Philosophical understanding of Darwin's evolutionary theory. Darwin's theory led to world war Darwin and Marxists believe that

Darwin's theory played a huge role in substantiating and strengthening the historical view of organic nature, giving new meaning and new goals to all biological sciences.

This fact was emphasized by Darwin himself and appreciated by many of his contemporaries. After the work of Darwin, the historical method becomes the guiding basis of biological research. It is characteristic, however, that the responses to Darwin's theory, from 1859 to the present, are extremely contradictory. The positive attitude of some critics is opposed by the sharply negative attitude of others. The former belonged and still belong to the progressive camp of science, the latter reflect the reactionary currents in it. The reasons for the negative attitude towards Darwin's theory on the part of the reactionary camp are clearly visible from the assessment of its founders of Marxism-Leninism.

K. Marx and F. Engels highly appreciated Darwin's theory, mainly for the following reasons:

• Darwin discovered and actually substantiated the law of development of the organic world;
• proposed a materialistic explanation of the main feature of organic evolution - its adaptive nature, revealing its main directing factor;
• this essentially reinforced the materialistic worldview, the weapon of the proletariat.

Marx wrote to Engels: "Darwin's book (The Origin of Species) provides a natural-historical basis for our views." Marx expresses the same idea in a letter to Lassalle, pointing out that Darwin's work "is suitable, it seems to me, as a natural-scientific support for the historical class struggle." In the same letter, a profound thought was expressed that Darwin's book "not only dealt a mortal blow to "teleology" in the natural sciences, but also empirically clarified its reasonable significance." In other words, not only is the very fact of the adaptability of organisms (organic expediency) shown, but a materialistic causal explanation of it is given, banishing from biology the doctrine of goals supposedly carried out by organic (living) nature.

Engels also noted that Darwin "delivered a severe blow to the metaphysical view of nature." V. I. Lenin compared the role of Marx with the role of Darwin, who “put biology on a completely scientific basis, establishing the variability of species and the continuity between them” ...

I. V. Stalin highly appreciates Darwin as a representative of true science, “that science that has the courage, determination to break old traditions, norms, attitudes when they become obsolete, when they turn into a brake on moving forward and which knows how to create new traditions , new norms, new attitudes”.

The positive aspects of Darwin's theory noted above are the reason for the reactionary camp's hatred of it.

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On February 12, 1809, the famous English scientist, naturalist and traveler was born. Charles Darwin. His theory of evolution and the origin of species is studied in school biology lessons. Nevertheless, many misconceptions, inaccuracies and myths are associated with the name of Darwin,

You all know the official version and more about Darwin. Let's first go over the current myths:

Myth 1. Darwin came up with the theory of evolution. In fact, he developed the first scientific theory of evolution at the beginning of the 19th century. Jean Baptiste Lamarck. He owns the assumption that acquired characteristics are inherited. For example, if an animal feeds on leaves from tall trees, its neck will stretch, and each successive generation will have a slightly longer neck than its ancestors. So, according to Lamarck, giraffes appeared.

Charles Darwin improved this theory and introduced the concept of "natural selection" into it. According to the theory, individuals with those features and qualities that are most conducive to survival are more likely to continue the genus.

Myth 2. Darwin claimed that man descended from a monkey. The scientist never said such a thing. Charles Darwin suggested that apes and humans may have shared an ape-like ancestor. Based on comparative anatomical and embryological studies, he was able to show that the anatomical, physiological and ontogenetic characteristics of humans and representatives of the primate order are very similar. This is how the simial (monkey) theory of anthropogenesis was born.

Myth 3. Before Darwin, scientists did not correlate humans with primates. In fact, the similarity between humans and monkeys was noticed by scientists at the end of the 18th century. The French naturalist Bufon suggested that people are the descendants of monkeys, and the Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus classified humans as primates, where we, in modern science, coexist as a species with monkeys.

Myth 4. According to Darwin's theory of evolution, the fittest survive This myth comes from a misunderstanding of the term "natural selection". According to Darwin, it is not the strongest who survive, but the fittest. Often the simplest organisms are the most "tenacious". This explains why strong dinosaurs died out, while single-celled organisms survived both the meteorite explosion and the ice age that followed.

Myth 5. Darwin renounced his theory at the end of his life. This is nothing more than an urban legend. 33 years after the scientist's death, in 1915, a story was published in a Baptist publication about how Darwin retracted his theory just before his death. There is no reliable evidence of this fact.

Myth 6. Darwin's theory of evolution is a Masonic conspiracy Fans of conspiracy theories claim that Darwin and his relatives were Freemasons. Freemasons are members of a secret religious society that arose in the 18th century in Europe. Noble people became members of the Masonic lodges, they are often credited with the invisible leadership of the whole world.

Historians do not confirm the fact that Darwin or any of his relatives were members of any secret societies. The scientist, on the contrary, was in no hurry to publish his theory, which had been worked on for 20 years. In addition, many of the facts discovered by Darwin were confirmed by further researchers.

Now let's take a closer look at what the opponents of Darwin's theory say:

The person who put forward the theory of evolution is the English amateur naturalist Charles Robert Darwin. Darwin never really studied biology, but had only an amateur interest in nature and animals. And as a result of this interest, in 1832 he volunteered to travel from England on the state research vessel "Beagle" and for five years sailed to different parts of the world. During the trip, young Darwin was impressed by the species of animals he saw, especially the various types of finches that lived on the Galapagos Islands. He thought that the difference in the beaks of these birds depends on the environment. Based on this assumption, he concluded for himself: living organisms were not created by God separately, but originated from a single ancestor and then changed depending on the conditions of nature.

This hypothesis of Darwin was not based on any scientific explanation or experiment. Only thanks to the support of the then famous materialistic biologists, over time, this hypothesis of Darwin was established as a theory. According to this theory, living organisms come from one ancestor, but over a long time they undergo small changes and begin to differ from each other. Species that have more successfully adapted to natural conditions pass on their characteristics to the next generation. Thus, these beneficial changes over time turn the individual into a living organism, completely different from its ancestor. What was meant by "beneficial changes" remained unknown. According to Darwin, man was the most developed product of this mechanism. Reviving this mechanism in his imagination, Darwin called it "evolution by natural selection." From now on, he thought he had found the roots of the "origin of species": the basis of one species is another species. He revealed these ideas in 1859 in his book On the Origin of Species.

However, Darwin realized that there was much unresolved in his theory. He acknowledges this in Difficulties of Theory. These difficulties were in the complex organs of living organisms that could not have appeared by chance (for example, the eyes), as well as fossil remains, animal instincts. Darwin hoped that these difficulties would be overcome in the process of new discoveries, but for some of them he gave incomplete explanations.

In contrast to the purely naturalistic theory of evolution, two alternatives are put forward. One is purely religious in nature: this is the so-called "creationism", a literal perception of the biblical legend about how the Almighty created the universe and life in all its diversity. Creationism is professed only by religious fundamentalists, this doctrine has a narrow base, it is on the periphery of scientific thought. Therefore, for lack of space, we confine ourselves to mentioning its existence.

But another alternative has made a very serious bid for a place under the scientific sun. The theory of “intelligent design” (intelligent design), among whose supporters there are many serious scientists, recognizing evolution as a mechanism for intraspecific adaptation to changing environmental conditions (microevolution), categorically rejects its claims to be the key to the mystery of the origin of species (macroevolution), not to mention about the origin of life itself.

Life is so complex and diverse that it is absurd to think about the possibility of its spontaneous origin and development: it must inevitably be based on intelligent design, advocates of this theory say. What kind of mind it is is not important. Intelligent design theorists are more agnostic than religious, and are not particularly interested in theology. They are only concerned with punching gaping holes in the theory of evolution, and they have succeeded in riddling it so much that the dogma prevailing in biology now resembles not so much a granite monolith as Swiss cheese.

Throughout the history of Western civilization, it has been considered an axiom that life is created by a higher power. Even Aristotle expressed the conviction that the incredible complexity, elegant harmony and harmony of life and the universe cannot be a random product of spontaneous processes. The most famous teleological argument for the existence of a rational principle was formulated by the English religious thinker William Paley in his book Natural Theology, published in 1802.

Paley reasoned as follows: if, while walking in the forest, I stumble on a stone, I will not have any doubts about its natural origin. But if I see a clock lying on the ground, I will voluntarily or involuntarily have to assume that they could not have arisen by themselves, someone had to collect them. And if a watch (a relatively small and simple device) has a reasonable organizer - a watchmaker, then the Universe itself (a large device) and the biological objects that fill it (more complex devices than a clock) must have a great organizer - the Creator.

But then Charles Darwin showed up, and everything changed. In 1859 he published an epoch-making work called "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Survival of Favored Breeds in the Struggle for Life", which was destined to make a real revolution in scientific and social thought. Based on the achievements of breeders (“artificial selection”) and on his own observations of birds (finches) in the Galapagos Islands, Darwin concluded that organisms can undergo small changes, adapting to changing environmental conditions through “natural selection”.

He further concluded that, given a sufficiently long time, the sum of such small changes gives rise to larger changes and, in particular, leads to the appearance of new species. According to Darwin, new traits that reduce the chances of an organism to survive are mercilessly rejected by nature, and traits that give an advantage in the struggle for life, gradually accumulating, eventually allow their carriers to take over less adapted competitors and force them out of contested ecological niches.

This purely naturalistic mechanism, completely devoid of any purpose or design, from the point of view of Darwin exhaustively explained how life developed and why all living beings are so ideally adapted to the conditions of their environment. The theory of evolution implies a continuous progression of gradually changing living beings in a row from the most primitive forms to higher organisms, the crown of which is man.

The problem, however, is that Darwin's theory was purely speculative, because in those years, paleontological evidence did not provide any basis for his conclusions. Throughout the world, scientists have dug up many fossil remains of extinct organisms of past geological epochs, but they all fit within the clear boundaries of the same unchanged taxonomy. Not a single intermediate species appeared in the fossil record, not a single creature with morphological features that would confirm the correctness of a theory formulated on the basis of abstract conclusions without relying on facts.

Darwin clearly saw the weakness of his theory. No wonder he did not dare to publish it for more than two decades and sent his capital work to print only when he learned that another English naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, was preparing to come up with his own theory, strikingly similar to Darwin's.

It is curious to note that both opponents behaved like true gentlemen. Darwin wrote a courteous letter to Wallace outlining the evidence of his superiority, who responded with a no less polite message proposing that a joint report be presented at the Royal Society. After that, Wallace publicly acknowledged Darwin's priority and, until the end of his days, never once complained about his bitter fate. That's how it was in the Victorian era. Talk about progress after that.

The theory of evolution was like a building erected on grass so that later, when the necessary materials were brought up, a foundation would be laid under it. Its author relied on the progress of paleontology, which, he was convinced, would make it possible in the future to find transitional life forms and confirm the validity of his theoretical calculations.

But the collections of paleontologists grew and grew, and there was no evidence of Darwin's theory. Scientists found similar species, but could not find a single bridge thrown from one species to another. But it follows from the theory of evolution that such bridges not only existed, but that there must have been a great many of them, because the paleontological record must reflect all the countless stages of the long history of evolution and, in fact, consist entirely of transitional links.

Some followers of Darwin, like himself, believe that you just need to be patient - they say, we just have not yet found intermediate forms, but we will certainly find them in the future. Alas, their hopes are unlikely to come true, because the existence of such transitional links would be in conflict with one of the fundamental postulates of the very theory of evolution.

Imagine, for example, that the front legs of dinosaurs gradually evolved into bird wings. But this means that during the long transitional period these limbs were neither paws nor wings, and their functional uselessness doomed the owners of such useless stumps to a deliberate defeat in the fierce struggle for life. According to Darwin's teaching, nature had to ruthlessly uproot such intermediate species and, therefore, nip the process of speciation in the bud.

But it is generally accepted that birds are descended from lizards. The dispute is not about that. Opponents of the Darwinian doctrine fully admit that the front paw of a dinosaur could indeed be the prototype of a bird's wing. They argue only that whatever perturbations may occur in living nature, they could not proceed according to the mechanism of natural selection. Some other principle should have been in effect - for example, the use of universal prototype templates by the carrier of a reasonable beginning.

