publication of Charles Darwin's seminal work, “The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.” The main driving force of evolution according to Darwin is natural selection. Selection, acting on individuals, allows those organisms that are better adapted for life in a given environment to survive and leave offspring. The action of selection causes species to break apart into subspecies, which in turn diverge over time into genera, families, and all larger taxa.

With his characteristic honesty, Darwin pointed to those who directly pushed him to write and publish the doctrine of evolution (apparently, Darwin was not too interested in the history of science, since in the first edition of The Origin of Species he did not mention his immediate predecessors: Wells, Matthew, Blyte). Darwin was directly influenced in the process of creating the work by Lyell and to a lesser extent by Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), with his geometric progression of numbers from the demographic work “Essay on the Law of Population” (1798). And, one might say, Darwin was “forced” to publish his work by the young English zoologist and biogeographer Alfred Wallace (1823-1913) by sending him a manuscript in which, independently of Darwin, he sets out the ideas of the theory of natural selection. At the same time, Wallace knew that Darwin was working on the doctrine of evolution, for the latter himself wrote to him about this in a letter dated May 1, 1857: “This summer will mark 20 years (!) since I started my first notebook on the question of about how and in what ways species and varieties differ from each other. Now I am preparing my work for publication... but I do not intend to publish it earlier than in two years... Really, it is impossible (within the framework of a letter) to expound my views on the causes and methods of changes in the state of nature; but step by step I came to a clear and distinct idea - whether true or false, this must be judged by others; for - alas! – the most unshakable confidence of the author of the theory that he is right is in no way a guarantee of its truth!” Darwin's common sense is evident here, as well as the gentlemanly attitude of the two scientists towards each other, which is clearly visible when analyzing the correspondence between them. Darwin, having received the article on June 18, 1858, wanted to submit it for publication, keeping silent about his work, and only at the insistence of his friends he wrote a “short extract” from his work and presented these two works to the Linnean Society.

Darwin fully adopted the idea of ​​gradual development from Lyell and, one might say, was a uniformitarian. The question may arise: if everything was known before Darwin, then what is his merit, why did his work cause such a resonance? But Darwin did what his predecessors could not do. Firstly, he gave his work a very relevant title, which was “on everyone’s lips.” The public had a burning interest specifically in “The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.” It is difficult to remember another book in the history of world natural science, the title of which would so clearly reflect its essence. Perhaps Darwin came across the title pages or titles of the works of his predecessors, but simply did not have the desire to familiarize himself with them. We can only wonder how the public would react if Matthew had released his evolutionary views under the title “The Possibility of Variation of Plant Species Over Time through Survival (Selection) of the Fittest.” But, as we know, “Ship’s timber…” did not attract attention.

Secondly, and this is the most important thing, Darwin was able to explain to his contemporaries the reasons for the variability of species based on his observations. He rejected, as untenable, the idea of ​​“exercising” or “non-exercising” organs and turned to the facts of the breeding of new breeds of animals and varieties of plants by people - to artificial selection. He showed that indefinite variability of organisms (mutations) are inherited and can become the beginning of a new breed or variety, if it is useful to humans. Having transferred these data to wild species, Darwin noted that only those changes that are beneficial to the species for successful competition with others can be preserved in nature, and spoke about the struggle for existence and natural selection, to which he attributed an important, but not the only role as the driver of evolution. Darwin not only gave theoretical calculations of natural selection, but also showed, using factual material, the evolution of species in space, with geographic isolation (finches) and explained the mechanisms of divergent evolution from the standpoint of strict logic. He also introduced the public to the fossil forms of giant sloths and armadillos, which could be seen as evolution through time. Darwin also allowed for the possibility of long-term preservation of a certain average norm of a species in the process of evolution by eliminating any deviating variants (for example, sparrows that survived a storm had an average wing length), which was later called stasygenesis. Darwin was able to prove to everyone the reality of the variability of species in nature, therefore, thanks to his work, ideas about the strict constancy of species came to naught. It was pointless for staticists and fixists to continue to persist in their positions.

Development of Darwin's ideas

As a true gradualist, Darwin was concerned that the lack of transitional forms would be the downfall of his theory, and attributed this lack to the incompleteness of the geological record. Darwin was also concerned about the “dissolution” of a newly acquired trait over a series of generations, with subsequent crossing with ordinary, unchanged individuals. He wrote that this objection, along with breaks in the geological record, is one of the most serious for his theory.

Darwin and his contemporaries did not know that in 1865, the Austro-Czech naturalist Abbot Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) discovered the laws of heredity, according to which a hereditary trait does not “dissolve” in a series of generations, but passes (in the case of recessivity) into a heterozygous state and can be propagated in a population environment.

Such scientists as the American botanist Asa Gray (1810-1888) begin to speak out in support of Darwin; Alfred Wallace, Thomas Henry Huxley (Huxley; 1825-1895) - in England; classic of comparative anatomy Karl Gegenbaur (1826-1903), Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), zoologist Fritz Müller (1821-1897) - in Germany. No less distinguished scientists criticize Darwin's ideas: Darwin's teacher, professor of geology Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873), the famous paleontologist Richard Owen, the prominent zoologist, paleontologist and geologist Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), the German professor Heinrich Georg Bronn (1800-1873). 1862).

