G. Yu

Biological crises and social analogies

Is the theory of evolution a “birthmark” of the 19th century?

From my acquaintances with a liberal arts education, I often hear: “Evolution? Darwinism? Do you, in biology, still take this theory seriously? Isn't it rejected yet? It's something so outdated ... "

Why scientific theory causes this attitude? Perhaps this is the result of the forced confession of Darwinism in the Soviet era: in order to undermine confidence in something, it is necessary to make this “something” publicly available, or better yet, obligatory. Only the secret seems important. In fact, the "Darwinian" theory of evolution is one of the most significant achievements of the natural sciences and one of the greatest (and still not fully appreciated) achievements of human culture.

Twenty or thirty years ago it was fashionable to say that there are "one-story" and "multi-story" sciences. Multi-storey is, of course, "Her Majesty" physics. From the basic concepts that lie in its foundation, whole corpuses of more particular theories have grown, with their own complex methods and intricate corridors of consequences and principles. And biology is a one-story science, all there is is that a sea of \u200b\u200bfacts and one floor of theory is Darwinism.

But today, biological theory has grown enormously. Dull barracks of the same type of explanations were replaced by a whimsical abundance of turrets, covered passages, courtyards closed from prying eyes. And among them multi-storey buildings rise molecular biology and population genetics, half-forgotten labyrinths of morphology and taxonomy theory stretch ... As in physics, today's ecologists do not understand phylogenetics, and those - embryologists ... So we have grown up!

In this "modern building", the theory of evolution has long ceased to be Darwinism - it, in its classical form, really belongs to the 19th century. By now, the very appearance of this theory has changed - it is simply impossible to talk about all its "superstructures" and "alterations". Let's try to arrange an excursion only to one of the youngest additions to the building of biological theory.

Competition, progress and specialization dead ends

The appearance of the classical "Darwinian" theory of evolution necessarily includes the thesis about the "survival of the fittest" ... In the 19th century. this thesis literally "was in the air", and it is not surprising that from the sociology of Malthus he moved to biological theory, and then and vice versa - the mechanism of interaction of species developed by Darwin began to be considered in relation to social life. Even such an amusing trend appeared - social Darwinism. It was seriously believed that the one who is more adapted will win in the "life struggle": a good specialist will win in the competition of a bad one, high-quality goods are unreliable (and cheap) goods, a society of "white collars" will always win a society of "unwashed necks". Good old nineteenth century ...

However, later, from such a situation, they deduced the inevitability of progress and growth in the well-being of the masses, up to the inconceivable simple language limits. The Bright Communist Future and the Great American Dream were unanimous in this.

The difficulty, both in the Darwinian theory itself and in attempts to apply its provisions to social life, caused the existence of such a concept as the "impasse of specialization." Its meaning is very simple. If you want to climb higher, then moving exclusively up is not the best strategy. Because when you get to the top, it may be the top of the nearest bump or hillock. Where you will stay, looking out over the towering mountain peaks. After all, to get to them, you must first go down. Sometimes to the bottom of a deep abyss.

Likewise, the striving for perfection in one direction - specialization - "drives" the species into a certain state most suitable for this direction. True, even in such a state, you can live comfortably for quite a long time - until conditions change radically environment... Nevertheless, the history of the development of life on Earth shows us examples of continuous improvement. Reaching the “nearest peak” does not stop progress - someone moves on and reaches new heights.

Another important point is the presence of facts that do not really support the theory of survival of the fittest, examples of a decrease in the number of specialized forms with a simultaneous increase in the number of non-specialized forms.

So, in the Oligocene (geological era, which is approximately 20-35 million years apart from our time) in North America the number of didelfid marsupials (relatives of the modern opossum) - rather weak specialists - increased. And the number good specialists, for example, creodonts (extinct large carnivores), decreased. And only after that, modern groups begin to occupy a dominant position in the North American fauna: predators - dogs and cats, insectivores - hedgehogs, moles and shrews.

