Global evolutionism and the modern scientific picture of the world is a topic that many researchers have devoted their works to. It is now becoming more and more popular as it addresses the most important issues in science.
The concept of global (universal) evolutionism suggests that the structure of the world is consistently improving. The world in it is considered as an integrity, which allows us to talk about the unity of the general laws of being and makes it possible to make the universe "commensurate" with a person, to correlate it with him. The concept of global evolutionism, its history, basic principles and concepts are discussed in this article.
Backstory
The idea of the development of the world is one of the most important in European civilization. In its simplest forms (Kantian cosmogony, epigenesis, preformism), it penetrated natural science as early as the 18th century. Already the 19th century can rightfully be called the century of evolution. Theoretical modeling of objects,characterized by development, began to pay great attention first in geology, and then in biology and sociology.
Teachings of Charles Darwin, research of G. Spencer
Charles Darwin was the first to apply the principle of evolutionism to the realm of reality, thus laying the foundations of modern theoretical biology. Herbert Spencer made an attempt to project his ideas onto sociology. This scientist proved that the evolutionary concept can be applied to various areas of the world that do not belong to the subject of biology. However, classical natural science as a whole did not accept this idea. Evolving systems have long been considered by scientists as a random deviation resulting from local perturbations. Physicists have made the first attempt to extend this concept beyond the social and biological sciences by hypothesizing that the universe is expanding.
Big Bang Concept
The data obtained by astronomers confirmed the inconsistency of the opinion about the stationarity of the Universe. Scientists have found that it has been developing since the Big Bang, which, according to the assumption, provided the energy for its development. This concept appeared in the 40s of the last century, and in the 1970s it was finally established. Thus, evolutionary ideas penetrated into cosmology. The concept of the Big Bang significantly changed the idea of how matter arose in the Universe.
Only towards the end of the 20th centurynatural science has received methodological and theoretical means for the formation of a unified model of evolution, the discovery of the general laws of nature that bind the appearance of the Universe, the solar system, the planet Earth, life and, finally, man and society into one whole. Universal (global) evolutionism is such a model.
Rise of global evolutionism
In the early 80s of the last century, the concept of interest to us entered modern philosophy. Global evolutionism began to be considered for the first time in the study of integrative phenomena in science, which are associated with the generalization of evolutionary knowledge accumulated in various branches of natural science. For the first time, this term began to define the desire of such disciplines as geology, biology, physics and astronomy to generalize the mechanisms of evolution, to extrapolate. At least, this is the meaning that was invested in the concept of interest to us at first.
Academician N. N. Moiseev pointed out that global evolutionism can bring scientists closer to resolving the issue of meeting the interests of the biosphere and humanity in order to prevent a global ecological catastrophe. The discussion was conducted not only within the framework of methodological science. It is not surprising, because the idea of global evolutionism has a special ideological load, in contrast to traditional evolutionism. The latter, as you remember, was laid down in the writings of Charles Darwin.
Global evolutionism and the modern scientific picture of the world
Currently, many estimates of the idea that interests us in the development of the scientific worldview are alternative. In particular, the opinion was expressed that global evolutionism should form the basis of the scientific picture of the world, since it integrates the sciences of man and nature. In other words, it was emphasized that this concept is of fundamental importance in the development of modern natural science. Global evolutionism today is a systematic formation. As V. S. Stepin notes, in modern science, his positions are gradually becoming the dominant feature of the synthesis of knowledge. This is the core idea that permeates special worldviews. Global evolutionism, according to V. S. Stepin, is a global research program that sets the research strategy. Currently, it exists in many versions and variants, characterized by different levels of conceptual elaboration: from unsubstantiated statements that fill ordinary consciousness to expanded concepts that consider in detail the entire course of the evolution of the world.
The essence of global evolutionism
The appearance of this concept is connected with the expansion of the boundaries of the evolutionary approach accepted in the social and biological sciences. The fact of the existence of qualitative leaps to the biological, and from it to the social world, is largely a mystery. It can be comprehended only by assuming the necessity of such transitions between other types of movement. In other words, based on the fact of the existence of the evolution of the world at the later stages of history, it can be assumed that it as a whole is an evolutionary system. This means that as a result of a consistent change, all other types of movement were formed, in addition tosocial and biological.