An interesting fact is that it was Bronn who translated Darwin’s book into German, who did not share his views, but believed that the new idea had a right to exist (the modern evolutionist and popularizer N.N. Vorontsov gives Bronn credit for this as a true scientist). Considering the views of another opponent of Darwin, Agassiz, we note that this scientist spoke about the importance of combining the methods of embryology, anatomy and paleontology to determine the position of a species or other taxon in the classification scheme. Thus, the species receives its place in the natural order of the universe. It was interesting to learn that an ardent supporter of Darwin, Haeckel, widely promoted the triad postulated by Agassiz, the “method of triple parallelism” already applied to the idea of ​​kinship, and it, fueled by Haeckel’s personal enthusiasm, captivated his contemporaries. All any serious zoologists, anatomists, embryologists, paleontologists begin to build entire forests of phylogenetic trees. With the light hand of Haeckel, the idea of ​​monophyly - descent from one ancestor, which reigned supreme over the minds of scientists in the middle of the 20th century, is spread as the only possible idea. Modern evolutionists, based on the study of the method of reproduction of Rhodophycea algae, which is different from all other eukaryotes (immobile both male and female gametes, the absence of a cell center and any flagellated formations), speak of at least two independently formed ancestors of plants. At the same time, they found out that “The emergence of the mitotic apparatus occurred independently at least twice: in the ancestors of the kingdoms of fungi and animals, on the one hand, and in the subkingdoms of true algae (except Rhodophycea) and higher plants, on the other” (exact quote, p. 319) . Thus, the origin of life is recognized not from one ancestral organism, but from at least three. In any case, it is noted that “no other scheme, like the proposed one, can turn out to be monophyletic” (ibid.). Scientists were also led to polyphyly (origin from several unrelated organisms) by the theory of symbiogenesis, which explains the appearance of lichens (a combination of algae and fungus) (p. 318). And this is the most important achievement of the theory. In addition, recent research suggests that more and more examples are being found showing “the prevalence of paraphyly in the origin of relatively closely related taxa.” For example, in the “subfamily of African tree mice Dendromurinae: the genus Deomys is molecularly close to the true mice Murinae, and the genus Steatomys is close in DNA structure to the giant mice of the subfamily Cricetomyinae. At the same time, the morphological similarity of Deomys and Steatomys is undeniable, which indicates the paraphylitic origin of Dendromurinae.” Therefore, the phylogenetic classification needs to be revised, based not only on external similarity, but also on the structure of the genetic material (p. 376). The experimental biologist and theorist August Weismann (1834-1914) spoke in a fairly clear manner about the cell nucleus as the carrier of heredity. Independently of Mendel, he came to the most important conclusion about the discreteness of hereditary units. Mendel was so ahead of his time that his work remained virtually unknown for 35 years. Weismann's ideas (sometime after 1863) became the property of wide circles of biologists and a subject for discussion. The most fascinating pages of the origin of the doctrine of chromosomes, the emergence of cytogenetics, the creation of T.G. Morgan's chromosome theory of heredity in 1912-1916. – all this was greatly stimulated by August Weismann. Studying the embryonic development of sea urchins, he proposed to distinguish between two forms of cell division - equatorial and reduction, i.e. approached the discovery of meiosis, the most important stage of combinative variability and the sexual process. But Weisman could not avoid some speculativeness in his ideas about the mechanism of transmission of heredity. He thought that only the so-called cells have the entire set of discrete factors - “determinants”. "germinal tract". Some determinants enter some of the cells of the “soma” (body), others – others. Differences in the sets of determinants explain the specialization of soma cells. So, we see that, having correctly predicted the existence of meiosis, Weisman was mistaken in predicting the fate of gene distribution. He also extended the principle of selection to competition between cells, and, since cells are carriers of certain determinants, he spoke of their struggle among themselves. The most modern concepts of “selfish DNA”, “selfish gene”, developed at the turn of the 70s and 80s. XX century have much in common with Weismann's competition of determinants. Weisman emphasized that the “germ plasm” is isolated from the soma cells of the whole organism, and therefore spoke about the impossibility of inheriting characteristics acquired by the organism (soma) under the influence of the environment. But many Darwinists accepted this idea of ​​Lamarck. Weisman's harsh criticism of this concept caused a negative attitude towards him and his theory personally, and then towards the study of chromosomes in general, on the part of orthodox Darwinists (those who recognized selection as the only factor of evolution).

The rediscovery of Mendel's laws occurred in 1900 in three different countries: Holland (Hugo de Vries 1848-1935), Germany (Karl Erich Correns 1864-1933) and Austria (Erich von Tschermak 1871-1962), which simultaneously discovered Mendel's forgotten work. In 1902, Walter Sutton (Seton, 1876-1916) gave a cytological basis for Mendelism: diploid and haploid sets, homologous chromosomes, the process of conjugation during meiosis, prediction of the linkage of genes located on the same chromosome, the concept of dominance and recessivity, as well as allelic genes - all this was demonstrated on cytological preparations, was based on precise calculations of Mendeleev's algebra and was very different from hypothetical family trees, from the style of naturalistic Darwinism of the 19th century. The mutation theory of de Vries (1901-1903) was not accepted not only by the conservatism of orthodox Darwinists, but also by the fact that in other plant species researchers were unable to obtain the wide range of variability he achieved with Oenothera lamarkiana (it is now known that evening primrose is a polymorphic species , having chromosomal translocations, some of which are heterozygous, while homozygotes are lethal. De Vries chose a very successful object for obtaining mutations and at the same time not entirely successful, since in his case it was necessary to extend the results achieved to other plant species). De Vries and his Russian predecessor, the botanist Sergei Ivanovich Korzhinsky (1861-1900), who wrote in 1899 (St. Petersburg) about sudden spasmodic “heterogeneous” deviations, thought that the possibility of macromutations rejected Darwin’s theory. At the dawn of genetics, many concepts were expressed according to which evolution did not depend on the external environment. The Dutch botanist Jan Paulus Lotsi (1867-1931), who wrote the book “Evolution by Hybridization,” where he rightly drew attention to the role of hybridization in speciation in plants, also came under criticism from Darwinists.

If in the middle of the 18th century the contradiction between transformism (continuous change) and the discreteness of taxonomic units of systematics seemed insurmountable, then in the 19th century it was thought that gradualistic trees built on the basis of kinship came into conflict with the discreteness of hereditary material. Evolution through visually discernible large mutations could not be accepted by Darwinian gradualism.

Confidence in mutations and their role in the formation of species variability was restored by Thomas Ghent Morgan (1886-1945), when this American embryologist and zoologist moved on to genetic research in 1910 and, ultimately, chose the famous Drosophila. Probably, we should not be surprised that 20-30 years after the events described, it was population geneticists who came to evolution not through macromutations (which began to be recognized as unlikely), but through a steady and gradual change in the frequencies of allelic genes in populations. Since macroevolution by that time seemed to be an indisputable continuation of the studied phenomena of microevolution, gradualism began to seem an inseparable feature of the evolutionary process. There was a return to Leibniz’s “law of continuity” at a new level, and in the first half of the 20th century a synthesis of evolution and genetics was able to occur. Once again, once opposing concepts came together. (names, conclusions of evolutionists and chronology of events are taken from Nikolai Nikolaevich Vorontsov, “Development of evolutionary ideas in biology, 1999)

Let us recall that in the light of the latest biological ideas put forward from the position of materialism, now there is again a movement away from the law of continuity, now not by geneticists, but by evolutionists themselves. The famous S.J. Gould raised the question of punctualism (punctuated equilibrium), as opposed to generally accepted gradualism, so that it became possible to explain the reasons for the already obvious picture of the absence of transitional forms among the fossil remains, i.e. the impossibility of building a truly continuous line of kinship from origins to the present. There is always a gap in the geological record.

Modern theories of biological evolution

Synthetic theory of evolution

The synthetic theory in its current form was formed as a result of rethinking a number of provisions of classical Darwinism from the standpoint of genetics of the early 20th century. After the rediscovery of Mendel's laws (in 1901), evidence of the discrete nature of heredity and especially after the creation of theoretical population genetics by the works of R. Fisher (-), J. B. S. Haldane Jr. (), S. Wright ( ; ), the teaching Darwin acquired a solid genetic foundation.

Neutral theory of molecular evolution

The theory of neutral evolution does not dispute the decisive role of natural selection in the development of life on Earth. The discussion is about the proportion of mutations that have adaptive significance. Most biologists accept a number of results from the theory of neutral evolution, although they do not share some of the strong claims originally made by M. Kimura.