In South America, nonspecialists diddelphids dominated even in the Cretaceous period - about 80 million years ago, and then, “as it should be”, more specialized groups began to displace them: carnivorous and insectivorous marsupials of other groups, as well as terrestrial crocodiles and large flightless birds of prey fororakos ... By the Miocene (about 15 million years ago) there was a community of perfectly adapted forms, remarkable specialists in their fields, closely linked by biocenotic ties with each other. But then, in the Miocene, the number of these species began to decline against the background of an increase in the number of the same weakly specialized didelphids.

True, throughout the history of the Earth, South America was sometimes connected with the North Isthmus of Panama, then it turned out to be cut off when this isthmus was flooded by the sea. So some changes in the fauna of this continent can be explained by the periodic influx of migrants from the north. But the Miocene increase in the number of didelphids began long before the next invasion from the north. "Professionals" disappeared for no apparent reason, and instead of them all kinds of gol and shantrap multiplied, lovers of easy living, who really did not know how to do anything.

From the point of view of the conventional theory of evolution, this is simply nonsense: a strong specialist, protected from all the blows of the environment from head to toe, is defeated by someone completely inept. David and Goliath. Is there any way to explain this?

What happened in the Mesozoic?

True, in the history of life on Earth there have been quite a few crises, accompanied by the extinction of various groups of animals and plants. Of these, the most famous not-so-significant event is the extinction of the dinosaurs. In fact, there was no such thing that some dinosaurs, and only dinosaurs, became extinct overnight. But it was different: at the end of the Mesozoic (about 60 million years ago) there was the extinction of several groups of reptiles, of which the most characteristic were dinosaurs. There have been reductions in the number of dinosaurs before, but then one of their groups was replaced by others. At the end of the Mesozoic, dinosaurs in communities were finally replaced by other groups of animals.

Why are they so fond of talking and writing about this event? Because this is a bright topic - dinosaurs were so big, and suddenly they became extinct. “Big” is from a thriller, “suddenly” is from a detective story, and that's why it's interesting. However, in this formulation, the problem of the extinction of dinosaurs is more literary than biological.

Meanwhile, several tens of millions of years before this extinction - in the first half of the Jurassic - life on Earth went through a much deeper crisis. Then there was a unique in scale reduction in the diversity of terrestrial tetrapods (tetrapods): amphibians, dinosaurs and other reptiles - pterosaurs, crocodiles, lizards, as well as mammalian ancestors.

At the same time, in the Jurassic there were no global climatic changes that could lead to such an ecological crisis. It seems that there were no cosmic catastrophes either: such catastrophes should have affected all groups of animals and plants, but this has not been noticed.

Survival strategy and the collapse of communities

Analyzing the Jurassic extinction of the community of terrestrial tetrapods, Russian paleontologists V.V. Zherikhin and A.S. Rautian nominated new theory ecological evolution.

As you know, in nature, most organisms are united into communities, or biocenoses. It is these communities that ensure the sustainable existence of life on Earth. Organisms are constantly exposed to solar radiation, various chemicals, temperature - in short, factors leading to mutations that change the hereditary material. And with a change in structure, the requirements of organisms to the environment, to the surrounding community conditions, also change. But the community itself, the structure of the ties that have developed in it, regulates such deviations, returning changes to the norm. After all, there are no places for evolutionary innovations in a good sustainable community, all ecological niches are already occupied here.

It so happens that by providing its members with a stable existence, the community at the same time inhibits phylogenesis, i.e. the emergence of new taxa - species and other taxonomic groups. Moreover, over time, the rigid structure of the community becomes more rigid, and its constituent species-specialists - more and more specialized.

But here comes the unexpected - a crisis. The reason for it may be external, "obvious", consisting in a sharp change in environmental conditions, such as global climate change or the fall of an asteroid. But it can also be internal, a consequence of inconsistencies arising during the specialization of certain types, especially dangerous in communities with a rigid structure. With a certain accumulation of such inconsistencies, the community disintegrates. And it disintegrates according to certain regularities, precisely in the "places of inconsistencies" - regardless of what the nature of the external shock was (comet, volcano, cooling) and whether there was such a shock at all. In any case, it breaks where it is thin.