The paleontological record stubbornly testifies to the failure of evolutionism. During the first three-plus billion years of the existence of life, only the simplest single-celled organisms lived on our planet. But about 570 million years ago, the Cambrian period began, and over the course of several million years (by geological standards, a fleeting moment), as if by magic, almost all the diversity of life arose from scratch in its current form and without any intermediate links. According to Darwin's theory, this "Cambrian explosion", as it is called, simply could not happen.

Another example: during the so-called Permian-Triassic extinction 250 million years ago, life on earth almost stopped: 90% of all marine organisms and 70% of terrestrial ones disappeared. Nevertheless, the basic taxonomy of the fauna has not undergone any significant changes - the main types of living creatures that lived on our planet before the “great extinction” were completely preserved after the catastrophe. But if we proceed from the Darwinian concept of natural selection, during this period of heightened competition for filling vacant ecological niches, numerous transitional species would certainly have arisen. However, this did not happen, which again implies that the theory is wrong.

Darwinists are desperately looking for transitional life forms, but all their efforts have so far been unsuccessful. The most they can find are the similarities between different species, but signs of genuine intermediate beings are still only a dream of evolutionists. Periodically, sensations flare up: a transitional link has been found! But in reality, it invariably turns out that the alarm is false, that the organism found is nothing more than a manifestation of ordinary intraspecific variability. And even just a falsification like the notorious Piltdown man.

It is impossible to describe the joy of evolutionists when, in 1908, a human-type fossil skull with an ape lower jaw was found in England. Here it is, the real proof of the correctness of Charles Darwin! The jubilant scientists had no incentive to take a closer look at the cherished find, otherwise they could not help but notice the obvious absurdities in its structure and realize that the “fossil” is a fake, and a very crude one at that. And it took a whole 40 years before the scientific world was forced to officially admit that he had been played. It turned out that some hitherto unknown prankster had simply glued the lower jaw of a by no means fossil orangutan with a skull from an equally fresh Homo sapiens dead man.

By the way, Darwin's personal discovery - the microevolution of Galapagos finches under environmental pressure - also did not stand the test of time. A few decades later, the climatic conditions on these Pacific islands changed again, and the length of the beak of birds returned to its former norm. No speciation took place, just the same species of birds temporarily adapted to changing environmental conditions - the most trivial intraspecific variability.

Some Darwinists are aware that their theory has reached a dead end and are frantically maneuvering. For example, the late Harvard biologist Stephen Jay Gould proposed the hypothesis of "punctuated equilibrium" or "dotted evolution." This is a kind of hybrid of Darwinism with Cuvier's "catastrophism", which postulated the intermittent development of life through a series of catastrophes. According to Gould, evolution proceeded in leaps and bounds, and each leap followed some universal natural disaster with such speed that it did not have time to leave any trace in the fossil record.

Although Gould considered himself an evolutionist, his theory undermines the basic premise of Darwin's theory of speciation through the gradual accumulation of favorable features. However, “dotted evolution” is just as speculative and just as devoid of empirical evidence as classical Darwinism.

Thus, the paleontological evidence strongly refutes the concept of macroevolution. But this is far from the only evidence of its failure. The development of genetics has completely destroyed the belief that environmental pressure can cause morphological changes. Countless mice have been cut off by researchers in the hope that their offspring will inherit a new trait. Alas, tailed offspring were stubbornly born from tailless parents. The laws of genetics are inexorable: all the features of the organism are encrypted in the parental genes and are directly transmitted from them to the descendants.

Evolutionists, following the principles of their teaching, had to adapt to new conditions. “Neo-Darwinism” appeared, in which the place of the classical “adaptation” was taken by the mutational mechanism. According to neo-Darwinists, it is by no means excluded that random gene mutations could give rise to a sufficiently high degree of variability, which, again, could contribute to the survival of the species and, being inherited by offspring, could gain a foothold and give its carriers a decisive superiority in the struggle for an ecological niche.

However, the deciphering of the genetic code dealt a crushing blow to this theory. Mutations are rare and in the vast majority of cases are unfavorable, so that the likelihood that a “new favorable trait” will be fixed in any population for a long enough time to give it an advantage in the fight against competitors is practically nil.

In addition, natural selection destroys genetic information as it culls out traits that are not conducive to survival, and leaves only "selected" traits. But they can by no means be considered “favorable” mutations, because these genetic traits in all cases were originally inherent in the population and were only waiting in the wings to manifest themselves when environmental pressure “cleaned up” unnecessary or harmful garbage.

The progress of molecular biology in recent decades has finally driven evolutionists into a corner. In 1996, Lehigh University biochemistry professor Michael Behey published the sensational book Darwin's Black Box, where he showed that there are biochemical systems of incredible complexity in the body that cannot be explained from Darwinian positions. The author described a number of intracellular molecular machines and biological processes characterized by "irreducible complexity".

By this term, Michael Bahey designated systems consisting of many components, each of which is of critical importance. That is, the mechanism can only work if all its components are present; as soon as at least one of them fails, the whole system goes wrong. From this, the conclusion inevitably follows: in order for the mechanism to fulfill its functional purpose, all its components had to be born and “turn on” at the same time - contrary to the main postulate of the theory of evolution.

The book also describes cascade phenomena, such as the mechanism of blood clotting, which involves a dozen and a half specialized proteins plus intermediate forms that are formed during the process. When cut in the blood, a multi-stage reaction is launched in which proteins activate each other in a chain. In the absence of any of these proteins, the reaction is automatically interrupted. At the same time, the cascade proteins are highly specialized, none of them perform any other function than the formation of a blood clot. In other words, “they certainly had to arise immediately in the form of a single complex,” Behey writes.

Cascading is the antagonist of evolution. It is inconceivable that the blind, chaotic process of natural selection would provide for the future storage of many useless elements that remain in a latent state until the last of them finally appears in the world of God and allows the system to immediately turn on and earn on full power. Such an idea fundamentally contradicts the fundamental principles of the theory of evolution, which Charles Darwin himself was well aware of.

“If the possibility of the existence of any complex organ, which could in no way be the result of numerous successive small changes, is proved, my theory will crumble to dust,” Darwin frankly admitted. In particular, he was extremely concerned about the problem of the eye: how to explain the evolution of this most complex organ, which acquires functional significance only at the very last moment, when all its constituent parts are already in place? After all, if you follow the logic of his teaching, any attempt of the body to start a multi-stage process of creating a vision mechanism would be ruthlessly suppressed by natural selection. And where, for no reason at all, did the developed organs of vision appear in trilobites - the first living creatures on earth?

After the publication of Darwin's Black Box, its author was subjected to a hail of violent attacks and threats (mostly on the Internet). Moreover, the vast majority of advocates of the theory of evolution expressed confidence that "the Darwinian model of the origin of irreducibly complex biochemical systems is presented in hundreds of thousands of scientific publications." However, nothing could be further from the truth.

Anticipating the storm his book would cause while working on it, Michael Bahey delved into the scientific literature to get an idea of ​​how evolutionists explain the origin of complex biochemical systems. And… found absolutely nothing. It turned out that there is not a single hypothesis of the evolutionary path of formation of such systems. Official science arranged a conspiracy of silence around an uncomfortable topic: not a single scientific report, not a single scientific monograph, not a single scientific symposium was devoted to it.

Since then, several attempts have been made to develop an evolutionary model for the formation of systems of this kind, but all of them invariably failed. Many scientists of the naturalistic school clearly understand the impasse in which their favorite theory has ended up. “We refuse on principle to replace intelligent design with a dialogue between chance and necessity,” writes biochemist Franklin Harold. “But at the same time, we must admit that, apart from fruitless speculation, to this day no one has been able to offer a detailed Darwinian mechanism for the evolution of any biochemical system.”

Like this: we refuse on principle, and that's it! Just like Martin Luther: "Here I stand and I can't help it!" But the leader of the Reformation at least justified his position with 95 theses, and here there is only one bare principle, dictated by blind worship of the dominant dogma, and nothing more. I believe, Lord!

Even more problematic is the neo-Darwinian theory of the spontaneous generation of life. To Darwin's credit, he did not touch on this topic at all. His book is about the origin of species, not life. But the followers of the founder went a step further and offered an evolutionary explanation for the very phenomenon of life. According to the naturalistic model, the barrier between inanimate nature and life was overcome spontaneously due to a combination of favorable environmental conditions.

However, the concept of spontaneous generation of life is built on sand, because it is in flagrant contradiction with one of the most fundamental laws of nature - the second law of thermodynamics. It says that in a closed system (in the absence of a purposeful supply of energy from the outside), entropy inevitably increases, i.e. the level of organization or degree of complexity of such a system is inexorably reduced. And the reverse process is impossible.

The great English astrophysicist Stephen Hawking in his book “A Brief History of Time” writes: “According to the second law of thermodynamics, the entropy of an isolated system always and in all cases increases, and when two systems merge, the entropy of the combined system is higher than the sum of the entropies of the individual systems included in it” . Hawking adds: “In any closed system, the level of disorganization, i.e. entropy inevitably increases with time.

But if entropic decay is the fate of any system, then the possibility of spontaneous generation of life is absolutely excluded; spontaneous increase in the level of organization of the system when a biological barrier is broken. The spontaneous generation of life under any circumstances must be accompanied by an increase in the degree of complexity of the system at the molecular level, and entropy prevents this. Chaos cannot by itself give rise to order, this is forbidden by the law of nature.

Another blow was dealt to the concept of spontaneous generation of life by information theory. In Darwin's time, science believed that the cell was just a primitive container filled with protoplasm. However, with the development of molecular biology, it became clear that a living cell is a mechanism of incredible complexity, carrying an incomprehensible amount of information. But information itself does not arise out of nothing. According to the law of conservation of information, its amount in a closed system never and under no circumstances increases. External pressure may cause a “shuffling” of information already available in the system, but its total volume will remain at the same level or decrease due to an increase in entropy.

In short, as the world famous English physicist, astronomer and science fiction writer Sir Fred Hoyle writes: “There is not a shred of objective evidence in favor of the hypothesis that life spontaneously originated in the organic soup on our earth.” Hoyle's co-author, astrobiologist Chandra Wykramasingh, expressed the same idea more eloquently: "The chance of spontaneous generation of life is as slim as the chance of a hurricane wind sweeping over a junkyard to scavenge a serviceable airliner in one rush."

Many other proofs can be cited that refute attempts to present evolution as a universal mechanism for the origin and development of life in all its diversity. But even the facts presented, I think, are sufficient to show the predicament in which the teachings of Darwin found themselves.

And how do the champions of evolution react to all this? Some of them, in particular Francis Crick (who shared the Nobel Prize with James Watson for the discovery of the structure of DNA), became disillusioned with Darwinism and believed that life on earth was brought from space. This idea was first put forward more than a century ago by another Nobel laureate, the outstanding Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius, who proposed the “panspermia” hypothesis.

However, supporters of the theory of seeding the earth with life germs from outer space do not notice or prefer not to notice that such an approach only pushes the problem one step further, but by no means solves it. Let's assume that life is really brought from space, but then the question arises: where did it come from - did it spontaneously arise or was it created?

Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasingh, who share this view, found a gracefully ironic way out. Having given in his book "Evolution from Space" (Evolution from Space) a lot of arguments in favor of the hypothesis that life was brought to our planet from outside, Sir Fred and his co-author ask: how did life originate there, outside the earth? And they answer: it is known how - it was created by the Almighty. In other words, the authors make it clear that they have set themselves a narrow task and are not going to go beyond it, it is too tough for them.

However, the majority of evolutionists categorically reject any attempts to cast a shadow on their teaching. The intelligent design hypothesis, like a red rag with which they tease a bull, causes them paroxysms of unbridled (it is tempting to say - animal) rage. The evolutionary biologist Richard von Sternberg, who did not share the concept of intelligent design, nevertheless allowed a scientific article to be published in his journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington in support of this hypothesis. After that, such a flurry of abuse, curses and threats hit the editor that he was forced to turn to the FBI for protection.

The position of evolutionists was eloquently summarized by one of the most vociferous Darwinists, the English zoologist Richard Dawkins: don't want to believe it). This phrase alone is enough to lose all respect for Dawkins. Like orthodox Marxists waging war on revisionism, Darwinists do not argue with opponents, but denounce them; do not debate with them, but anathematize them.