Epigenetic theory of evolution

The main provisions of the epigenetic theory of evolution were formulated in the 20th year by M. A. Shishkin based on the ideas of I. I. Shmalhausen and K. H. Waddington. The theory considers a holistic phenotype as the main substrate of natural selection, and selection not only fixes useful changes, but also takes part in their creation. The fundamental influence on heredity is not the genome, but the epigenetic system (ES) - a set of factors affecting ontogenesis. The general organization of the ES is transmitted from ancestors to descendants, which shapes the organism during its individual development, and selection leads to the stabilization of a number of successive ontogenies, eliminating deviations from the norm (morphoses) and forming a stable development trajectory (creod). Evolution according to ETE consists in the transformation of one creed into another under the disturbing influence of the environment. In response to disturbance, the ES is destabilized, as a result of which the development of organisms along deviating paths of development becomes possible, and multiple morphoses arise. Some of these morphoses receive a selective advantage, and over subsequent generations their ES develops a new stable development trajectory and a new creed is formed.

Ecosystem theory of evolution

This term is understood as a system of ideas and approaches to the study of evolution, focusing on the features and patterns of evolution of ecosystems at various levels - biocenoses, biomes and the biosphere as a whole, rather than taxa (species, families, classes, etc.). The provisions of the ecosystem theory of evolution are based on two postulates:

• Naturalness and discreteness of ecosystems. An ecosystem is a really existing (and not allocated for the convenience of the researcher) object, which is a system of interacting biological and non-biological (eg soil, water) objects, territorially and functionally separated from other similar objects. The boundaries between ecosystems are clear enough to allow us to talk about the independent evolution of neighboring objects.
• The determining role of ecosystem interactions in determining the rate and direction of population evolution. Evolution is seen as a process of creating and filling ecological niches or licenses.

The ecosystem theory of evolution operates with such terms as coherent and incoherent evolution, ecosystem crises at various levels. The modern ecosystem theory of evolution is based mainly on the works of Soviet and Russian evolutionists: V. A. Krasilov, S. M. Razumovsky, A. G. Ponomarenko, V. V. Zherikhin and others.

Evolutionary doctrine and religion

Although in modern biology many unclear questions remain about the mechanisms of evolution, the vast majority of biologists do not doubt the existence of biological evolution as a phenomenon. However, some believers of a number of religions find some provisions of evolutionary biology contrary to their religious beliefs, in particular, the dogma of the creation of the world by God. In this regard, in part of society, almost from the moment of the birth of evolutionary biology, there has been a certain opposition to this teaching from the religious side (see creationism), which in some times and in some countries has reached the point of criminal sanctions for teaching evolutionary teaching (which became the reason, for example, for the scandalous famous "monkey process" in the USA in the city).

It should be noted that the accusations of atheism and denial of religion, brought by some opponents of the teaching of evolution, are based to a certain extent on a misunderstanding of the nature of scientific knowledge: in science, no theory, including the theory of biological evolution, can either confirm or deny the existence of such subjects from the other world, like God (if only because God could use evolution in the creation of living nature, as the theological doctrine of “theistic evolution” states).

On the other hand, the theory of evolution, being a scientific theory, considers the biological world as part of the material world and relies on its natural and self-sufficient, i.e., natural origin, alien, therefore, to any otherworldly or divine intervention; alien for the reason that the growth of scientific knowledge, penetrating into previously incomprehensible and explainable only by the activity of otherworldly forces, seems to take away the ground from religion (when explaining the essence of the phenomenon, the need for a religious explanation disappears, because there is a convincing natural explanation). In this regard, evolutionary teaching may be aimed at denying the existence of extranatural forces, or rather their interference in the process of development of the living world, which is one way or another assumed by religious systems.

Attempts to contrast evolutionary biology with religious anthropology are also mistaken. From the point of view of scientific methodology, a popular thesis “man came from apes” is only an excessive simplification (see reductionism) of one of the conclusions of evolutionary biology (about the place of man as a biological species on the phylogenetic tree of living nature), if only because the concept “man” is polysemantic: man as a subject of physical anthropology is by no means identical to man as a subject of philosophical anthropology, and it is incorrect to reduce philosophical anthropology to physical anthropology.

Many believers of different religions do not find the teaching of evolution to be contrary to their faith. The theory of biological evolution (along with many other sciences - from astrophysics to geology and radiochemistry) contradicts only the literal reading of sacred texts telling about the creation of the world, and for some believers this is the reason for rejecting almost all the conclusions of natural sciences that study the past of the material world (literalist creationism ).

Among believers who profess the doctrine of literalist creationism, there are a number of scientists who are trying to find scientific evidence for their doctrine (so-called “scientific creationism”). However, the scientific community disputes the validity of this evidence.

Literature

• Berg L.S. Nomogenesis, or Evolution based on patterns. - Petersburg: State Publishing House, 1922. - 306 p.
• Kordyum V. A. Evolution and the biosphere. - K.: Naukova Dumka, 1982. - 264 p.
• Krasilov V. A. Unsolved problems of the theory of evolution. - Vladivostok: Far Eastern Scientific Center of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1986. - P. 140.
• Lima de Faria A. Evolution without selection: Autoevolution of form and function: Trans. from English. - M.: Mir, 1991. - P. 455.
• Nazarov V. I. Evolution not according to Darwin: Changing the evolutionary model. Tutorial. Ed. 2nd, rev. - M.: LKI Publishing House, 2007. - 520 p.
• Tchaikovsky Yu. V. The science of life development. Experience of the theory of evolution. - M.: Partnership of Scientific Publications KMK, 2006. - 712 p.
• Golubovsky M. D. Non-canonical hereditary changes // Nature. - 2001. - No. 8. - P. 3–9.
• Meyen S.V. The path to a new synthesis, or where do homological series lead? // Knowledge is power. - 1972. - № 8.

Evolution is a scientific theory that essentially indicates the change of species over time. There are many different mechanisms by which species change, but most of them are based on the idea of ​​natural selection. Evolution by natural selection was the first scientific theory to provide evidence of how animals and plants change over time, as well as the mechanism of how this occurs.

History of the theory of evolution

The idea that traits are passed on from parents to offspring has been around since the time of the ancient Greek philosophers. In the mid-1700s, Carol Linnaeus came up with his taxonomic naming system, which grouped by species and implied that there was an evolutionary relationship between species within the same group.

In the late 1700s, the first theories emerged and changed over time. Scientists such as the Comte de Buffon and Charles Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, proposed the idea that species changed over time, but no one could explain how or why this happened. They also kept their thoughts secret, as their theories were controversial with the generally accepted religious views of the era.

Jean Baptiste Lamarck, a student of Comte de Buffon, was the first to publicly state that species have changed over time. However, part of his theory was wrong. Lamarck proposed that acquired traits are inherited. Georges Cuvier was able to prove this statement wrong. He also had evidence of species that had evolved and gone extinct.