To be continued

How does a scientific one come from folk taxonomy? How are scientific concepts born, arbitrarily invented, rationally constructed, or occur in some other way? How are terms created from ordinary words? How does science appear, what is needed for the emergence of a method of scientific knowledge? It is probably impossible to answer these questions in full, but it is already possible to give several pictures of how this happens, in the light of recent changes in our ideas about the history of science. The development of botany, the scientific revolution associated with the names of Cesalpino and Linnaeus is a meaningful topic, by the example of which these difficult questions are revealed.

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company liters.

In the XVII century. a unique event in world history took place - the birth of modern science. The significance of this civilizational invention can hardly be overestimated. We do not eat bread or meat now, we eat and drink science, and 7 billion of the world's population live on science. A very rough estimate of how many people the Earth can feed in natural state, - the first hundreds of thousands of people. This should be approximately the number of our species, if we try to proceed only from biology. At the end of the Paleolithic, about 15 thousand years ago, about 3 million people lived on Earth. At the end of the Neolithic, 2000 BC. e., people were about 50 million. In the XVII century. people on the planet, there were approximately 600 million. After that, a lot of things happened, here and the "green revolution", and genetically modified plants, and modern medicine. In the XVIII century. the first demographic jump took place, followed by several more.

In general, we can say that the current population of the planet without modern science, which has created social institutions of medicine, food production, etc., simply could not be maintained. The point is not that decisively every person on the planet "eats science" - but if you stop the development of science and retreat, there will be a catastrophic drop in numbers, and it is easy to imagine the consequences - these are, first of all, large-scale wars. So the “same” social system will not remain, and in this sense, we all, humanity as a system, all feed on science. The system turned out to be very effective - now there are about 6 million scientists on the planet, the population is three orders of magnitude larger. Of course, not only scientists are included in the social system of science, but ultimately it is these 6 million people who are involved.

This means that we all, regardless of the way of life and existing sympathies, live by the fruits of a special social institution - science. It is clear that we are extremely interested in how this happened. Can we repeat this on occasion? Do we know the reasons? Did it really happen once? Are these reasons still valid? There can be a lot of questions.

Studies in the history of science have shown that, although the level of craft production, population density, the intensity of trade contacts, and many other indicators more than once in the history of the Earth turned out to be comparable to what was achieved in Europe in the 17th century, science appeared only once. Once, but many times at once. It turned out that different areas of knowledge had their own scientific revolutions, not related to each other. In mechanics and optics, there was a revolution of its own, in biology - its own, in linguistics - another one, there were not so few of them. Then they intertwined into something more or less united, although the "scars", or boundaries of division, remained in plain sight - the systems of knowledge that we call the humanities, natural and mathematical sciences are hardly homogeneous. Most likely, we have before us "three sciences", three different types of knowledge, on rather vague grounds combined into something single. And maybe there are even more of them.

Science has appeared several times in a row, and this allows us to compare different ways of origin and to note the characteristic features and sets of ideas that in each case led to the formation of science. But the most famous and long considered exemplary scientific revolution is the revolution in physics, mechanics and optics, associated with the names of Galileo, Kepler and Newton. Usually the conversation goes in such a way as if first there was a revolution in physics, and then other sciences began to branch off from it, so that the events of the 17th century. in physics should be regarded as a permanent example of the emergence of science. From this point of view, such a particular area as the systematics of living organisms is far on the periphery of science, far from fundamental physics, and therefore it is as if initially clear that everything in it was about the same, only weaker and less frequent, so what to expect from there is nothing particularly interesting to study this area.

However, the revolution in the field of biological taxonomy, even more broadly, the revolution in biological knowledge, took place almost earlier than the revolution in physics. And inside biology (there was no such science yet, the name appeared a century and a half later) there were also several revolutions, Harvey's physiology, say, developed independently of the successes of botany. But the entire biological field developed independently of the successes of mechanics, so that the biological scientific revolution is an independent history of the emergence of science. This makes it possible to compare independent scientific traditions, assess the fruitfulness of certain ideas that find themselves in a different environment, applied to a different material.