This is the classic mainstream reaction to a challenge from a dangerous heresy. Such a comparison is quite appropriate. Like Marxism, Darwinism has long since degenerated, petrified and turned into an inert pseudo-religious dogma. Yes, by the way, that's what they called it - Marxism in biology. Karl Max himself enthusiastically welcomed Darwin's theory as "the natural-scientific basis of the class struggle in history."

And the more gaps are found in the dilapidated teaching, the more violent the resistance of its adherents. Their material well-being and spiritual comfort are under threat, their entire universe is collapsing, and there is no anger more unrestrained than the wrath of the faithful, whose faith is crumbling under the blows of inexorable reality. They will cling to their beliefs with teeth and nails and stand to the last. For when an idea dies, it is reborn into an ideology, and an ideology is absolutely intolerant of competition.

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We, who see everything,

what the day gave us to see,

We can't find the words

for songs and praises .

William Shakespeare. Sonnet 106

(translated by N. Gerbel

The ordinary human mind cannot accept that our beautiful green surrounding world, inhabited by millions of living beings, with us at the head, could arise on its own, without any intention from the outside, that this is only the result of the evolution of living nature. Idea, plan, meaning are the elements that accompany human activity throughout the entire known period of its existence. Therefore, theological thinking is inherent in man. Clouds in the sky so that it rains from them, the sun rises to illuminate the Earth, etc. From here, only half a step, to the recognition that there is a higher plan. And that's exactly what the Bible says.
Even the American biologist Collins slyly called his book on deciphering the human genome

« Deciphering divine blueprints ».

Well, it is clear that the book needs to be promoted, and America is a religious country, and in order to buy better, we had to sacrifice a little principles.
Charles Darwin was born on February 12, 1809 in England. The fifth of six children of wealthy physician and financier Robert Darwin. In the summer of 1825, he acts as an apprentice assistant and helps his father in his medical practice, helping the poor. Apparently on the advice of his Father, he enters the University of Edinburgh, where he studies medicine. (1825-1827)
During his studies, he found lectures boring and surgery painful, so he abandoned his medical studies.
During this time, he assists Robert Edmond Grant in his research on the anatomy and life cycle of marine invertebrates. At the meetings of the society, in March 1827, Darwin presents brief messages about his first discoveries, which changed his view of familiar things.
During his second year in Edinburgh, Darwin attended Robert Jameson's natural history course, which covered geology. In the same year he studied plant classification and took part in the extensive collections at the University Museum, one of the largest museums in Europe of that period.
Darwin's father, having learned that his son had abandoned his studies in medicine, was annoyed and suggested that he enter the Cambridge Christian College and receive
rank of priest of the Anglican Church. (1828-1831)

In Cambridge, he is interested not only in the study of theology. There he got acquainted with entomology and became close to people who were fond of collecting insects. As a result, he develops a passion for collecting beetles.
He becomes a close friend and follower of botany professor John Stephens Genslow.
In 1831, after graduating from the University of Darwin as a naturalist, despite having received a religious education, on the recommendation of Henslow, he went on a trip around the world on the expedition ship of the Royal Navy, the Beagle, from where he returned to England only on October 2, 1836.
The journey lasted almost five years. Darwin spends most of his time on the coast, studying geology and collecting natural history collections, while the Beagle, under the direction of Fitzroy, carried out hydrographic and cartographic surveys of the coast.
During his journey through all the continents, he apparently fell ill with some kind of mysterious illness from which he could never be cured. From childhood, he was distinguished by good health and could even become an athlete, as he ran amazingly fast.
Only upon his return from a trip in 1837, he raised the question of the origin of species and decided to start developing it. In 1839, after reading the book of Malthus, he quite clearly formulated the idea of ​​natural selection.
In 1859, Darwin published The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Breeds in the Struggle for Life.
The theory of Charles Darwin was developed so carefully, based on such a wealth of facts, explained so many mysterious phenomena, and finally pointed out so many new ways for research, that it established itself in science with remarkable speed, despite the fierce attacks of opponents of transformism.
In 1868, Darwin published his second work on the subject of evolution, The Variation of Animals and Plants in the Domestic State, which included many examples of the evolution of organisms.
In 1871, another important work of Darwin appeared - "The Origin of Man and Sexual Selection", where Darwin argued in favor of the natural origin of man from animals (monkey-like ancestors).

About evolution

It must be understood that evolution and the principle of natural selection can only work if there is the possibility of transferring hereditary information. Now we know that this information is recorded in the genome, the totality of the genes of a given individual. Without genes, evolution is impossible. Darwin did not know where it was recorded, but the results of observations pointed him to this very fact. According to R. Dawkins's modern idea, an individual is only a body for moving genes. Bodies live and die, genes remain.
Evolution by natural selection consists in the fact that individuals with certain genotypes and phenotypes leave more surviving and reproducing offspring than individuals of other genotypes, which are slightly less adapted. Therefore, evolution is a change in the genetic composition of a population.
Evolution is an unprogrammed process. This non-programming ensures non-purposeful development.
At first glance, it may seem that understanding the operation of the principle of natural selection is simple. But this simplicity is apparent. In each case it is necessary to understand separately. The relationship of various living beings with each other is complex and diverse. We are unable to trace all connections. Everyone here influences everyone.

Reaction of the Marxists

Marx, 10 years younger than Darwin, read The Origin of Species for the first time just a year after its publication, and he liked the book so much that he reread it two years later.
He attended Thomas Huxley's lectures on Darwin's ideas and "did not talk for months about anything but Darwin and the enormous significance of his scientific discoveries."
Darwin's book is very important; it is the basis of my idea of ​​natural selection in the class struggle throughout history. It not only dealt a death blow to "teleology" in natural science and empirically explained its rational meaning.
Another Marxist, Leon Trotsky, wrote, "Darwin's discovery is the greatest triumph of dialectics in the realm of all organic matter."

Nothing could be more stupid. If only Darwin had read that the thread was made of diamat, his health would have been completely and irrevocably upset.

Marx, Engels, Lenin, interpreted Darwinism in accordance with their philosophical views. They did not understand the essence of Darwinism.
It is safe to say that if Darwin had also been a philosopher, he would never have written On the Origin of Species....
The fact is that philosophers do not bother to study specific phenomena, they are “armed” with the highest knowledge about everything, and specific facts must fit into the framework assigned to them by the philosopher. Such is, in fact, their dialectic
In Darwin, Max liked the term "Struggle for coexistence" the most.
She was in great harmony with his "class struggle"
But these are completely different concepts. For Marx, the struggle is a struggle not for life, but for death. Darwin used the term in a very broad sense.
Karl Marx even dedicated the first German edition of his book Das Kapital to Darwin and signed on the title page "Charles Darwin from an ardent admirer."
Darwin did not accept this initiation.
In turn, Engels, in his book The Dialectics of Nature, undoubtedly written under the influence of the ideas of The Origin of Species, highly appreciated Darwin's teaching and tried to contribute to the development of the theory, devoting an entire chapter of the book to this: "The role of labor in the process of formation of man from apes".

In this work, Engels stands firmly in the position of Lamarck, who believed that acquired traits are inherited. Therefore, according to Engels, a person developed more and more limbs in labor, and therefore they improved. You can write like this only without mastering the methods of analysis used by Darwin in his book. But philosophers have their own ways of knowing.
100 years after Engels, our Great mystifier T. Lysenko under the philosophical cover of an academician Presentation managed to prove to the leadership of the country that, through education, rye can be turned into wheat. And the genes and chromosomes were already known.
But they were branded as inventions of bourgeois science and new abusive words were introduced - the Mendelists-Morganists.
This is how our (Soviet) recognition of Darwin turned into its opposite. And science was divided into our domestic and bourgeois
It is difficult to understand why smart people (Marx, Engels, Lenin, Plekhanov, Trotsky, etc.) could not understand and accept the principles of natural selection, which are so detailed and illustrated in many examples by Darwin.
The key to the riddle is provided by Engels' frank statement.

In 1883, F. Engels gave a dialectical assessment of Darwinism -
“In Darwin’s teachings, I agree with the theory of development, but I consider Darwin’s method of proof (struggle for existence, natural selection) to be just the first, temporary, imperfect expression of a newly discovered fact”
But it is precisely the method of proving evolution that is the essence of Darwin's teaching.

Thus, Engels hopes in time to find a more appropriate dialectical explanation of evolution than natural selection, which by no means fits into their dogmatic conception.
The usual philosophical way to get around some difficulty is to discard it, to forget it, to pretend that there is nothing. But evolution is too significant a fact to be ignored.
Having received a philosophical education, the classics considered themselves to be the possessors of a certain higher knowledge, which, like a key, allows one to penetrate into any other field of knowledge and put everything upside down where the beard of a Marxist has not yet been, as they “did” with Hegel’s dialectics.
When Marx was working on Capital, he wrote that he was studying algebra (It seems that philosophers were not taught this subject at all). But in Capital, he mastered only the simplest linear equations, the square trinomial, which schoolchildren study in the 5th grade, was inaccessible to Marx.
The great economist of the 20th century, John Maynard Keynes, considered Marx's Capital an outdated textbook on economics, not only erroneous from an economic point of view, but also devoid of interest and practical application.
In the USSR, the imposition of a Marxist economy in the 1930s was accompanied by the destruction of the world-class Russian school of economics ( Nikolay Kondratiev, Vasily Leontiev, Alexander Chayanov).
If you look at life through the cloudy glasses of dialectics, then you can see not much, and the way of thinking turns out to be programmed. The orthodoxy of thinking did not make it possible for all Marxists to understand an idea that did not fit into their dogmas, but was essentially simple. I can't find any other explanation.

Starting with the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" (1848), K. Marx, F. Engels, and later V. I. Lenin developed the foundations of the communist ideology, developed a plan for building socialism. All this began to be actively implemented in practice in Russia. But, as we can now definitely say, it was not successful. Moreover, it has suffered a crushing fiasco. What are the reasons for this apparent failure? Why did such a romantic idea fail? Where did the founders of communism go wrong? An analysis of these issues is the subject of a work written in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which, judging by the direction of thought of some sociologists (see the introduction), still retains its relevance.

Sweet poison of utopia

In 1859, when Marx and Engels were in full swing developing their theory of communism, Charles Darwin's book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was published, which very unequivocally indicated the place of man in the general row with all other organisms of the biosphere and their subordination to a single the laws of nature. However, such a modest place did not suit everyone, it did not suit the classics of communism either.

All biological systems, be it a virus, a human body or animal communities, are self-regulating, and this regulation is carried out, as is known, according to the feedback principle. The same principle is laid down in the economic system built on market relations, state intervention in this mechanism is very limited. Marxism, on the other hand, proposes the destruction of feedbacks and total centralized control. What considerations guided the classics of Marxism, proposing this path, can be understood by examining their ideas about the theory of evolution.

Darwin's work deeply offended the founders of communism in the best feelings for all mankind. "Darwin did not suspect what a bitter satire he drew on people and, in particular, on his countrymen, when he proved that free competition, the struggle for existence, glorified by economists as the greatest historical achievement, is the normal state of the animal world. Only the conscious organization of social production with planned production and planned distribution can elevate people above other animals ... ".

That is why it is necessary to destroy the principles of feedback in order to "raise people above other animals"!

Psychologically, such a desire is quite understandable - nature, alas, does not have morality, every second an astronomical number of living beings die on earth, losing in the struggle for existence. Such extravagance of nature is the payment for evolution, and, by the way, it never occurs to anyone to eliminate this universal injustice by fighting the feedback principles that regulate all these processes, especially since individual experiments in this direction, as a rule, end very deplorably. . Recall, for example, the famous episode of beating wolves for the benefit of hares, after which the hares died safely from epidemics. Nature always avenges attempts to correct her laws.