Cuvier believed in catastrophism and believed that these changes and disappearances in nature occurred suddenly and violently. James Hutton and Charles Lyell countered Georges Cuvier's arguments with the idea of ​​uniformitarianism. This theory states that changes in nature occur slowly and accumulate over time.

Darwin and natural selection

Sometimes called "survival of the fittest", "natural selection" is especially known from Charles Darwin's book On the Origin of Species.

In the book, Darwin proposed that species with traits best suited to their environment live long enough to reproduce and pass on those “fortunate” traits to their descendants. Over time, only the “fittest” traits of a species are retained. Eventually, over a period of time, these small adaptations can create new species.

At the time, Charles Darwin was not the only person who came up with this idea. Alfred Russel Wallace also had evidence and came to similar conclusions as Darwin. They even collaborated and presented joint findings. Armed with evidence from around the world through their extensive travels, Darwin and Wallace's ideas received positive feedback from the scientific community. The partnership ended when Darwin published his book.

One very important part of the theory of evolution by natural selection is the understanding that species cannot evolve. They can only adapt to their environment. Adaptations add up over time and ultimately lead to the evolution of a species. It can also lead to the emergence of new species and sometimes the extinction of older ones.

Evidence of evolution

There is plenty of evidence to support the theory of evolution. Darwin relied on similar species anatomy to tie them together. He also had some fossil evidence that showed slight changes in the species' body structure over time, often resulting in vestigial structures. Of course, the fossil record is incomplete and has “missing links.” With today's technology, there is plenty of other evidence for evolution. These include similarities between embryos across species, the same DNA sequences shared across species, and an understanding of how DNA mutations work in microevolution. Even more fossil evidence has been found since Darwin's time, although there are still many gaps in the fossil record.

Controversy over the theory of evolution

Today, the theory of evolution is often portrayed in the media as a controversial issue. The development of primates and the idea that humans evolved from apes have been a major debate between the scientific and religious communities. Politicians and courts have been deciding whether schools should teach evolution or whether they should teach alternative viewpoints such as intelligent design and creationism.

The case of Tennessee v. John Scopes, also known as the Monkey Trial, became a famous legal battle over the teaching of evolution in schools. In 1925, a teacher named John Scopes was arrested for illegally teaching evolution in a Tennessee science class. It was the first major evolution trial and brought attention to a previously taboo topic.

Theory of evolution in biology

The theory of evolution is often seen as the main overarching topic that unites all topics. These include genetics, population biology, anatomy and physiology, and embryology. While the theory itself has evolved and expanded over time, the principles laid out by Darwin in the 1800s still hold true today.

Anaximander. We know about Anaximander’s scheme from the historian of the 1st century BC. e. Diodorus Siculus. In his account, when the young Earth was illuminated by the Sun, its surface first hardened and then fermented, and rot arose, covered with thin shells. In these shells all kinds of animal breeds were born. Man supposedly arose from a fish or a fish-like animal. Despite the originality, Anaximander's reasoning is purely speculative and not supported by observations. Another ancient thinker, Xenophanes, paid more attention to observations. So, he identified the fossils that he found in the mountains with the imprints of ancient plants and animals: laurel, mollusk shells, fish, seals. From this he concluded that the land once sank into the sea, bringing death to land animals and people, and turned into mud, and when it rose, the prints dried up. Heraclitus, despite his metaphysics being imbued with the idea of ​​constant development and eternal formation, did not create any evolutionary concepts. Although some authors still attribute him to the first evolutionists.

The only author in whom one can find the idea of ​​gradual change in organisms was Plato. In his dialogue "The State" he put forward the infamous proposal: improving the breed of people by selecting the best representatives. Without a doubt, this proposal was based on the well-known fact of selection of sires in animal husbandry. In the modern era, the unfounded application of these ideas to human society developed into the doctrine of eugenics, which underpinned the racial policies of the Third Reich.

Middle Ages and Renaissance

With the rise of scientific knowledge after the “Dark Ages” of the early Middle Ages, evolutionary ideas again begin to creep into the works of scientists, theologians and philosophers. Albertus Magnus was the first to note the spontaneous variability of plants, leading to the emergence of new species. Examples once given by Theophrastus he characterized as transmutation one type to another. The term itself was apparently taken by him from alchemy. In the 16th century, fossil organisms were rediscovered, but only towards the end of the 17th century the idea that this was not a “play of nature”, not stones in the shape of bones or shells, but the remains of ancient animals and plants, finally took hold of minds. In his work of the year, “Noah’s Ark, Its Shape and Capacity,” Johann Buteo cited calculations that showed that the ark could not contain all the species of known animals. In the year Bernard Palissy organized an exhibition of fossils in Paris, where he for the first time compared them with living ones. In the year he published in print the idea that since everything in nature is “in eternal transmutation,” many fossil remains of fish and shellfish belong to extinct species

Evolutionary ideas of the New Age

As we see, things did not go further than expressing scattered ideas about the variability of species. The same trend continued with the advent of modern times. So Francis Bacon, politician and philosopher, suggested that species can change by accumulating “errors of nature.” This thesis again, as in the case of Empedocles, echoes the principle of natural selection, but there is no word yet about a general theory. Oddly enough, the first book on evolution can be considered a treatise by Matthew Hale. Matthew Hale) "The Primitive Origin of Mankind Considered and Examined According to the Light of Nature." This may seem strange already because Hale himself was not a naturalist or even a philosopher, he was a lawyer, theologian and financier, and he wrote his treatise during a forced vacation on his estate. In it, he wrote that one should not assume that all species were created in their modern form; on the contrary, only archetypes were created, and all the diversity of life developed from them under the influence of numerous circumstances. Hale also foreshadows many of the controversies about randomness that arose after the establishment of Darwinism. In the same treatise, the term “evolution” in the biological sense was first mentioned.

Ideas of limited evolutionism like Hale's arose constantly, and can be found in the writings of John Ray, Robert Hooke, Gottfried Leibniz, and even in the later work of Carl Linnaeus. They are expressed more clearly by Georges Louis Buffon. Observing the deposition of sediments from water, he came to the conclusion that the 6 thousand years allotted for the history of the Earth by natural theology were not enough for the formation of sedimentary rocks. The age of the Earth calculated by Buffon was 75 thousand years. Describing the species of animals and plants, Buffon noted that, along with useful characteristics, they also have those to which it is impossible to attribute any usefulness. This again contradicted natural theology, which asserted that every hair on the body of an animal was created for the benefit of it or man. Buffon came to the conclusion that this contradiction can be eliminated by accepting the creation of only a general plan, which varies in specific incarnations. Applying Leibniz's “law of continuity” to systematics, he spoke out against the existence of discrete species in 2010, considering species to be the fruit of the imagination of taxonomists (in this one can see the origins of his ongoing polemics with Linnaeus and the antipathy of these scientists towards each other).