It is clear that the scientific tradition, the emergence of which we will consider - scientific systematics, the allocation of living scientific objects perceived as an object of scientific knowledge - developed from some non-scientific, pre-scientific state. And we will be interested, first of all, in the history of how it happened that something else developed from knowledge that we would not attribute to science. It now seems that science is “just” rational knowledge, or “just” empirical, that it was only necessary to pay attention to experience, discard superstitions and everything will work out right away. In fact, the history of rationalism is at least a couple of thousand years older than science, and reliance on experience, empiricism is an eternal companion of human knowledge. Why and how were they able to unite in what is called science? Are Reason and Experience Enough for Science to Begin?

To answer such questions, one should turn to very deep foundations of knowledge - after all, modern biology works with a ready-made object, isolated in nature: living organisms. It is believed that objects of biology - plants, animals - obviously exist. This is not questioned, the ways of their structure, behavior, change are being studied. But before there was neither the science of biology, nor the concept of "living being" in the modern scientific sense, there was no "plant" as a subject of scientific knowledge. All these concepts developed together - a new area of \u200b\u200bintellectual activity appeared - science, a separate science of living things arose, and at the same time the subject of this science appeared for the first time.

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The given introductory fragment of the book The birth of science. Analytical morphology, classification system, scientific method (G. Yu. Lyubarsky, 2015) provided by our book partner -

See my impressions of his previous book "The Birth of Science", and I will try not to repeat what has already been said there (these books naturally overlap).

1. I am usually not inclined to admire erudition, especially since in our crazy world it is confused with the ability to play "What? Where? When?", And thus, some complete idiots acquire a reputation as the greatest erudite. But the erudition of G.Yu. really shocking and delightful, because it is - erudition in the case. Plots are organized, they are connected by a branched system thoughts... Here, of course, there is also a danger: at times it seems that delicious raisins have been picked out of the history and philosophy of science, and that what does not work for the author's concept is crumbled to birds. It seems to me that from this book it is dangerous to form the impression "how people in general thought", but it is very clear from it how G.Yu. And, since he thinks great, this is not a minus, but a plus.

2. It is a real delight to read the story of constructive misunderstanding in the first chapters. How people, swearing by the name of Aristotle, turned inside out those scraps that remained of his writings after a long chain of translations, and, thinking that they were breaking through to the true Aristotle and engaged in interpretation and commentary, generated radically new ideas. A common story, but somehow few people understand it. I note that along the way there are scattered a lot of interesting remarks about historical process in general, with special emphasis on the colossal practical importance of very abstract (in the opinion modern mantormented by narzan and general secondary education) of philosophical and theological concepts. Very roughly, it directly follows from them who will conquer whom, who will become whose colony in hundreds of years, and so on and so forth.

3. The main plot of the book, as I understood it, is a plot about universals, about reality and unreality general concepts... This "main European dispute", according to G.Yu., ended in a decisive and crushing victory of the nominalists, which determined the appearance of European culture and civilization for hundreds of years to come. Very roughly formulating the author's thought, as I understood it: people have created an extremely effective science in an instrumental sense, but have completely forgotten how to think (because it is impossible to think about single things, thinking about each cat separately is not enough to think about). Humanity is now reaping the consequences of both.

4. To me, as a physicist, the dispute about the reality of biological taxa reminds me of the dispute about the reality of the wave function in quantum mechanics. Not so long ago, we made an attempt to formalize the well-known saying "Quantum mechanics speaks not about the atomic world, but about our understanding of the atomic world", within the framework of the logical inference approach:
Quantum theory as the most robust description of reproducible experiments. Our wave function is literally built from two bricks: inference probability (\u003d plausibility) (our idea) and action (about the atomic world). Most likely, the same bullshit is with taxa. Especially this analogy is suggested by the emphasized G.Yu. the assertion that taxonomy gives stability to the picture of the world: from variability without shores, overwhelming us at the level of individual organisms, we move on to a stable, compact and clearly organized picture at the level of higher taxa. It is the requirement of robustness that is key in our approach.

5. In general, an attempt to think seriously about the subsidence of complexity and the formation of patterns on physical and chemical material immediately runs into the problem of hierarchy. Patterns do arise at several levels at once, and we do not seem to seriously understand this. It is generally accepted that the explanation is contained in the concept of self-organized criticality, but there is a nuance. Hierarchy in Baku is fractal, that is, self-similar. "What is above, so below." Real layering is not self-similar. We do not seem to know how to describe such a situation.