Let us return, however, to the classics. Darwin's theory initially made a favorable impression on them, but only as long as, in their opinion, poured water on their mill. "The book gives a naturally historical basis for our views". But as soon as they noticed that Darwin's theory was analogous to the market principle, "glorified by economists," they fell out of favor with the great Charles Darwin. "The entire Darwinian doctrine of the struggle for existence is simply a transfer from society to the realm of living nature of Hobbesian doctrine of bellum omnium contra omnes (the war of all against all) and the bourgeois economic doctrine of competition, as well as the Malthusian theory of population. Having done this trick (unconditional the legitimacy of which - especially with regard to the Malthusian teaching - is still very debatable - L.O.-D.), it is very easy then to transfer these teachings again from the history of nature back to the history of society ".

I dare to intercede for the "magician" Darwin, for whom the theory of Malthus really served as the key to explaining the origin of species. However, for such a "simply" transference, even Darwin's genius was not enough (and not safe at that time), if he did not have an excellent natural science base and a huge number of irrefutable facts collected by him over 20 years, which, in the end, account, and convinced the whole world of the correctness of his theory, but not Marx and Engels.

Marx and Engels, stigmatizing the theory of Malthus, "throw out the baby with the water." Meanwhile, a brilliant insight leading to great discoveries sometimes comes under the influence of more prosaic phenomena than scientific theory. For example, the legendary apple that fell on Newton's head, or the Archimedean bath, and sometimes already proven scientific truths cannot break through the inertia or bias of contemporaries.

It is completely unclear what exactly is meant by the word "transfer" in this case. The only thing that Darwin could "simply endure" is simply the very fact of the existence of this struggle, and, as they say, it is evident both in human society and in the rest of the biosphere. However, Marx was by no means such a zealous admirer of the purity of the boundaries between the fields of science. In a letter to Lassalle in 1861, he writes: "A very significant book by Darwin, it suits me as a natural scientific basis for understanding the historical class struggle." Therefore, it is suitable for class struggle, but not suitable for the doctrine of competition. The reasons for such discrimination are quite understandable: if we recognize that competitive struggle is a natural process occurring in human society, then we will have to agree that in the biosphere the struggle for existence is the driving force of evolution. Consequently, there is every reason to assume that the competitive struggle is the driving force of progress, and since the competitive struggle and the struggle of classes are quite united under the general name of the "struggle for existence", then in the future Marx preferred to understand the historical struggle of classes without Darwin's book.

Engels also did not differ in particular consistency of views in understanding the driving forces of evolution. This phrase about the circus talents of Charles Darwin can also be read in Engels' letter to Pyotr Lavrovich Lavrov, written in 1875, but already in Anti-Dühring (1871-1878) there is criticism of this provision. "First of all, Darwin is reproached for transferring Malthus's theory of population from political economy to natural science," and then, on several pages, there is an argument with Dühring in favor of Darwin and Haeckel. It might be assumed that Engels' views changed, but apparently they changed only temporarily in order to "destroy" Dühring, since later they return to the level of 1875. What should be taken as a basis, if the views of the scientist, to put it mildly, did not differ in constancy? Probably his last work, unless, of course, we assume that by that time he had already lost his clarity of thought.

Engels's Dialectics of Nature is such a work, and I based myself on it, although one often hears the fair remark that it is de unfinished. Of course, following the logic of the above facts, one can assume that if Engels had finished it, we would have been able to read something completely opposite, but if we do not resort to the help of spiritualists, it remains to be content with what we have.

In addition, our task is not to quarrelsomely seek out contradictory statements from the classics and make accusations of scientific dishonesty, but to single out exactly that line in their understanding of the laws of nature, which led to the formation of a new "anti-Darwinian" trend in natural science. . Of course, it was not the only one, and before Darwin, and in his time up to the present day, more and more hypotheses of the driving forces of the evolutionary process were put forward, put forward and, in all likelihood, will be put forward, some of them supplement Darwin's teachings, others contradict him, but none of them led to such sad consequences that we happened to experience.

It is not known who first came up with the idea of ​​accusing Darwin of plagiarism - Marx, Engels or Dühring, but the classics liked it so much that it is repeated many times in their works, and therefore, it can be considered a program in their understanding of the teachings of their great contemporary. But what remains of Darwin's theory if the struggle for existence is deleted from it?!

In 1862, Marx wrote to Engels: "... I am amused by his (Darwin - L.O.-D..) assertion that he applies the "Malthusian" theory also to plants and animals...". The possibility of such an application amused Marx so much that he probably considered Darwin to be a frivolous person, and paid very little attention to his theory of the formation of species.

Another thing is Engels, he not only gives a formula about Darwin's great love for the theory of Malthus, but also significantly "complements" the causes of speciation, finds "mistakes", and gives "evidence". "Darwin's mistake lies precisely in the fact that in his 'natural selection or survival of the fittest' he confuses two completely different things:

1. Selection under the pressure of overpopulation, where the strongest, perhaps, survive in the first place, but at the same time may turn out to be the weakest in some respects (here, probably, Engels understands "selection under the pressure of overpopulation" in the most direct sense of the word - as a physical fight - L.O.-D.).

2. Selection due to greater ability to adapt to changed circumstances, where surviving individuals are better adapted to these circumstances ... ".

So fighting is one thing, but adapting to circumstances is another, and it would be a mistake to confuse these two "completely different things." But I think that an animal dying, for example, from hunger, will not agree with Engels, because, in essence, it does not matter to him whether a stronger neighbor takes away food from him or whether drought has destroyed the food base of the entire population of this species. Moreover, it doesn’t matter for him what to die from: from cold, from hunger, or to be eaten by his fellows (this is a lyrical question, which death is better - on the chopping block, in a noose or in an electric chair, in any case, milk soup is preferable), for the main thing for him is to survive and give fertile offspring, thereby, therefore, asserting the advantages of his own genotype in the biosphere.

To study the ecology of organisms, of course, all the details of life are important, but the genius of Charles Darwin lies in the fact that he was able to generalize the entire diversity of life and saw the driving forces of evolution in the survival of the most adapted to the whole complex of environmental conditions, and even called this process capacious formula ("skinny and one-sided" according to Engels) - "struggle for existence".

“Before Darwin, his current supporters emphasized just harmonious cooperation in organic nature, pointing out how plants deliver food and oxygen to animals, and animals deliver fertilizers, ammonia and carbon dioxide to plants. But as soon as Darwin’s teaching was recognized, how these same people became see only struggle everywhere." It is not known who "these same people" are, but it is quite obvious that Engels himself could not overcome the everyday meaning of the word "Struggle" and as a result understood the struggle for existence in a very vulgar way, as a total mutual beating of all life on our planet.

If Engels, in his criticism of Darwin's teachings, had limited himself to a dubious division of certain forms of adaptation of organisms to the environment, the meaning of which can only be explained by the deep aversion of the classic to physical violence. However, he turned his attention to the deeper laws of nature, to the driving forces of evolution, which later led to very dramatic consequences, which, unfortunately, the great humanist could not foresee.

"... species change - the old ones die out, and new, more developed ones (it would be more correct to say more adapted - L.O.-D.) take their place ... for example, when plants and animals move to new places where new climatic, soil and other conditions cause changes. Consequently, Engels sees the causes of evolution in changes arising under the influence of the environment, and he considers it possible "... to ensure the entire process of development without the need for selection and Malthusianism."

Engels' ideas about heredity are even more fantastic: "Modern natural science recognizes the heredity of acquired properties and thereby expands the subject of experience, spreading it from individual to species: it is no longer considered necessary that each individual individual personally experiences everything in his own experience; his individual experience can be to a certain extent replaced by the results of the experience of a number of his ancestors.If, for example, with us the mathematical axioms appear to every eight-year-old child as something taken for granted, not in need of any experimental proof, then this is only the result of "accumulated heredity" .

This theory of evolution by Engels, ignoring selection and asserting the inheritance of the experience of ancestors down to mathematical axioms, can only be successful in our time with an eight-year-old child, but if scientists all over the world did not dare to challenge this theory, then most likely, genetics would not exist at all. formed as a science. Therefore, the statement of I.T. Frolov that "Marxism ... does not exclude, on the contrary, suggests the study of his (man - L.O.-D.) biological nature, his genetics" - can be regarded as the desire of a Soviet scientist to be great royalist than the king himself.

To compare Engels' views with modern science, let's take a short digression through the course of general biology for high school.

Genetics brilliantly confirmed Darwin's theory. According to its laws, the genotype of any organism is stable throughout life and no external conditions can change it. Only in the process of fertilization does a new set appear, which is nevertheless much closer to the parental forms than to the genotype of any other organism. And with this relatively new set, the daughter organism is destined to live all its life, which, in turn, will reveal how well the parental genes are arranged. But these changes are not directed. We can only obtain the necessary forms by selecting producers with desirable qualities.

Of course, the environment plays a big role in the formation and life of the organism. If we keep a cow in excellent conditions, but she will have genetically low milk yields, then she will be able to produce more milk than a cow of the best dairy breed, but kept in harsh centrally planned conditions. However, these qualities are not inherited. And no matter how much you bring up the first cow, how much you don’t seduce her with the title of “medalist” and a trip to the VDNKh of the USSR, as was customary in our country at one time, neither she, nor, most likely, her offspring, can be compared with the second cow in terms of milk yield , but subject to the same content.

Thus, the environment forms the organism within its genotype, and no changes that have arisen under the influence of the environment are inherited, the new generation starts everything from scratch, as if all its ancestors did not experience any environmental influence at all. The very fact of the appearance of offspring indicates that the parental genotype fully meets the requirements of the environment, that it is this hereditary information that allowed them to survive, has the right to continue the "pedigree" of this species in new and different versions, since it has an undeniable advantage over its counterparts who did not live. until puberty or for other reasons left no offspring and, therefore, lost in the struggle for existence.

Marx and Engels were not professional biologists, and any Darwinist could easily cope with the bogey of Malthusianism. But the whole trouble is that their works were canonized, and any doubts about the sterile innocence of each letter of their works (and, as a rule, exactly the letter that was officially recognized at the moment) were regarded as terrible sedition, and in other times, in professional terms, did not contribute to survival.

And here we see the ominous shadow of the unforgettable academician Lysenko, in whose teaching Marxism (in the field of natural science) reached its zenith. The academician not only denied the existence of selection and its leading role in evolution, but also gave his own interpretation of the change in the heredity of organisms, which, in his opinion, occurs due to a change in metabolism under the influence of the environment.

So, we can note two mutually exclusive directions in natural science, the fundamental principles of which are as follows:

I 1. The genetic code of an organism is stable throughout its life.

2. The mutation process occurs non-directionally, all changes in the new organism are random.

3. New forms arise due to the survival of the fittest.

II 1. Hereditary information undergoes constant changes during the life of the organism.

2. All changes are adequate.

3. New forms arise due to these changes in heredity under the influence of the environment. There is no struggle for existence.

The first direction was created by Darwinism, genetics, generalized by the modern synthetic theory of evolution, based on the facts of scientific research.

The second is purely emotional, aimed not at knowing the truth, but at discrediting the opponent by any means. Hence the corresponding methods: denial of facts, sticking labels, contradictory statements, "scientific" argumentation, such as: accusations of being "anti-people" and "adherence to bourgeois survivals", calls for partisanship in science, etc. etc. How else to deal with the facts? There is simply no other way.

If Marx and Engels assumed that it would be sufficient to "raise people above other animals" by introducing "planned production and planned distribution", then Lysenko was in more difficult conditions, since there was already a planned economy, but people were in no hurry to "rise" and everyone strove to live according to - the old fashioned way - making good, bargaining, violating the planned management of the economy with their unplanned actions. Therefore, the primary task was the "education of a new man", without which the construction of a new society became unthinkable, but it is this task from the point of view of the natural sciences and especially genetics that is absolutely impossible. This statement deserves special attention and, like any other, requires proof, and therefore let us leave Marx and the Marxists for now and turn to human genetics and the problems of education.

Behavior genetics is a relatively young science and is now in its infancy, although the successes it has already achieved can hardly be overestimated. The study of various groups of animals from bacteria to primates convincingly indicates the presence of genetic control over a wide variety of behavioral responses. Studying the genetics of human behavior is much more difficult, since most of the methods used for animals are not applicable to humans for ethical reasons. And yet, research is being carried out very vigorously, new methods are being developed, and facts are accumulating.