Lamarck's theory

A step towards combining the transformist and systematic approaches was made by the natural scientist and philosopher Jean Baptiste Lamarck. As a proponent of species change and a deist, he recognized the Creator and believed that the Supreme Creator created only matter and nature; all other inanimate and living objects arose from matter under the influence of nature. Lamarck emphasized that “all living bodies come from one another, and not through sequential development from previous embryos.” Thus, he opposed the concept of preformationism as autogenetic, and his follower Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772-1844) defended the idea of ​​​​the unity of the structural plan of animals of various types. Lamarck’s evolutionary ideas are most fully presented in “Philosophy of Zoology” (1809), although Lamarck formulated many of the provisions of his evolutionary theory in introductory lectures to a zoology course back in 1800-1802. Lamarck believed that the stages of evolution do not lie on a straight line, as followed from the “ladder of creatures” by the Swiss natural philosopher C. Bonnet, but have many branches and deviations at the level of species and genera. This introduction set the stage for future “family trees.” Lamarck also proposed the term “biology” in its modern sense. However, the zoological works of Lamarck - the creator of the first evolutionary doctrine - contained many factual inaccuracies and speculative constructions, which is especially evident when comparing his works with the works of his contemporary, rival and critic, the creator of comparative anatomy and paleontology, Georges Cuvier (1769-1832). Lamarck believed that the driving factor of evolution could be the “exercise” or “non-exercise” of organs, depending on the adequate direct influence of the environment. Some naivety of the argumentation of Lamarck and Saint-Hilaire largely contributed to the anti-evolutionary reaction to transformism of the early 19th century, and provoked absolutely factual criticism from the creationist Georges Cuvier and his school.

Catastrophism and transformism

Cuvier's ideal was Linnaeus. Cuvier divided animals into four “branches,” each of which is characterized by a common structural plan. For these “branches,” his follower A. Blainville proposed the concept of type, which fully corresponded to Cuvier’s “branches.” A phylum is not simply the highest taxon in the animal kingdom. There are not and cannot be transitional forms between the four identified types of animals. All animals belonging to the same type are characterized by a common structure plan. This most important position of Cuvier is extremely significant even today. Although the number of types has significantly exceeded the number 4, all biologists speaking about type proceed from a fundamental idea that gives much concern to the promoters of gradualism in evolution - the idea of ​​​​the isolation of the structural plans of each type. Cuvier fully accepted the Linnaean hierarchy of the system and built his system in the form of a branching tree. But this was not a family tree, but a tree of similarities between organisms. As rightly noted by A.A. Borisyak, “having built a system on ... a comprehensive account of the similarities and differences of organisms, he thereby opened the door to the evolutionary doctrine that he fought against.” Cuvier's system was apparently the first system of organic nature in which modern forms were considered side by side with fossils. Cuvier is rightfully considered a significant figure in the development of paleontology, biostratigraphy and historical geology as sciences. The theoretical basis for identifying the boundaries between layers was Cuvier’s idea of ​​catastrophic extinctions of faunas and floras at the boundaries of periods and eras. He also developed the doctrine of correlations (italics by N.N. Vorontsov), thanks to which he restored the appearance of the skull as a whole, the skeleton as a whole, and, finally, provided a reconstruction of the external appearance of a fossil animal. Together with Cuvier, his French colleague paleontologist and geologist A. Brongniard (1770-1847) made his contribution to stratigraphy, and, independently of them, the English surveyor and mining engineer William Smith (1769-1839). The term for the study of the form of organisms - morphology - was introduced into biological science by Goethe, and the doctrine itself arose at the end of the 18th century. For creationists of that time, the concept of unity of body plan meant a search for similarity, but not relatedness, of organisms. The task of comparative anatomy was seen as an attempt to understand by what plan the Supreme Being created all the diversity of animals that we observe on Earth. Evolutionary classics call this period in the development of biology “idealistic morphology.” This direction was also developed by the opponent of transformism, the English anatomist and paleontologist Richard Owen (1804-1892). By the way, it was he who proposed, in relation to structures that perform similar functions, to apply the now well-known analogy or homology, depending on whether the animals being compared belong to the same structural plan or to different ones (to the same type of animal or to different types).

Evolutionists - Darwin's contemporaries

In 1831, the English forester Patrick Matthew (1790-1874) published the monograph “Ship logging and tree planting.” The phenomenon of uneven growth of trees of the same age, the selective death of some and the survival of others has long been known to foresters. Matthew suggested that selection not only ensures the survival of the fittest trees, but can also lead to changes in species during historical development. Thus, the struggle for existence and natural selection were known to him. At the same time, he believed that the acceleration of the evolutionary process depends on the will of the organism (Lamarckism). For Matthew, the principle of the struggle for existence coexisted with the recognition of the existence of catastrophes: after upheavals, a few primitive forms survive; in the absence of competition after the revolution, the evolutionary process proceeds at a high pace. Matthew's evolutionary ideas went unnoticed for three decades. But in 1868, after the publication of On the Origin of Species, he republished his evolutionary pages. After this, Darwin familiarized himself with the works of his predecessor and noted Matthew’s achievements in the historical review of the 3rd edition of his work.

Charles Lyell (1797-1875) was a major figure of his time. He brought back to life the concept of actualism (“Fundamentals of Geology”, 1830-1833), coming from ancient authors, as well as from such significant personalities in human history as Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Lomonosov (1711-1765), James Hutton (England, Hutton, 1726-1797) and, finally, Lamarck. Lyell's acceptance of the concept of knowledge of the past through the study of modernity meant the creation of the first holistic theory of the evolution of the face of the Earth. The English philosopher and historian of science William Whewell (1794-1866) in 1832 put forward the term uniformitarianism in relation to the assessment of Lyell's theory. Lyell spoke about the invariability of the action of geological factors over time. Uniformitarianism was the complete antithesis of Cuvier's catastrophism. “The teaching of Lyell now prevails as much,” wrote the anthropologist and evolutionist I. Ranke, “as the teaching of Cuvier once dominated. At the same time, it is often forgotten that the doctrine of catastrophes could hardly have provided a satisfactory schematic explanation of geological facts for so long in the eyes of the best researchers and thinkers if it had not been based on a certain amount of positive observations. The truth here also lies between the extremes of theory.” As modern biologists admit, “Cuvier’s catastrophism was a necessary stage in the development of historical geology and paleontology. Without catastrophism, the development of biostratigraphy would hardly have progressed so quickly.”