6. We are working on it, cho. We'll let you know how something works out. At the same time, therefore, the reality of taxa will become clear.

7. A very important plot in the book is the merono-taxonomic inconsistency and the associated impossibility of an unambiguous and consistent classification. Here physics also has something to say, similar problems can be found even in crystallography. For example, at normal pressure among alkali metals - clearly a well-established group of similar elements - the structure of the BCC ground state for potassium, rubidium and cesium, and 9R for lithium and sodium. It is also called the "structure of samarium". Where is that samarium and where is lithium? Here you can dig further, but this is clearly not a Live-Facebook format.

8. To summarize: a great book, awakens thought (for those who have something to wake up). Respect and respect to author, peshi ischo.

M .: KMK, 2000 .-- 449 p. - ISBN 5-87317-079-7 The book illustrates the application of the undeservedly forgotten comparative method in global and private historical research. The complex interaction of historical processes of a global nature, such as Westernization, with the characteristics of individual societies, determine the specific morphology of history - those forms of development of societies that we observe. As a result of the morphological study of history, it is found that psychological characteristics people change from era to era. The consequences of these mental changes are many social, political, economic processes, and it is with them that the periodization of the history of mankind is connected. In connection with the natural change in the characters of the people and civilizations participating in the historical process, the structure of society also changes at each historical stage. The book examines the interaction of parts of modern society; culture, state, economy. The morphological approach to history allows us to explore the failed versions of history, to characterize those historical opportunities and forks that took place in the past and await us in the future. The book is addressed to historians, philosophers, sociologists, culturologists, political scientists and a wide range of readers. The method of historical research: a comparative method.
Comparative method in historical research. Own time. Morphology of society.
Harmony of the spheres. The triune formula of social structure. State. Economy. Culture. Free cultural life: continuity and education. University. Ecology of culture. Diversity of culture. Homological series of historical phenomena.
Borrowing. Fashion. Steresis. Waves of Westernization. Chimeras. Modernization. Feudalism and the formation of nation states.
Three spheres in feudalism. The Development of Feudalism: Fugue and Variations. Features of European feudalism. The origin of chivalry. Romano-Germanic synthesis. Comparison of European chivalry with its eastern counterpart. Germanic folk character and feudalism. Folk characters and their characteristics. Features of European development in other areas of culture. Scholasticism and the development of the "spirit of Protestantism". Changing the concept of nationality. Formation of nation states. Control of violence. Merging in the 15th century. statehood and nationality. Decomposition of nationality into components. The wave of the formation of nation states. Nationalization scheme. Ring of Time Change of the human soul as the cause of historical change.
A number of homologies in culture. Renaissance Variations. Eastern Renaissance. Personalization of personality. A new attitude towards nature, death, body, sex. The birth of the landscape. Inner life. Floor. Travels. Mystic. Metaphor of judgment. Birth modern philosophy... The sequence of styles in art. The place of the "Russian revival". Reformation. "Pre-Reformation". Cluny Reform. "Russian Reformation" and Schism. Individuation of religious life. Folk feeling. The boundaries of eras.
Changes in the human soul at the boundaries of historical eras. Stages of development of the soul. Genealogical tree of cultures. The Crisis of Polis Consciousness: The Peloponnesian War. The crisis of Chinese consciousness under Confucius. Sophists. The Crisis of Polis Consciousness: Rome. Directed time religions. Changing ideas about time. The phenomenon of non-authorship. Natural and artificial culture. Education: non-universities. Sport. The science. Asian Science. Characteristics of the second thinking. Serfdom and the absolute state.
The payment for freedom. Charter of Liberties and the Extension of Privileges. Abolition of serfdom. Serfdom in Russia. The era of revolutions. Japanese miracle. Japanese national character. Absolutism: Empires of the New Time. Bureaucracy: features of a new society. Causes of absolutism. The Formation of Empires. Human History as a Special Case of Development.
The laws of development and the three-part social whole. German Shift and Russian Heterochrony. Polarity: West and East. Gradient. Development as a whole. Democratic society. Prognostic concepts arising from the morphology of history.