Of course, man would like to believe that, unlike other animals, all his actions are exclusively acts of free will and that he himself thus determines his own destiny. However, it would be more strange to assume that the genotype, controlling the vast majority of physical parameters, does not have any effect on human behavior, although the physical parameters themselves have such an effect. However, extremely pronounced examples of genetic control over human behavior have been known for a long time. For example, Down syndrome, in which the appearance of an extra chromosome causes physical deformities, as well as slow mental, physical and sexual development. There are other chromosomal changes that have a strong influence on behavior. As you know, a person has two sex chromosomes XX "women" and XY "men". However, there are women with the karyotype XXX, XXXX and even XXXXX, but, unfortunately, such individuals do not differ in super-feminine qualities, moreover, women with the XXX karyotype are characterized by a decrease in the IQ, and with the XXXX and XXXXX karyotype, serious mental disorders and are unable to have children. Males with "the XYY karyotype are highly irresponsible and infantile individuals who show a propensity for crime at a very early age." This conclusion was made by Price and Watmore, studying prisoners in a hospital in one of the prisons in Scotland.

In addition to those listed above, there are many different chromosomal abnormalities that have a significant impact on behavior. It is difficult to imagine that the relationship between a person's genotype and his behavior is limited to such serious chromosomal pathologies, it would be more logical to assume that genetic control over behavior is carried out not only in the case of genetic abnormalities, but also in the normal state. At present, science already has experimental data on the influence of the genotype on such important behavioral traits as: fluency of speech, the ability for spatial imagination, attentiveness, etc. Especially many works are devoted to the influence of the genetic program on the intellect due to its great influence on the overall structure of the personality. We will not consider in detail the methods and results of these works, we will only quote the conclusions made by Wilson on the basis of many years of research on twins brought up in various conditions. "Individual differences in intelligence among people will never be smoothed out, despite all the perfection of methods and the enthusiasm of educators.

The genotypically determined differences are too deep-rooted to be eliminated by special training. But the maximum realization of the mental abilities of each child is a very real goal ... ". Similar conclusions can be drawn on the basis of acquaintance with studies conducted to clarify the dependence of the mental abilities of children on the mental abilities of their true parents and adoptive ones. It turned out that the mental abilities of children in In any case, they are much closer to their true parents than to their adoptive parents and almost do not differ in their indicators from children brought up in their own families.

Following the logic of the above facts, it is difficult not to conclude that human behavior largely depends on the genetic program embedded in it. Of course, it is not the behavior itself that is determined, but the predisposition to a certain kind of action, but how much this program will be implemented depends on the environment. How are we going to "correct" genetic "defects"? As long as the formation of personality occurs spontaneously, there can be no question of any "new man"; in this case, we will always have only what we have - a motley kaleidoscope of all possible options.

Let's try to bring all this diversity into a system with the help of the science of random variables. It is known that any continuous random feature, whether it is the size of the leaves on the trees, the height of a person or his intellectual abilities, with a large number of samples, has a normal distribution, i.e. most of all there will be variants with an average value, and the more the feature deviates from the average values, the less often it will occur. Take, for example, intelligence. Whatever population we choose, most of all it will have people with average intelligence. And the more or less we take the indicator of this feature, the less often it will occur to us. According to the same law, any behavioral trait will be distributed, for example, altruism, extraversion, a tendency to deceit, memory, neuroticism, etc.

We need to direct the upbringing process in such a way that, for example, exclude area "A" (see Fig.), That is, (in case of successful work) the normal distribution curve should move to the right and by average values ​​we will already understand that before we called high. However, perhaps this would suit us already, know for yourself move the curve to the right to infinity. And we will have, for example, solid geniuses, and people with average intelligence will turn out to be a rare occurrence.

A B C

Rice. Curve of normal distribution. A - low low rates; B - average values; C - high performance.

But, alas, genetics leaves us no hope for such a favorable development of events, because. the genetic fund, due to the randomness of mutations, gives us the most diverse material, and if, say, a child does not have natural mathematical abilities, and we educate a great mathematician, then a great mathematician will not come out, we will get an average mathematician (we cannot obtain directed mutations and unlikely to learn in the foreseeable future). Therefore, the normal distribution curve in its movement to the right has a limit due to the genetic fund, and even the movement of the curve, which was described above, can only occur due to a more complete implementation of genetic programs, through favorable education.

What can you do, statistics is an exact science! In order for our curve to still move in the desired direction, we must act like in ancient Sparta, where they selected for physical endurance and, without further ado, threw weak children into the abyss, thereby clearing the gene pool of an undesirable predisposition. Appropriate education completed the job. Thus, in order to completely eliminate vices, without following the example of the Spartans, we need to get rid of accidents as much as possible!!! Try to imagine a world where random events are completely absent! Perhaps it will be beyond the power of even the richest imagination.

But even if we went so far in our desire to educate the "new man" that we would become worthy followers of the ancient Spartans, and genetics would reach such perfection that we could take into account all desirable and undesirable inclinations in newborns, we would have to decide dilemmas that arise all the time: who do we need more - a brilliant egoist or a mentally retarded altruist. In addition, collective education, attempts to instill approximately the same traits in all children, often leads to undesirable consequences. Suppose that we are trying to educate in children such traits as altruism, sensitivity to others, kindness. If a child has the makings of an egoist and money-grubber, then this upbringing will certainly benefit, and if the genetic predisposition of another child is directed towards softness, compliance, responsiveness, then a similar upbringing will lead to the fact that we get a weak, amorphous, weak-willed person unable to stand up for himself or for his ideas.

We all have the opportunity to observe such paradoxes, when in the same family (with the same upbringing), having a similar genotype from siblings (brothers and sisters), people with diametrically opposite character traits grow up. It remains to return to the individual approach, but in this case, it is still better for children to stay in families, and parents should have precise instructions on how they should raise each of their offspring, unless, of course, their genetic inclinations are already known. But who raised the parents before? And, as mentioned above, we still never manage to equalize the diversity of genetic programs through education.

In this case, all hope for genetics (eugenics). But geneticists will tell us that sometimes one gene encodes several traits, and it happens that several genes control one trait, in addition, there is linked inheritance, when several traits are transmitted together, and even the presence of random mutations, and a huge number of genes themselves, and even their mutual influences, plus the environment - that's why we are all so different - is the result of the interaction of a large number of random events that leave us no hope for the complete elimination of personality defects in the process of educating the "new person".

However, given the state in which our pedagogy is today, we can conclude that we have large reserves. And all the same, we will have to come to terms with the unfortunate fact that we will always have a certain percentage of vices, and this will be the price for virtues.

Or maybe, in order to get rid of accidents in the formation of the genotype of each person, we will provide genetic engineering not only with the editorial staff, but we will completely entrust the task of forming the human race into its hands. Let them calculate the optimal options on a computer and assemble the chromosomes in vitro. But what about the environment then? How will we deal with unpredictable random events occurring in the environment and affecting the formation and implementation of the genetic program? After all, it is known that even people with the same genotype - monozygotic twins - and brought up in the same family, sometimes implement this program very ambiguously, which largely depends on the further conditions of existence. Therefore, even a standard, pre-calculated environment in which personality formation would take place does not guarantee against diversity, which is always decomposed according to the normal distribution described above. In addition, many personality traits appear depending on the circumstances and sometimes quite unexpectedly. And what in one case we will take as a virtue, in another situation will be regarded as a vice.

And in general, any standardization of the human gene pool would be extremely harmful, as it would reduce its adaptive value. Simply put, the vast variety of conditions for human existence requires a correspondingly unlimited variety of human abilities, otherwise our species will simply die out.

But imagine for a moment the life of a standard person in standard conditions! It is unlikely that anyone will be seduced by such a prospect. However, the hope for the complete elimination of random events, even in the most distant future, is absolutely unrealistic. Or will we be able to create an environment in which there will be no place for vices, and the best qualities of a person will be most fully revealed? But can an imperfect society create perfect conditions? It is more realistic to assume that both of these processes will go on simultaneously - human society will improve the environment of its existence, which in turn will affect society and each of its members. But it should be especially noted that both the perfection of the environment and the person cannot be absolute. We can only talk about the degree of adaptation, i.e. the correspondence of the qualities that a person possesses to the specific conditions of the environment.

Our hopes for the creation of an optimal society are similar to the expectation that an ideal biosphere will suddenly form on our Earth, where no one will eat anyone, all species will live in complete peace, harmony, in food and territorial abundance!

It is quite possible that many ideologists of communism really sacredly believed in the infallibility of their views, moreover, they saw in their theories the way to the bright future of mankind. The whole trouble is that they took the idea of ​​creating a "new society" without any criticism, as a matter of course, and instead of first solving the question - "is it possible to do this?", They immediately turned to the problem - "how is it do". How can you do something that can't be done? And it is quite natural that in order to solve such, frankly, a difficult task, it was necessary to attract all sorts of scientific fantasies by the ears, to deny scientific facts. For any scientist who has set himself the task of putting genuine science in the "Procrustean bed" of the Marxist idea of ​​building a new society will inevitably have to cut off more and more scientific facts from it, until there is nothing left of it at all, and the resulting void will have to be filled with all sorts of science-like surrogate .

If Marx and Engels had to fight Darwinism, then Lysenko, in addition to Darwinism, to which he opposed "Soviet creative Darwinism" (?!), also had to fight with genetics and probability theory. With regard to the latter, the academician looked straight to the root, calling "...without any ceremony to expel accidents from biological science."

Such decisive actions in relation to genetics and the theory of probability were fully included in the plans for the destruction of everything that could call into question the correctness of the chosen path, and it is precisely these sciences, as mentioned above, that leave no hope for the possibility of educating a "new man", and, consequently, to create a "new society".

So Lysenko came to court with his theory of evolution, which assumes the infinite plasticity of human nature, easily changed under the influence of educational measures. A very convenient theory for trying to create a man-slave, subject to a single will, and it must be admitted that the "father of the peoples" was very successful in this. True, despite the denial of genetics, he conducted, according to all the rules, a real artificial selection on the basis of personal devotion. And he did not wait for the environment to re-educate the geneticists, but took and destroyed both genetics, and geneticists, and not only them ... Looks like Comrade Stalin did not really trust Academician Lysenko.

One does not have to be particularly insightful in order to fail to notice in Marx's desire to "raise man above other animals" the recognition that, at least by that time, this had not happened. In the future, as we noted, Marx's recipe was not successful, and hopes for educational measures did not materialize, and even the most daring eugenicist projects, as already mentioned, have no prospects. It would seem that it was already possible to conclude that humanity, both now and in the future, will not have fundamental differences with all other organisms on the planet, and therefore, the laws of existence and development are the same. However, humanity is not in a hurry to draw conclusions. Our anthropocentric thinking refuses to understand the logic of the behavior of other organisms, regarding it as a lack of thinking. We, for example, admire "swan fidelity" when a swan, having lost a "faithful girlfriend", takes his own life. But it is unlikely that anyone will sing the high feelings of a spider who eats her "husband" after intercourse. Meanwhile, these events have a completely similar ecological meaning, since they eliminate "extra" animals so that they do not compete with their own offspring.

But let's think about how logically we act ourselves. What is worth at least the episode of the beating of the bell in Uglich, which brought bad news. This, of course, was a long time ago, but modern people sometimes act no more logically: they break dishes during family quarrels, throw the receiver on the lever of an innocent telephone, send curses in full confidence that the addressee will not hear them. .. Is there a lot of logic in the actions of our politicians?

It is very interesting what some aliens would think of us if they suddenly decided to study the mental abilities of the Homo sapiens species using the example of the economic structure of our state during the period of socialist construction. I'm afraid that they would deny us not only the ability to think, but they would doubt, perhaps, that we have such elementary instincts inherent in all living things, such as, for example, the instinct of self-preservation!

Moreover, when attempts are made to distinguish between man and other animals, man does not mean all representatives of the human race, but only some of the most developed part of it. After all, even now there are tribes in the depths of the continents that have not gone further than gathering in their way of life. However, among the developed peoples there are many representatives, the difference between which and other animals is far from being so obvious.

And yet it is difficult for a person to come to terms with the idea that all the successes of civilization have been achieved thanks to the same laws of nature, according to which not only man, but also all other organisms of our biosphere exist.