Scotsman Robert Chambers (1802-1871), a book publisher and popularizer of science, published in London “Traces of the Natural History of Creation” (1844), in which he anonymously promoted the ideas of Lamarck, spoke about the duration of the evolutionary process and about evolutionary development from simply organized ancestors to more complex forms . The book was designed for a wide readership and over 10 years went through 10 editions with a circulation of at least 15 thousand copies (which in itself is impressive for that time). Controversy has flared up around a book by an anonymous author. Always very reserved and cautious, Darwin stood aloof from the debate that was unfolding in England, but carefully observed how criticism of particular inaccuracies turned into criticism of the very idea of ​​mutability of species, so as not to repeat such mistakes. Chambers, after the publication of Darwin's book, immediately joined the ranks of supporters of the new teaching.

In the 20th century, people remembered Edward Blyth (1810-1873), an English zoologist and researcher of the fauna of Australia. In 1835 and 1837 he published two articles in the English Journal of Natural History in which he said that in conditions of fierce competition and lack of resources, only the strongest have a chance of leaving offspring.

Thus, even before the publication of the famous work, the entire course of development of natural science had already prepared the ground for the acceptance of the doctrine of the variability of species and selection.

Darwin's works

A new stage in the development of evolutionary theory came in 1859 as a result of the publication of Charles Darwin's seminal work, “The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.” The main driving force of evolution according to Darwin is natural selection. Selection, acting on individuals, allows those organisms that are better adapted for life in a given environment to survive and leave offspring. The action of selection causes species to break apart into subspecies, which in turn diverge over time into genera, families, and all larger taxa.

With his characteristic honesty, Darwin pointed to those who directly pushed him to write and publish the doctrine of evolution (apparently, Darwin was not too interested in the history of science, since in the first edition of The Origin of Species he did not mention his immediate predecessors: Wells, Matthew, Blyte). Darwin was directly influenced in the process of creating the work by Lyell and to a lesser extent by Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), with his geometric progression of numbers from the demographic work “Essay on the Law of Population” (1798). And, one might say, Darwin was “forced” to publish his work by the young English zoologist and biogeographer Alfred Wallace (1823-1913) by sending him a manuscript in which, independently of Darwin, he sets out the ideas of the theory of natural selection. At the same time, Wallace knew that Darwin was working on the doctrine of evolution, for the latter himself wrote to him about this in a letter dated May 1, 1857: “This summer will mark 20 years (!) since I started my first notebook on the question of about how and in what ways species and varieties differ from each other. Now I am preparing my work for publication... but I do not intend to publish it earlier than in two years... Really, it is impossible (within the framework of a letter) to expound my views on the causes and methods of changes in the state of nature; but step by step I came to a clear and distinct idea - whether true or false, this must be judged by others; for - alas! – the most unshakable confidence of the author of the theory that he is right is in no way a guarantee of its truth!” Darwin's common sense is evident here, as well as the gentlemanly attitude of the two scientists towards each other, which is clearly visible when analyzing the correspondence between them. Darwin, having received the article on June 18, 1858, wanted to submit it for publication, keeping silent about his work, and only at the insistence of his friends he wrote a “short extract” from his work and presented these two works to the Linnean Society.

Darwin fully adopted the idea of ​​gradual development from Lyell and, one might say, was a uniformitarian. The question may arise: if everything was known before Darwin, then what is his merit, why did his work cause such a resonance? But Darwin did what his predecessors could not do. Firstly, he gave his work a very relevant title, which was “on everyone’s lips.” The public had a burning interest specifically in “The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.” It is difficult to remember another book in the history of world natural science, the title of which would so clearly reflect its essence. Perhaps Darwin came across the title pages or titles of the works of his predecessors, but simply did not have the desire to familiarize himself with them. We can only wonder how the public would react if Matthew had released his evolutionary views under the title “The Possibility of Variation of Plant Species Over Time through Survival (Selection) of the Fittest.” But, as we know, “Ship’s timber…” did not attract attention.

Secondly, and this is the most important thing, Darwin was able to explain to his contemporaries the reasons for the variability of species based on his observations. He rejected, as untenable, the idea of ​​“exercising” or “non-exercising” organs and turned to the facts of the breeding of new breeds of animals and varieties of plants by people - to artificial selection. He showed that indefinite variability of organisms (mutations) are inherited and can become the beginning of a new breed or variety, if it is useful to humans. Having transferred these data to wild species, Darwin noted that only those changes that are beneficial to the species for successful competition with others can be preserved in nature, and spoke about the struggle for existence and natural selection, to which he attributed an important, but not the only role as the driver of evolution. Darwin not only gave theoretical calculations of natural selection, but also showed, using factual material, the evolution of species in space, with geographic isolation (finches) and explained the mechanisms of divergent evolution from the standpoint of strict logic. He also introduced the public to the fossil forms of giant sloths and armadillos, which could be seen as evolution through time. Darwin also allowed for the possibility of long-term preservation of a certain average norm of a species in the process of evolution by eliminating any deviating variants (for example, sparrows that survived a storm had an average wing length), which was later called stasygenesis. Darwin was able to prove to everyone the reality of the variability of species in nature, therefore, thanks to his work, ideas about the strict constancy of species came to naught. It was pointless for staticists and fixists to continue to persist in their positions.

Development of Darwin's ideas

As a true gradualist, Darwin was concerned that the lack of transitional forms would be the downfall of his theory, and attributed this lack to the incompleteness of the geological record. Darwin was also concerned about the “dissolution” of a newly acquired trait over a series of generations, with subsequent crossing with ordinary, unchanged individuals. He wrote that this objection, along with breaks in the geological record, is one of the most serious for his theory.

Darwin and his contemporaries did not know that in 1865, the Austro-Czech naturalist Abbot Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) discovered the laws of heredity, according to which a hereditary trait does not “dissolve” in a series of generations, but passes (in the case of recessivity) into a heterozygous state and can be propagated in a population environment.

Such scientists as the American botanist Asa Gray (1810-1888) begin to speak out in support of Darwin; Alfred Wallace, Thomas Henry Huxley (Huxley; 1825-1895) - in England; classic of comparative anatomy Karl Gegenbaur (1826-1903), Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), zoologist Fritz Müller (1821-1897) - in Germany. No less distinguished scientists criticize Darwin's ideas: Darwin's teacher, professor of geology Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873), the famous paleontologist Richard Owen, the prominent zoologist, paleontologist and geologist Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), the German professor Heinrich Georg Bronn (1800-1873). 1862).