This statement can be considered as the most general formulation of what global evolutionism is. Let us briefly outline its main principles. This will help you better understand what is being said.
Guidelines
The paradigm we are interested in made itself felt as a well-formed concept and an important component of the modern picture of the world in the last third of the last century in the works of specialists in cosmology (A. D. Ursula, N. N. Moiseeva).
According to N. N. Moiseev, the following basic principles underlie global evolutionism:
- The universe is a single self-developing system.
- Development of systems, their evolution is directional: it follows the path of increasing their diversity, complicating these systems, and reducing their stability.
- Random factors that influence development are inevitably present in all evolutionary processes.
- Heredity dominates the Universe: the present and the future depend on the past, but they are not unambiguously determined by it.
- Considering the dynamics of the world as a constant selection, in which the system chooses the most real from many different virtual states.
- The presence of bifurcation states is not denied, as a result, further evolution becomes fundamentally unpredictable, since random factors act during the transition period.
Universe in conceptglobal evolutionism
The Universe in it appears as a natural whole, developing in time. Global evolutionism is the idea according to which the entire history of the Universe is considered as a single process. Cosmic, biological, chemical and social types of evolution in it are interconnected successively and genetically.
Interaction with various fields of knowledge
Evolutionism is the most important component of the evolutionary-synergetic paradigm in modern science. It is understood not in the traditional sense (Darwinian), but through the idea of universal (global) evolutionism.
The primary task of developing the concept that interests us is to overcome the gaps between different areas of being. Its supporters concentrate on those areas of knowledge that can be extrapolated to the entire universe and that could link different fragments of being into a kind of unity. Such disciplines are evolutionary biology, thermodynamics, and more recently it has made a great contribution to global evolutionism and synergetics.
However, the concept that interests us at the same time reveals contradictions between the second law of thermodynamics and the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin. The latter proclaims the selection of states and forms of the living, the strengthening of order, and the first - the growth of the measure of chaos (entropy).
The problem of the anthropic principle
Global evolutionism emphasizes that the development of the world whole is aimed at increasing the structural organization. According toof this concept, the entire history of the Universe is a single process of self-organization, evolution, self-development of matter. Global evolutionism is a principle that requires a deep understanding of the logic of the development of the Universe, the cosmic order of things. This concept currently has multi-sided coverage. Scientists consider its axiological, logical-methodological and ideological aspects. The problem of the anthropic principle is of particular interest. Discussions on this issue are still ongoing. This principle is closely related to the idea of global evolutionism. It is often regarded as the most modern version of it.
The anthropic principle is that the emergence of mankind was possible due to certain large-scale properties of the Universe. If they were different, then there would be no one to know the world. This principle was put forward by B. Carter several decades ago. According to him, there is a relationship between the existence of intelligence in the universe and its parameters. This led to the question of how the parameters of our world are random, how much they are interconnected. What happens if there is a slight change? As the analysis showed, even a slight change in the basic physical parameters will lead to the fact that life, and hence the mind, simply cannot exist in the Universe.
Carter expressed the relationship between the appearance of intelligence in the universe and its parameters in a strong and weak formulation. The weak anthropic principle only states the fact thatthe conditions existing in it do not contradict the existence of man. The strong anthropic principle implies a more rigid relationship. The universe, according to him, must be such that at a certain stage of development, the existence of observers is allowed in it.
Coevolution
In the theory of global evolutionism, such a concept as "co-evolution" is very important. This term is used to denote a new stage in which the existence of man and nature is coordinated. The concept of co-evolution is based on the fact that people, changing the biosphere in order to adapt it to their needs, must change themselves in order to meet the objective requirements of nature. This concept in a concentrated form expresses the experience of mankind in the course of history, which contains certain imperatives and regulations of socio-natural interaction.
In closing
Global evolutionism and the modern picture of the world is a very hot topic in natural science. In this article, only the main issues and concepts were considered. The problems of global evolutionism, if desired, can be studied for a very long time.