In the history of the development of natural science, one can observe how humanity desperately resists attempts to unite it with the rest of the Earth's biosphere and how it gradually surrenders under the onslaught of irrefutable scientific facts that push the field of scientific research further and further - into little-studied areas, such as ways of thinking. But we still know so little about how a person thinks, and even less about how other animals do it, that it would be more correct to evaluate the higher nervous activity of a person and other organisms according to its results, i.e. on environmental impact.

The oldest representatives of the species Homo sapiens hardly opposed themselves to the environment and nature. In the future, all kinds of religious teachings represented the relationship of man with the outside world in different ways, although, as a rule, they recognized the fundamental difference between man and other animals. Nevertheless, not a single religion placed man at the center of the World; on the contrary, it called for humility before the forces of nature, before the deities personifying these forces. Probably, this has an important adaptive value, since it corrects human actions in the biosphere.

In the middle of the last century, there was a reassessment of ideas about the place of man in Nature, and it went in two mutually opposite directions, based on the natural science theories described above. One of them was given an impetus by the great Darwin, and since then the proof of the general plan of the structure of man and other animals, the general schemes for the development of embryos, the recognition of man as an animal species, etc., and recently the success of such sciences as the genetics of behavior, ethology, zoopsychology and others are rapidly bringing humans closer in our minds to other organisms on our planet, punching holes in the anthropocentric consciousness of mankind. The other direction, the theoretical foundations of which were laid by Marx and Engels, and practically embodied in our country, is directly opposite and orients a person towards anthropocentric claims of gigantic proportions that have never been seen anywhere before.

The old religiosity, where a rather modest role was assigned to a person, was finished, in its place a new religion arose with its idols, shrines, sermons, worldview, dogmas. Psychologically, it had a stronger impact, as it turned out to be more flattering, and, moreover, paradise was promised while still alive on Earth. The role of the deity was assigned to a person who, as stated, CAN EVERYTHING: move mountains, turn rivers back, control the weather, and build this paradise on earth himself and gain immortality in it. However, it is now quite obvious that the steam was only enough for a whistle.

Although the classics lamented the fact that man had not yet "rise above the animals", nevertheless, with their inherent logic, they proved the fundamental difference between man and other animals, blaming humanity for the obvious analogies between Darwin's "struggle for existence" and economic struggle in human society, trying to prove the existence of various laws of development and driving forces of evolution between man and other animals, which was necessary for the theoretical justification of more humane, better laws of the development of human society than the rest of the biosphere. Although it doesn’t fit in my head personally: what other laws of nature can there be besides the LAWS OF NATURE ?!

Engels paid the most attention to this question in Dialectics of Nature. "But let's take for a moment for argument sake (in order to analyze the argument itself) this formula: "Struggle for existence". An animal at best comes to gathering, while a person produces. .This makes it impossible for any transfer without appropriate reservations of the laws of animal life to the human society" . But at the time of Engels, producing animals were already known, but Engels is not so easily confused - "... insect states (ordinary insects do not go beyond purely natural relations) - [consequently, according to Engels there are natural relations, but there are unnatural!- L.O.-D.] - there is even a social germ. The same is true of producing animals with tool-organs (bees, beavers, etc.): however, this is something only secondary and does not have impact on the situation as a whole. Thus, there is no need to prove anything, since it does not fit into his theory, then naturally it is "something only secondary" and, of course, "has no effect" on Engels' views "as a whole." If Engels had been a more impartial researcher of this question, he would have paid more attention to the presence of production in various animal species and would have noted that in this case the phenomenon takes place and, consequently, does not give the right to draw a qualitative boundary between man and other animals, since the question who produces more and who produces less is a question of quantity.

In addition, Engels denies animals a purposeful change in the environment, which he also offers as an argument in favor of the human right to special laws of development: "... when animals have a long-term impact on the nature around them, this happens without any intention on their part and is in relation to these animals themselves something accidental ... ". "An animal destroys the vegetation of some locality, not knowing what it is doing. A man destroys it in order to sow bread on the vacated soil ...". It is amazing how Engels manages to know the intentions of all animals, or rather the absence of any intentions? While sometimes they are quite obvious, for example, some species of fish destroy aquatic vegetation with a very specific intention - to create a territory for spawning and raising offspring, beavers fell trees also with quite obvious intentions, thereby extracting material for the construction of "huts" and dams, moles dig underground labyrinths in order to subsequently collect small animals that got there, etc.

"In short, animals only use external nature and make changes in it simply by virtue of their presence; man, by the changes he makes, makes it serve his purposes, dominates it. And this is the last essential difference between man and other animals ...". This conclusion sounds more like a declarative wish than a scientific statement, especially since Engels himself gives examples when a person "only uses external nature", causing harm not only to this very "external nature", but also to himself, and even " a planned mode of action already exists in embryo wherever living protein exists and reacts ... ".

Thus, even in this case, it is impossible to notice the qualitative difference between humans and other animals, since in any case, whether it is humans or other animals, there is a deliberate impact, but the consequences can go far beyond these intentions, and in both cases. another case.

However, despite the fact that Engels himself actually proves the inconsistency of his position, he nevertheless concludes: "... we, unlike all other beings, are able to cognize its (Nature - L.O.-D.) laws and correctly apply them," without realizing that knowledge is infinite, and consequently, the "correctness" of applying the laws of nature will always be very, very relative and cannot insure against the same consequences that go beyond intentions. Moreover, Engels "did not notice" that other organisms also cognize nature and the whole difference between them and man is only in the scale of cognition, i.e. again quantitative!

Engels dismissed the deliberate actions of various organisms, recognizing them as "something accidental", which allowed him to raise similar human actions to a dizzying height of dominance over Nature, and recognize the possibility "... to subordinate to our domination and regulation ... the social consequences of our production activity", from which, judging by the experience of our state, one can once again be convinced that the road to Hell is being paved with good intentions.

Shortly after the publication of Darwin's book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or in the Struggle for Life Survival of the Worthy, a British Association conference was held in Oxford, at which Darwin's main opponent, Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, asked Darwin's friend and associate Thomas Huxley: "Do you great-grandmother is a monkey, why are you so zealously defending your origin? To which Huxley gave a brilliant answer, which, in a slightly modified form, spread throughout England in the form of an aphorism: "It is better to have a great-grandmother than a bishop."

Following this example, I want to respond to Marx's desire to raise a person above other animals with the help of a planned economy with my aphorism - "It's better not to raise a person above an animal, but to live like a human, than to raise, and live like a pig."

Marx and Engels were outstanding thinkers and could not fail to notice in the works of Darwin a fundamental discovery in the field of natural science.

I think that "the whole Darwinian teaching" became for Marx and Engels "simply a transference" at the moment when emotions prevailed over impartial research.

Here is what Marx writes in a letter to Lafargue in 1869: "The struggle for existence in English society is universal competition, bellum omnium contra omnes led Darwin to the discovery of a fierce competitive struggle for existence as the basic law of the "animal" and plant world." (It is hard to imagine that Darwin, traveling on the ship "Beagle", as a naturalist, was engaged not so much in the study of nature as in the study of general competition in English society. But it was the impressions received during this journey that formed the basis of his theory - L.O. .-D ..). But we read further - "Darwinism, on the contrary, considers this a decisive argument in proof that humanity will never get rid of its bestiality."

Of course, in a friendly letter, such elegant expressions are quite appropriate, but if we replace the word "bestiality" with more scientific terminology, then we get the following - humanity will never get rid of its belonging to a biological species with all the ensuing consequences.

Everyday expressions can hardly be appropriate in scientific research, and, moreover, serve as arguments. The laws of nature cannot be good or bad at all, they simply exist, and we should meet them with open eyes, and not bury our heads in the sand like an ostrich, claiming that we are different, that the laws of nature are not written for us. But for the time being we are forced to live according to these laws, since we have not yet created a person capable of living according to other, more humane, in our opinion, laws.

It is a pity that the ancient slave owners could not get acquainted with the idea of ​​educating the "new man". They would be delighted at the prospect of creating a man for whom work is the first necessity.

However, some of our ideologists would not be averse to enhancing the effect through coercion, up to and including physical destruction. That's how easy it turned out to be under the banner of "freedom, equality, fraternity" to assert slavery, elitism, genocide.

This reminds me of the famous aporias of Zeno or sophisms, where a deliberate or involuntary error is introduced into the logical construction, which is sometimes very difficult to detect, and the result is paradoxical. With the help of such constructions, it is possible, for example, to prove that there is no movement, the lengths of all circles are equal, and twice two - five. In the latter case, for example, in the process of algebraic operations, division by zero is performed, which leads to an erroneous result.

In our case, such a "division by zero" was carried out in two logical constructions, which made it possible, as a result, to put an equal sign between freedom and slavery.

1. Attributing to human society special laws of development, based on the erroneous postulate of a qualitative difference between man and the rest of the Earth's biosphere.

However, it soon became clear that a person does not possess the qualities that allow him to live according to these new laws and continues to live according to the old ones, according to which all life on Earth has existed for millions of years. In order to eliminate such an obvious discrepancy between theory and practice, it was necessary to reinforce the theory with one more logical construction.

2. The person with whom we are dealing is not the same person; it is necessary to fashion a person who would comply with these laws, i. pull a person under the new laws. To do this, we had to make one more "division by zero" - to accept the dogma of the infinite plasticity of human nature. But in this case, it was not possible to decisively dissociate itself from the rest of nature, so it was necessary to simply cross out the science of genetics.

Alas, neither Mohammed went to the mountain, nor the mountain to Mohammed.

As a result of such an "improvement" of the laws of nature, we got broken feedback principles and, as a result, complete chaos in the economy instead of the expected complete order, and the same forbidden feedback principles crawled out from all sides, but already in the form of ugly, criminal or semi-criminal phenomena.

Generally speaking, planning is a necessary thing both in the economy and in ordinary human life. For example, people certainly do not hurt to take an umbrella with them on the occasion of wet weather, but it would not occur to anyone, based on the morning forecast, to walk under an open umbrella all day. In the same way, in the economy there is a sufficient field of activity for planning, if, of course, planning is introduced not from considerations of "raising man above other animals", but from an objective economic necessity.

You can grieve as much as you like about the unsuccessful attempt to make all of humanity happy, however, a mistake is a mistake. a planned person in a planned society did not work out. However, is it really that sad? Let us recall the words of the great ancient thinker, the founder of objective dialectics, Heraclitus: "People would not be better off if all their desires were fulfilled."

Man's belonging to an animal species and his existence in accordance with the general laws of nature does not at all humiliate humanity (our painful anthropocentrism is very similar to the offended feelings of Chekhov's hero Vasily Semi-Bulatov from the village of Pancakes-Eaten, who in his letter to a learned neighbor states that ".. .if a man, the ruler of the world, the smartest of the respiratory creatures, descended from a stupid and ignorant monkey, then he would have a tail and a wild voice"), and certainly does not exempt from responsibility for his actions, for the fate of his neighbors and fate humanity, especially since other animals, at their level, also solve similar problems. Sometimes, wolves defend their offspring to the death, and people sometimes eat up the vanquished no worse than any wolf pack.

It is better to understand and feel this harmony of our community with the "smaller brothers" and all of nature, there can be more benefit from this than from a swaggering desire to dominate it. And you can improve your society as much as you like and without inventing new laws of nature, you just need to discover and study the existing ones. Just do not bring any good idea to the point of absurdity.

Fans of science fiction know that not a single even the most talented writer has succeeded in depicting an ideal society and in general no other society except our earthly one, whether with wings, with horns, with two heads, and all ours, relatives, with our passions, with our contradictions, with our imperfection... Without conflict, it is generally impossible to start any plot either in life or in literature.

Marx and Engels were prevented from being objective researchers by their ardent desire to make all mankind happy in one fell swoop, even jumping over the natural laws of nature for this. And yet, giving them their due, I want to conclude by quoting the words of Marx, which in a few lines prove everything that I had to spend so much paper on.

"The coexistence of two mutually opposite sides, their merging into a new category is the essence of the dialectical movement. Anyone who sets himself the task of eliminating the bad side, already by this alone immediately puts an end to the dialectical movement."

LITERATURE

1. Marx and Engels, complete works, vol. 20 p.359.

2. ibid., vol. 30, p. 102.

3. ibid., v. 20, p. 622.