An interesting fact is that it was Bronn who translated Darwin’s book into German, who did not share his views, but believed that the new idea had a right to exist (the modern evolutionist and popularizer N.N. Vorontsov gives Bronn credit for this as a true scientist). Considering the views of another opponent of Darwin, Agassiz, we note that this scientist spoke about the importance of combining the methods of embryology, anatomy and paleontology to determine the position of a species or other taxon in the classification scheme. Thus, the species receives its place in the natural order of the universe. It was interesting to learn that an ardent supporter of Darwin, Haeckel, widely promoted the triad postulated by Agassiz, the “method of triple parallelism” already applied to the idea of ​​kinship, and it, fueled by Haeckel’s personal enthusiasm, captivated his contemporaries. All any serious zoologists, anatomists, embryologists, paleontologists begin to build entire forests of phylogenetic trees. With the light hand of Haeckel, the idea of ​​monophyly - descent from one ancestor, which reigned supreme over the minds of scientists in the middle of the 20th century, is spread as the only possible idea. Modern evolutionists, based on the study of the method of reproduction of Rhodophycea algae, which is different from all other eukaryotes (immobile both male and female gametes, the absence of a cell center and any flagellated formations), speak of at least two independently formed ancestors of plants. At the same time, they found out that “The emergence of the mitotic apparatus occurred independently at least twice: in the ancestors of the kingdoms of fungi and animals, on the one hand, and in the subkingdoms of true algae (except Rhodophycea) and higher plants, on the other” (exact quote, p. 319) . Thus, the origin of life is recognized not from one ancestral organism, but from at least three. In any case, it is noted that “no other scheme, like the proposed one, can turn out to be monophyletic” (ibid.). Scientists were also led to polyphyly (origin from several unrelated organisms) by the theory of symbiogenesis, which explains the appearance of lichens (a combination of algae and fungus) (p. 318). And this is the most important achievement of the theory. In addition, recent research suggests that more and more examples are being found showing “the prevalence of paraphyly in the origin of relatively closely related taxa.” For example, in the “subfamily of African tree mice Dendromurinae: the genus Deomys is molecularly close to the true mice Murinae, and the genus Steatomys is close in DNA structure to the giant mice of the subfamily Cricetomyinae. At the same time, the morphological similarity of Deomys and Steatomys is undeniable, which indicates the paraphylitic origin of Dendromurinae.” Therefore, the phylogenetic classification needs to be revised, based not only on external similarity, but also on the structure of the genetic material (p. 376). The experimental biologist and theorist August Weismann (1834-1914) spoke in a fairly clear manner about the cell nucleus as the carrier of heredity. Independently of Mendel, he came to the most important conclusion about the discreteness of hereditary units. Mendel was so ahead of his time that his work remained virtually unknown for 35 years. Weismann's ideas (sometime after 1863) became the property of wide circles of biologists and a subject for discussion. The most fascinating pages of the origin of the doctrine of chromosomes, the emergence of cytogenetics, the creation of T.G. Morgan's chromosome theory of heredity in 1912-1916. – all this was greatly stimulated by August Weismann. Studying the embryonic development of sea urchins, he proposed to distinguish between two forms of cell division - equatorial and reduction, i.e. approached the discovery of meiosis, the most important stage of combinative variability and the sexual process. But Weisman could not avoid some speculativeness in his ideas about the mechanism of transmission of heredity. He thought that only the so-called cells have the entire set of discrete factors - “determinants”. "germinal tract". Some determinants enter some of the cells of the “soma” (body), others – others. Differences in the sets of determinants explain the specialization of soma cells. So, we see that, having correctly predicted the existence of meiosis, Weisman was mistaken in predicting the fate of gene distribution. He also extended the principle of selection to competition between cells, and, since cells are carriers of certain determinants, he spoke of their struggle among themselves. The most modern concepts of “selfish DNA”, “selfish gene”, developed at the turn of the 70s and 80s. XX century have much in common with Weismann's competition of determinants. Weisman emphasized that the “germ plasm” is isolated from the soma cells of the whole organism, and therefore spoke about the impossibility of inheriting characteristics acquired by the organism (soma) under the influence of the environment. But many Darwinists accepted this idea of ​​Lamarck. Weisman's harsh criticism of this concept caused a negative attitude towards him and his theory personally, and then towards the study of chromosomes in general, on the part of orthodox Darwinists (those who recognized selection as the only factor of evolution).

The rediscovery of Mendel's laws occurred in 1900 in three different countries: Holland (Hugo de Vries 1848-1935), Germany (Karl Erich Correns 1864-1933) and Austria (Erich von Tschermak 1871-1962), which simultaneously discovered Mendel's forgotten work. In 1902, Walter Sutton (Seton, 1876-1916) gave a cytological basis for Mendelism: diploid and haploid sets, homologous chromosomes, the process of conjugation during meiosis, prediction of the linkage of genes located on the same chromosome, the concept of dominance and recessivity, as well as allelic genes - all this was demonstrated on cytological preparations, was based on precise calculations of Mendeleev's algebra and was very different from hypothetical family trees, from the style of naturalistic Darwinism of the 19th century. The mutation theory of de Vries (1901-1903) was not accepted not only by the conservatism of orthodox Darwinists, but also by the fact that in other plant species researchers were unable to obtain the wide range of variability he achieved with Oenothera lamarkiana (it is now known that evening primrose is a polymorphic species , having chromosomal translocations, some of which are heterozygous, while homozygotes are lethal. De Vries chose a very successful object for obtaining mutations and at the same time not entirely successful, since in his case it was necessary to extend the results achieved to other plant species). De Vries and his Russian predecessor, the botanist Sergei Ivanovich Korzhinsky (1861-1900), who wrote in 1899 (St. Petersburg) about sudden spasmodic “heterogeneous” deviations, thought that the possibility of macromutations rejected Darwin’s theory. At the dawn of genetics, many concepts were expressed according to which evolution did not depend on the external environment. The Dutch botanist Jan Paulus Lotsi (1867-1931), who wrote the book “Evolution by Hybridization,” where he rightly drew attention to the role of hybridization in speciation in plants, also came under criticism from Darwinists.

If in the middle of the 18th century the contradiction between transformism (continuous change) and the discreteness of taxonomic units of systematics seemed insurmountable, then in the 19th century it was thought that gradualistic trees built on the basis of kinship came into conflict with the discreteness of hereditary material. Evolution through visually discernible large mutations could not be accepted by Darwinian gradualism.

Confidence in mutations and their role in the formation of species variability was restored by Thomas Ghent Morgan (1886-1945), when this American embryologist and zoologist moved on to genetic research in 1910 and, ultimately, chose the famous Drosophila. Probably, we should not be surprised that 20-30 years after the events described, it was population geneticists who came to evolution not through macromutations (which began to be recognized as unlikely), but through a steady and gradual change in the frequencies of allelic genes in populations. Since macroevolution by that time seemed to be an indisputable continuation of the studied phenomena of microevolution, gradualism began to seem an inseparable feature of the evolutionary process. There was a return to Leibniz’s “law of continuity” at a new level, and in the first half of the 20th century a synthesis of evolution and genetics was able to occur. Once again, once opposing concepts came together. (names, conclusions of evolutionists and chronology of events are taken from Nikolai Nikolaevich Vorontsov, “Development of evolutionary ideas in biology, 1999)

Let us recall that in the light of the latest biological ideas put forward from the position of materialism, now there is again a movement away from the law of continuity, now not by geneticists, but by evolutionists themselves. The famous S.J. Gould raised the question of punctualism (punctuated equilibrium), as opposed to generally accepted gradualism, so that it became possible to explain the reasons for the already obvious picture of the absence of transitional forms among the fossil remains, i.e. the impossibility of building a truly continuous line of kinship from origins to the present. There is always a gap in the geological record.