4. ibid., vol. 30, p. 475.

5. ibid., vol. 34, p. 137.

6. ibid., vol. 20, p.323

7. ibid., vol. 30, p. 204.

8. ibid., v. 20, p. 621.

9. ibid., v. 20, p. 622.

10. ibid., v. 20, p. 621.

11. ibid., v. 20, p. 621.

12. ibid., v. 20, p. 424

13 L. Erman, P. Parsons Genetics of behavior and evolution M., Mir, 1984, pp.104-106

14. ibid., p.103.

15. ibid., p.202.

16. ibid., pp. 412-413.

17 Lysenko T.D., Agrobiology, p. 579.

18. Marx and Engels, complete works vol. 20 p.622.

19. ibid., v. 20, p. 624.

20. ibid., v. 20, p. 494.

21. ibid., v. 20, p. 495.

22. ibid., vol. 20, p. 495.

23. ibid., v. 20, p. 496.

24. ibid., v. 20, p. 497.

25. ibid., vol. 32, p. 493.

26. ibid., vol. 4, p.136.

On February 12, 1809, the famous English scientist, naturalist and traveler was born. Charles Darwin. His theory of evolution and the origin of species is studied in school biology lessons. Nevertheless, many misconceptions, inaccuracies and myths are associated with the name of Darwin,

You all know the official version and more about Darwin, this. Let's first go over the current myths:

Myth 1. Darwin came up with the theory of evolution

In fact, the first scientific theory of evolution was developed at the beginning of the 19th century Jean Baptiste Lamarck. He owns the assumption that acquired characteristics are inherited. For example, if an animal feeds on leaves from tall trees, its neck will stretch, and each successive generation will have a slightly longer neck than its ancestors. So, according to Lamarck, giraffes appeared.

Charles Darwin improved this theory and introduced the concept of "natural selection" into it. According to the theory, individuals with those features and qualities that are most conducive to survival are more likely to continue the genus.

Myth 2. Darwin claimed that man descended from a monkey

The scientist never said such a thing. Charles Darwin suggested that apes and humans may have shared an ape-like ancestor. Based on comparative anatomical and embryological studies, he was able to show that the anatomical, physiological and ontogenetic characteristics of humans and representatives of the primate order are very similar. This is how the simial (monkey) theory of anthropogenesis was born.

Myth 3. Before Darwin, scientists did not correlate humans with primates.

In fact, the similarity between humans and monkeys was noticed by scientists at the end of the 18th century. The French naturalist Bufon suggested that people are descendants of monkeys, and the Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus classified humans as primates, where we, in modern science, coexist as a species with monkeys.

Myth 4. According to Darwin's theory of evolution, the fittest survive

This myth comes from a misunderstanding of the term "natural selection". According to Darwin, it is not the strongest who survive, but the fittest. Often the simplest organisms are the most "tenacious". This explains why strong dinosaurs died out, while single-celled organisms survived both the meteorite explosion and the ice age that followed.

Myth 5. Darwin at the end of his life renounced his theory

This is nothing more than an urban legend. 33 years after the scientist's death, in 1915, a story was published in a Baptist publication about how Darwin retracted his theory just before his death. There is no reliable evidence of this fact.

Myth 6. Darwin's theory of evolution is a Masonic conspiracy

Fans of conspiracy theories claim that Darwin and his relatives were Freemasons. Freemasons are members of a secret religious society that arose in the 18th century in Europe. Noble people became members of the Masonic lodges, they are often credited with the invisible leadership of the whole world.

Historians do not confirm the fact that Darwin or any of his relatives were members of any secret societies. The scientist, on the contrary, was in no hurry to publish his theory, which had been worked on for 20 years. In addition, many of the facts discovered by Darwin were confirmed by further researchers.

Here you can read the arguments of the supporter of the theory elvensou1 - Reject or accept evolution?

Clickable.

Now let's take a closer look at what the opponents of Darwin's theory say:

The man who put forward the theory of evolution is the English amateur naturalist Charles Robert Darwin.

Darwin never really studied biology, but only had an amateur interest in nature and animals. And as a result of this interest, in 1832 he volunteered to travel from England on the state research vessel "Beagle" and for five years sailed to different parts of the world. During the trip, young Darwin was impressed by the species of animals he saw, especially the various types of finches that lived on the Galapagos Islands. He thought that the difference in the beaks of these birds depends on the environment. Based on this assumption, he concluded for himself: living organisms were not created by God separately, but originated from a single ancestor and then changed depending on the conditions of nature.

This hypothesis of Darwin was not based on any scientific explanation or experiment. Only thanks to the support of the then famous materialistic biologists, over time, this hypothesis of Darwin was established as a theory. According to this theory, living organisms come from one ancestor, but over a long time they undergo small changes and begin to differ from each other. Species that have more successfully adapted to natural conditions pass on their characteristics to the next generation. Thus, these beneficial changes over time turn the individual into a living organism, completely different from its ancestor. What was meant by "beneficial changes" remained unknown. According to Darwin, man was the most developed product of this mechanism. Reviving this mechanism in his imagination, Darwin called it "evolution by natural selection." From now on, he thought he had found the roots of the "origin of species": the basis of one species is another species. He revealed these ideas in 1859 in his book On the Origin of Species.

However, Darwin realized that there was much unresolved in his theory. He acknowledges this in Difficulties of Theory. These difficulties were in the complex organs of living organisms that could not have appeared by chance (for example, the eyes), as well as fossil remains, animal instincts. Darwin hoped that these difficulties would be overcome in the process of new discoveries, but for some of them he gave incomplete explanations.

In contrast to the purely naturalistic theory of evolution, two alternatives are put forward. One is purely religious in nature: this is the so-called "creationism", a literal perception of the biblical legend about how the Almighty created the universe and life in all its diversity. Creationism is professed only by religious fundamentalists, this doctrine has a narrow base, it is on the periphery of scientific thought. Therefore, for lack of space, we confine ourselves to mentioning its existence.

But another alternative has made a very serious bid for a place under the scientific sun. The theory of “intelligent design” (intelligent design), among whose supporters there are many serious scientists, recognizing evolution as a mechanism for intraspecific adaptation to changing environmental conditions (microevolution), categorically rejects its claims to be the key to the mystery of the origin of species (macroevolution), not to mention about the origin of life itself.

Life is so complex and diverse that it is absurd to think about the possibility of its spontaneous origin and development: it must inevitably be based on intelligent design, advocates of this theory say. What kind of mind it is is not important. Intelligent design theorists are more agnostic than religious, and are not particularly interested in theology. They are only concerned with punching gaping holes in the theory of evolution, and they have succeeded in riddling it so much that the dogma prevailing in biology now resembles not so much a granite monolith as Swiss cheese.

Throughout the history of Western civilization, it has been considered an axiom that life is created by a higher power. Even Aristotle expressed the conviction that the incredible complexity, elegant harmony and harmony of life and the universe cannot be a random product of spontaneous processes. The most famous teleological argument for the existence of a rational principle was formulated by the English religious thinker William Paley in his book Natural Theology, published in 1802.

Paley reasoned as follows: if, while walking in the forest, I stumble on a stone, I will not have any doubts about its natural origin. But if I see a clock lying on the ground, I will voluntarily or involuntarily have to assume that they could not have arisen by themselves, someone had to collect them. And if a watch (a relatively small and simple device) has a reasonable organizer - a watchmaker, then the Universe itself (a large device) and the biological objects that fill it (more complex devices than a clock) must have a great organizer - the Creator.

But then Charles Darwin showed up, and everything changed. In 1859 he published an epoch-making work called "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Survival of Favored Breeds in the Struggle for Life", which was destined to make a real revolution in scientific and social thought. Based on the achievements of breeders (“artificial selection”) and on his own observations of birds (finches) in the Galapagos Islands, Darwin concluded that organisms can undergo small changes, adapting to changing environmental conditions through “natural selection”.

He further concluded that, given a sufficiently long time, the sum of such small changes gives rise to larger changes and, in particular, leads to the appearance of new species. According to Darwin, new traits that reduce the chances of an organism to survive are mercilessly rejected by nature, and traits that give an advantage in the struggle for life, gradually accumulating, eventually allow their carriers to take over less adapted competitors and force them out of contested ecological niches.

This purely naturalistic mechanism, completely devoid of any purpose or design, from the point of view of Darwin exhaustively explained how life developed and why all living beings are so ideally adapted to the conditions of their environment. The theory of evolution implies a continuous progression of gradually changing living beings in a row from the most primitive forms to higher organisms, the crown of which is man.

The problem, however, is that Darwin's theory was purely speculative, because in those years, paleontological evidence did not provide any basis for his conclusions. Throughout the world, scientists have dug up many fossil remains of extinct organisms of past geological epochs, but they all fit within the clear boundaries of the same unchanged taxonomy. Not a single intermediate species appeared in the fossil record, not a single creature with morphological features that would confirm the correctness of a theory formulated on the basis of abstract conclusions without relying on facts.

Darwin clearly saw the weakness of his theory. No wonder he did not dare to publish it for more than two decades and sent his capital work to print only when he learned that another English naturalist - Alfred Russel Wallace - was preparing to come up with his own theory, strikingly similar to Darwin's.

It is curious to note that both opponents behaved like true gentlemen. Darwin wrote a courteous letter to Wallace outlining the evidence of his superiority, who responded with a no less polite message proposing that a joint report be presented at the Royal Society. After that, Wallace publicly acknowledged Darwin's priority and, until the end of his days, never once complained about his bitter fate. That's how it was in the Victorian era. Talk about progress after that.

The theory of evolution was like a building erected on grass so that later, when the necessary materials were brought up, a foundation would be laid under it. Its author relied on the progress of paleontology, which - he was convinced - would allow in the future to find transitional forms of life and confirm the validity of his theoretical calculations.

But the collections of paleontologists grew and grew, and there was no evidence of Darwin's theory. Scientists found similar species, but could not find a single bridge thrown from one species to another. But it follows from the theory of evolution that such bridges not only existed, but that there must have been a great many of them, because the paleontological record must reflect all the countless stages of the long history of evolution and, in fact, consist entirely of transitional links.

Some followers of Darwin, like himself, believe that you just need to be patient - they say, we simply have not yet found intermediate forms, but we will certainly find them in the future. Alas, their hopes are unlikely to come true, because the existence of such transitional links would be in conflict with one of the fundamental postulates of the very theory of evolution.

Imagine, for example, that the front legs of dinosaurs gradually evolved into bird wings. But this means that during the long transitional period these limbs were neither paws nor wings, and their functional uselessness doomed the owners of such useless stumps to a deliberate defeat in the fierce struggle for life. According to Darwin's teaching, nature had to ruthlessly uproot such intermediate species and, therefore, nip the process of speciation in the bud.

But it is generally accepted that birds are descended from lizards. The dispute is not about that. Opponents of the Darwinian doctrine fully admit that the front paw of a dinosaur could indeed be the prototype of a bird's wing. They argue only that whatever perturbations may occur in living nature, they could not proceed according to the mechanism of natural selection. Some other principle must have been in effect - say, the use of universal templates-prototypes by the carrier of a reasonable beginning.

The paleontological record stubbornly testifies to the failure of evolutionism. During the first three-plus billion years of the existence of life, only the simplest single-celled organisms lived on our planet. But about 570 million years ago, the Cambrian period began, and over the course of several million years (by geological standards, a fleeting moment), as if by magic, almost all the diversity of life arose from scratch in its current form and without any intermediate links. According to Darwin's theory, this "Cambrian explosion", as it is called, simply could not happen.

Another example: during the so-called Permian-Triassic extinction 250 million years ago, life on earth almost stopped: 90% of all marine organisms and 70% of terrestrial ones disappeared. Nevertheless, the basic taxonomy of the fauna has not undergone any significant changes - the main types of living creatures that lived on our planet before the “great extinction” were completely preserved after the catastrophe. But if we proceed from the Darwinian concept of natural selection, during this period of heightened competition for filling vacant ecological niches, numerous transitional species would certainly have arisen. However, this did not happen, which again implies that the theory is wrong.

Darwinists are desperately looking for transitional life forms, but all their efforts have so far been unsuccessful. The maximum that they can find is the similarities of different species, but the signs of genuine intermediate beings are still only a dream of evolutionists. Periodically, sensations flare up: a transitional link has been found! But in practice, it invariably turns out that the alarm is false, that the organism found is nothing more than a manifestation of ordinary intraspecific variability. And even just a falsification like the notorious Piltdown man.

It is impossible to describe the joy of evolutionists when, in 1908, a human-type fossil skull with an ape lower jaw was found in England. Here it is, the real proof of the correctness of Charles Darwin! The jubilant scientists had no incentive to take a closer look at the cherished find, otherwise they could not help but notice the obvious absurdities in its structure and realize that the “fossil” is a fake, and a very crude one at that. And it took a whole 40 years before the scientific world was forced to officially admit that he had been played. It turned out that some hitherto unknown prankster had simply glued the lower jaw of a by no means fossil orangutan with a skull from an equally fresh Homo sapiens dead man.

By the way, Darwin's personal discovery - the microevolution of Galapagos finches under environmental pressure - also did not stand the test of time. A few decades later, the climatic conditions on these Pacific islands changed again, and the length of the beak of birds returned to its former norm. No speciation occurred, just the same species of birds temporarily adapted to changing environmental conditions - the most trivial intraspecific variability.

Some Darwinists are aware that their theory has reached a dead end and are frantically maneuvering. For example, the late Harvard biologist Stephen Jay Gould proposed the hypothesis of "punctuated equilibrium" or "dotted evolution." This is a kind of hybrid of Darwinism with Cuvier's "catastrophism", which postulated the intermittent development of life through a series of catastrophes. According to Gould, evolution proceeded in leaps and bounds, and each leap followed some universal natural disaster with such speed that it did not have time to leave any trace in the fossil record.

Although Gould considered himself an evolutionist, his theory undermines the basic premise of Darwin's theory of speciation through the gradual accumulation of favorable features. However, “dotted evolution” is just as speculative and just as devoid of empirical evidence as classical Darwinism.

Thus, the paleontological evidence strongly refutes the concept of macroevolution. But this is far from the only evidence of its failure. The development of genetics has completely destroyed the belief that environmental pressure can cause morphological changes. Countless mice have been cut off by researchers in the hope that their offspring will inherit a new trait. Alas, tailed offspring were stubbornly born from tailless parents. The laws of genetics are inexorable: all the features of the organism are encrypted in the parental genes and are directly transmitted from them to the descendants.

Evolutionists, following the principles of their teaching, had to adapt to new conditions. “Neo-Darwinism” appeared, in which the place of the classical “adaptation” was taken by the mutational mechanism. According to neo-Darwinists, by no means excluded that random gene mutations could give rise to a sufficiently high degree of variability, which again could contribute to the survival of the species and, being inherited by offspring, could to gain a foothold and give their carriers a decisive advantage in the struggle for an ecological niche.

However, the deciphering of the genetic code dealt a crushing blow to this theory. Mutations are rare and in the vast majority of cases are unfavorable, so that the likelihood that a “new favorable trait” will be fixed in any population for a long enough time to give it an advantage in the fight against competitors is practically nil.

In addition, natural selection destroys genetic information as it culls out traits that are not conducive to survival, and leaves only "selected" traits. But they can by no means be considered “favorable” mutations, because these genetic traits in all cases were originally inherent in the population and were only waiting in the wings to manifest themselves when environmental pressure “cleaned up” unnecessary or harmful garbage.

The progress of molecular biology in recent decades has finally driven evolutionists into a corner. In 1996, Lehigh University biochemistry professor Michael Behey published the sensational book Darwin's Black Box, where he showed that there are biochemical systems of incredible complexity in the body that cannot be explained from Darwinian positions. The author described a number of intracellular molecular machines and biological processes characterized by "irreducible complexity".

By this term, Michael Bahey designated systems consisting of many components, each of which is of critical importance. That is, the mechanism can only work if all its components are present; as soon as at least one of them fails, the whole system goes wrong. From this, the conclusion inevitably follows: in order for the mechanism to fulfill its functional purpose, all its constituent parts had to be born and “turn on” at the same time - contrary to the main postulate of the theory of evolution.

The book also describes cascade phenomena, such as the mechanism of blood clotting, which involves a dozen and a half specialized proteins plus intermediate forms that are formed during the process. When cut in the blood, a multi-stage reaction is launched in which proteins activate each other in a chain. In the absence of any of these proteins, the reaction is automatically interrupted. At the same time, the cascade proteins are highly specialized, none of them perform any other function than the formation of a blood clot. In other words, “they certainly had to arise immediately in the form of a single complex,” Behey writes.

Cascading is the antagonist of evolution. It is inconceivable that the blind, chaotic process of natural selection would provide for the future storage of many useless elements that remain in a latent state until the last of them finally appears in the world of God and allows the system to immediately turn on and earn on full power. Such an idea fundamentally contradicts the fundamental principles of the theory of evolution, which Charles Darwin himself was well aware of.

“If the possibility of the existence of any complex organ, which could in no way be the result of numerous successive small changes, is proved, my theory will crumble to dust,” Darwin frankly admitted. In particular, he was extremely concerned about the problem of the eye: how to explain the evolution of this most complex organ, which acquires functional significance only at the very last moment, when all its constituent parts are already in place? After all, if you follow the logic of his teaching, any attempt of the body to start a multi-stage process of creating a vision mechanism would be ruthlessly suppressed by natural selection. And where, for no reason at all, did the developed organs of vision appear in trilobites - the first living creatures on earth?

After the publication of Darwin's Black Box, its author was subjected to a hail of violent attacks and threats (mostly on the Internet). Moreover, the vast majority of advocates of the theory of evolution expressed confidence that "the Darwinian model of the origin of irreducibly complex biochemical systems is presented in hundreds of thousands of scientific publications." However, nothing could be further from the truth.

Anticipating the storm his book would cause while working on it, Michael Bahey delved into the scientific literature to get an idea of ​​how evolutionists explain the origin of complex biochemical systems. And… found absolutely nothing. It turned out that there is not a single hypothesis of the evolutionary path of formation of such systems. Official science arranged a conspiracy of silence around an uncomfortable topic: not a single scientific report, not a single scientific monograph, not a single scientific symposium was devoted to it.

Since then, several attempts have been made to develop an evolutionary model for the formation of systems of this kind, but all of them invariably failed. Many scientists of the naturalistic school clearly understand the impasse in which their favorite theory has ended up. “We fundamentally refuse to put intelligent design in the place of a dialogue between chance and necessity,” writes biochemist Franklin Harold. “But at the same time, we must admit that, apart from fruitless speculation, to this day no one has been able to offer a detailed Darwinian mechanism for the evolution of any biochemical system.”

Like this: we refuse on principle, and that's it! Just like Martin Luther: "Here I stand and I can't help it!" But the leader of the Reformation at least justified his position with 95 theses, and here there is only one bare principle, dictated by blind worship of the dominant dogma, and nothing more. I believe, Lord!

Even more problematic is the neo-Darwinian theory of the spontaneous generation of life. To Darwin's credit, he did not touch on this topic at all. His book is about the origin of species, not life. But the followers of the founder went a step further and offered an evolutionary explanation for the very phenomenon of life. According to the naturalistic model, the barrier between inanimate nature and life was overcome spontaneously due to a combination of favorable environmental conditions.

However, the concept of spontaneous generation of life is built on sand, because it is in flagrant contradiction with one of the most fundamental laws of nature - the second law of thermodynamics. It says that in a closed system (in the absence of a purposeful supply of energy from the outside), entropy inevitably increases, i.e. the level of organization or degree of complexity of such a system is inexorably reduced. And the reverse process is impossible.

The great English astrophysicist Stephen Hawking in his book “A Brief History of Time” writes: “According to the second law of thermodynamics, the entropy of an isolated system always and in all cases increases, and when two systems merge, the entropy of the combined system is higher than the sum of the entropies of the individual systems included in it” . Hawking adds: “In any closed system, the level of disorganization, i.e. entropy inevitably increases with time.

But if entropic decay is the fate of any system, then the possibility of spontaneous generation of life is absolutely excluded; spontaneous increase in the level of organization of the system when a biological barrier is broken. The spontaneous generation of life under any circumstances must be accompanied by an increase in the degree of complexity of the system at the molecular level, and entropy prevents this. Chaos cannot by itself give rise to order, this is forbidden by the law of nature.

Another blow was dealt to the concept of spontaneous generation of life by information theory. In Darwin's time, science believed that the cell was just a primitive container filled with protoplasm. However, with the development of molecular biology, it became clear that a living cell is a mechanism of incredible complexity, carrying an incomprehensible amount of information. But information itself does not arise out of nothing. According to the law of conservation of information, its amount in a closed system never and under no circumstances increases. External pressure may cause a “shuffling” of information already available in the system, but its total volume will remain at the same level or decrease due to an increase in entropy.

In short, as the world famous English physicist, astronomer and science fiction writer Sir Fred Hoyle writes: “There is not a shred of objective evidence in favor of the hypothesis that life spontaneously originated in the organic soup on our earth.” Hoyle's co-author, astrobiologist Chandra Wykramasingh, expressed the same idea more eloquently: "The chance of spontaneous generation of life is as slim as the chance of a hurricane wind sweeping over a junkyard to scavenge a serviceable airliner in one rush."

Many other proofs can be cited that refute attempts to present evolution as a universal mechanism for the origin and development of life in all its diversity. But even the facts presented, I think, are sufficient to show the predicament in which the teachings of Darwin found themselves.

And how do the champions of evolution react to all this? Some of them, in particular Francis Crick (who shared the Nobel Prize with James Watson for the discovery of the structure of DNA), became disillusioned with Darwinism and believed that life on earth was brought from space. This idea was first put forward more than a century ago by another Nobel laureate, the outstanding Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius, who proposed the “panspermia” hypothesis.

However, supporters of the theory of seeding the earth with life germs from outer space do not notice or prefer not to notice that such an approach only pushes the problem one step further, but by no means solves it. Let's assume that life is really brought from space, but then the question arises: where did it come from - did it spontaneously arise or was it created?

Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasingh, who share this view, found a gracefully ironic way out. Having given in his book "Evolution from Space" (Evolution from Space) a lot of arguments in favor of the hypothesis that life was brought to our planet from outside, Sir Fred and his co-author ask: how did life originate there, outside the earth? And they answer: it is known how - it was created by the Almighty. In other words, the authors make it clear that they have set themselves a narrow task and are not going to go beyond it, it is too tough for them.

However, the majority of evolutionists categorically reject any attempts to cast a shadow on their teaching. The intelligent design hypothesis, like a red rag, which is teased by a bull, causes them paroxysms of unbridled (it is tempting to say - animal) rage. The evolutionary biologist Richard von Sternberg, who did not share the concept of intelligent design, nevertheless allowed a scientific article to be published in his journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington in support of this hypothesis. After that, such a flurry of abuse, curses and threats hit the editor that he was forced to turn to the FBI for protection.

The position of the evolutionists was eloquently summed up by one of the most vociferous Darwinists, the English zoologist Richard Dawkins: “It can be stated with absolute certainty that anyone who does not believe in evolution is either an ignoramus, or a fool, or an insane person (or maybe a bastard, although in the last don't want to believe it). This phrase alone is enough to lose all respect for Dawkins. Like orthodox Marxists waging war on revisionism, Darwinists do not argue with opponents, but denounce them; do not debate with them, but anathematize them.

This is the classic mainstream reaction to a challenge from a dangerous heresy. Such a comparison is quite appropriate. Like Marxism, Darwinism has long since degenerated, petrified and turned into an inert pseudo-religious dogma. Yes, by the way, that's what they called it - Marxism in biology. Karl Max himself enthusiastically welcomed Darwin's theory as "the natural-scientific basis of the class struggle in history."

And the more gaps are found in the dilapidated teaching, the more violent the resistance of its adherents. Their material well-being and spiritual comfort are under threat, their entire universe is collapsing, and there is no anger more unrestrained than the wrath of the faithful, whose faith is crumbling under the blows of inexorable reality. They will cling to their beliefs with teeth and nails and stand to the last. For when an idea dies, it is reborn into an ideology, and an ideology is absolutely intolerant of competition.