Modern theories of biological evolution

Synthetic theory of evolution

The synthetic theory in its current form was formed as a result of rethinking a number of provisions of classical Darwinism from the standpoint of genetics of the early 20th century. After the rediscovery of Mendel's laws (in 1901), evidence of the discrete nature of heredity and especially after the creation of theoretical population genetics by the works of R. Fisher (-), J. B. S. Haldane Jr. (), S. Wright ( ; ), the teaching Darwin acquired a solid genetic foundation.

Neutral theory of molecular evolution

The theory of neutral evolution does not dispute the decisive role of natural selection in the development of life on Earth. The discussion is about the proportion of mutations that have adaptive significance. Most biologists accept a number of results from the theory of neutral evolution, although they do not share some of the strong claims originally made by M. Kimura.

Epigenetic theory of evolution

The main provisions of the epigenetic theory of evolution were formulated in the 20th year by M. A. Shishkin based on the ideas of I. I. Shmalhausen and K. H. Waddington. The theory considers a holistic phenotype as the main substrate of natural selection, and selection not only fixes useful changes, but also takes part in their creation. The fundamental influence on heredity is not the genome, but the epigenetic system (ES) - a set of factors affecting ontogenesis. The general organization of the ES is transmitted from ancestors to descendants, which shapes the organism during its individual development, and selection leads to the stabilization of a number of successive ontogenies, eliminating deviations from the norm (morphoses) and forming a stable development trajectory (creod). Evolution according to ETE consists in the transformation of one creed into another under the disturbing influence of the environment. In response to disturbance, the ES is destabilized, as a result of which the development of organisms along deviating paths of development becomes possible, and multiple morphoses arise. Some of these morphoses receive a selective advantage, and over subsequent generations their ES develops a new stable development trajectory and a new creed is formed.

Ecosystem theory of evolution

This term is understood as a system of ideas and approaches to the study of evolution, focusing on the features and patterns of evolution of ecosystems at various levels - biocenoses, biomes and the biosphere as a whole, rather than taxa (species, families, classes, etc.). The provisions of the ecosystem theory of evolution are based on two postulates:

• Naturalness and discreteness of ecosystems. An ecosystem is a really existing (and not allocated for the convenience of the researcher) object, which is a system of interacting biological and non-biological (eg soil, water) objects, territorially and functionally separated from other similar objects. The boundaries between ecosystems are clear enough to allow us to talk about the independent evolution of neighboring objects.
• The determining role of ecosystem interactions in determining the rate and direction of population evolution. Evolution is seen as a process of creating and filling ecological niches or licenses.

The ecosystem theory of evolution operates with such terms as coherent and incoherent evolution, ecosystem crises at various levels. The modern ecosystem theory of evolution is based mainly on the works of Soviet and Russian evolutionists: V. A. Krasilov, S. M. Razumovsky, A. G. Ponomarenko, V. V. Zherikhin and others.

Evolutionary doctrine and religion

Although in modern biology many unclear questions remain about the mechanisms of evolution, the vast majority of biologists do not doubt the existence of biological evolution as a phenomenon. However, some believers of a number of religions find some provisions of evolutionary biology contrary to their religious beliefs, in particular, the dogma of the creation of the world by God. In this regard, in part of society, almost from the moment of the birth of evolutionary biology, there has been a certain opposition to this teaching from the religious side (see creationism), which in some times and in some countries has reached the point of criminal sanctions for teaching evolutionary teaching (which became the reason, for example, for the scandalous famous "monkey process" in the USA in the city).

It should be noted that the accusations of atheism and denial of religion, brought by some opponents of the teaching of evolution, are based to a certain extent on a misunderstanding of the nature of scientific knowledge: in science, no theory, including the theory of biological evolution, can either confirm or deny the existence of such subjects from the other world, like God (if only because God could use evolution in the creation of living nature, as the theological doctrine of “theistic evolution” states).

On the other hand, the theory of evolution, being a scientific theory, considers the biological world as part of the material world and relies on its natural and self-sufficient, i.e., natural origin, alien, therefore, to any otherworldly or divine intervention; alien for the reason that the growth of scientific knowledge, penetrating into previously incomprehensible and explainable only by the activity of otherworldly forces, seems to take away the ground from religion (when explaining the essence of the phenomenon, the need for a religious explanation disappears, because there is a convincing natural explanation). In this regard, evolutionary teaching may be aimed at denying the existence of extranatural forces, or rather their interference in the process of development of the living world, which is one way or another assumed by religious systems.

Attempts to contrast evolutionary biology with religious anthropology are also mistaken. From the point of view of scientific methodology, a popular thesis “man came from apes” is only an excessive simplification (see reductionism) of one of the conclusions of evolutionary biology (about the place of man as a biological species on the phylogenetic tree of living nature), if only because the concept “man” is polysemantic: man as a subject of physical anthropology is by no means identical to man as a subject of philosophical anthropology, and it is incorrect to reduce philosophical anthropology to physical anthropology.

Many believers of different religions do not find the teaching of evolution to be contrary to their faith. The theory of biological evolution (along with many other sciences - from astrophysics to geology and radiochemistry) contradicts only the literal reading of sacred texts telling about the creation of the world, and for some believers this is the reason for rejecting almost all the conclusions of natural sciences that study the past of the material world (literalist creationism ).

Among believers who profess the doctrine of literalist creationism, there are a number of scientists who are trying to find scientific evidence for their doctrine (so-called “scientific creationism”). However, the scientific community disputes the validity of this evidence.

Literature

• Berg L.S. Nomogenesis, or Evolution based on patterns. - Petersburg: State Publishing House, 1922. - 306 p.
• Kordyum V. A. Evolution and the biosphere. - K.: Naukova Dumka, 1982. - 264 p.
• Krasilov V. A. Unsolved problems of the theory of evolution. - Vladivostok: Far Eastern Scientific Center of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1986. - P. 140.
• Lima de Faria A. Evolution without selection: Autoevolution of form and function: Trans. from English. - M.: Mir, 1991. - P. 455.
• Nazarov V. I. Evolution not according to Darwin: Changing the evolutionary model. Tutorial. Ed. 2nd, rev. - M.: LKI Publishing House, 2007. - 520 p.
• Tchaikovsky Yu. V. The science of life development. Experience of the theory of evolution. - M.: Partnership of Scientific Publications KMK, 2006. - 712 p.
• Golubovsky M. D. Non-canonical hereditary changes // Nature. - 2001. - No. 8. - P. 3–9.
• Meyen S.V. The path to a new synthesis, or where do homological series lead? // Knowledge is power. - 1972. - № 8.