Brief description of the species Homo sapiens. Questions and tasks for preparing for seminars What is the uniqueness of the Homo sapiens species

Nosce te ipsum.

Type: Chordates;
Subtype: Vertebrates;
Class: Mammals;
Subclass: Placental;
Order: Primates;
Family: Hominid;
Species: Homo sapiens;

Homo sapiens within a macro herd and herds are subdivided into smaller groups. Of these groups, one of the smallest subunits are, as homo sapiens are called, "families", from a scientific point of view - microherds. Inside the so-called "families" they retain the appearance of kinship and goodwill, and therefore, to an inexperienced biologist or a simple observer, it may seem that homo sapiens take care of each other, but this is a delusion. One of the distinguishing features of Homo sapiens is the ability to lie and hypocrisy, perhaps this is a consequence of their low development.

There is a fear of following one’s own opinion if it contradicts the conventional norms (“laws”, if you like) of their culture or subculture (macrostuds, herds, or microstuds). However, they try to find like-minded people (according to scientific research in the field of neurophysiology and related areas, the only the concept of "unireflexics" is correct, due to the complete, or almost complete absence of mental activity in this species of animals), which is explained by the same herd instinct. Subsequently, a small population of Homo sapiens muster up the courage and decide to defend their way of life. Of course, due to the low intelligence of the representatives of the species, the methods of defending the interests are stupid and illogical (for example: the so-called "gay parades" are observed, the essence of which is noisy movement across a certain part of the range of this species).

Speech is often slurred, poorly delivered, verbal communication is reinforced with even more incomprehensible gestures. Because the level of development is extremely low, they use a small set of ways to exchange information. And yet they often fail to understand.

There is a clear hierarchy in the herd, however, not a single step is devoid of the above-described lies and hypocrisy. Thus, in view of the impudence and inflated self-esteem described earlier, many believe in their significance in the collective unconscious, the higher levels of the hierarchy reinforce the faith of the lower levels, but they themselves believe (and are more right) only in their significance in the underdeveloped herd of Homo sapiens.

Homo sapiens are afraid of conflicts, but they are preparing for them with all their might (the invention of technological and biological weapons), very often greed for new territories and influence prevails over fear (in connection with which most intra-herd conflicts occur, more often global ones, exceptions are conflicts caused by the reproduction reflex expressed in attempts to attract the attention of the female; however, there are cases of global intra-herd conflicts due to the fault of human females and the reproductive instinct of males). I want to complete a brief overview of the life of the species Homo sapiens.

I also consider it necessary to note other features of this species: they are unpretentious in food (they can digest everything that does not dissolve their cells, tissues, organs and organ systems, many vitamins and minerals can be neglected), high reproduction rate under any conditions (it is enough to provide at least one male and one female the opportunity to have close contact with each other, in any, preferably limited space, in any conditions suitable for life), are very lazy, afraid of change and make decisions on their own (despite the fact that they strive for freedom), as well as generally cowardly representatives of the fauna. All these qualities contribute to the comfortable breeding and cultivation of Homo sapiens in an artificial environment. However, despite the described positive characteristics of the species, one should not forget about the totality of their life activity.

Thus, the Homo sapiens species is highly discouraged for breeding and use, moreover, the complete total extermination of the above-described animal species is recommended.

Thank you very much for your attention.

The structure of the species of Homo sapiens

Remark 1

The Homo sapiens species appeared about 200 thousand years ago on the territory of the African continent and was represented by the only population with an area in the central western region of Africa. During the period of its existence, the species carried out numerous migrations around the planet and eventually became a cosmopolitan, i.e. spread everywhere. Homo sapiens is currently divided into 3 races:

• caucasoid,
• mongoloid,
• equatorial.

Criteria for the species Homo sapiens

1. Morphological. The type of a reasonable person has a similar external structure. There are so-called anthropometric indicators - height, weight, brain volume and some others. So a reasonable person of the modern type has a height of about 140-190 cm, weight 50-100 kg, brain volume $ 1000-1850 \ cm ^ 3. $
2. Geographical. This species lives in certain places on the planet Earth, since a reasonable species is a cosmopolitan, respectively, its range is the entire globe with the exception of Antarctica. However, there is some tendency for human settlement, in particular, this species settles mainly in flat places with a temperate or tropical climate, near the sea or a reservoir.
3. Ecological. All individuals of the species Homo sapiens are interconnected with the surrounding living and non-living environment in the same way. So all individuals have similar trophic (food) relationships, topical (habitat), phoric (distribution), factory (dwelling) and other relationships. However, depending on the specific population, these relationships can differ significantly. So the diet of the Eskimos of Greenland and the Bedouins of Africa practically does not coincide. Therefore, man is a highly eurybiont species (i.e., an organism with a wide range of adaptation to the environment).
4. Molecular genetic. All individuals of a species have a single molecular genetic structure. So the diploid set of chromosomes is 46, the haploid 23, respectively.
5. Physiological and biochemical. All individuals have similar physiological and biochemical processes in the body. The systems of respiration, digestion, reproduction, excretion, etc. function in the same way. There are also some modifications depending on the population. For example, the majority of Europeans have the ability to digest milk lactose and, on the contrary, a minority of Southeast Asians are able to digest this disaccharide.
6. Histological and cytological. All individuals of the species have a single tissue and cellular structure. A person is characterized by 4 types of tissues: nervous, connective, epithelial, muscle, which are arranged and function in all people in the same way. All cells that make up tissue are also arranged and function as one. The difference can be, for example, due to the peculiarities of the habitat, so melatonin in the skin of Negroids is contained in much greater quantities than in the skin of Caucasians, due to the fact that the latter live in conditions of insignificant radiation exposure from the Sun.
7. reproductive. All people have intrauterine development, the period of bearing offspring is 9 months, care for offspring, feeding and education for a long period is typical. Family formation for the period of raising children or longer.
8. Ethological (behavioral). Similarity in behavior to meet their needs. This criterion is currently the most socialized. According to him, now a person differs significantly depending on his status in society.
9. Historical (evolutionary). All individuals of the Homo sapiens species have a similar origin in the process of anthropogenesis and descended from a single ancestor of Homo erectus.

Features of Homo sapiens as a biological species.

Hypercephalization - hypertrophic development of the brain. The dimensions of the human brain (on average 1300-1600 g) significantly (about three times) exceed the brain volume of the largest great apes (300-500 g). And the relative ratio of brain weight to body weight (cephalization index) in humans is greater than in any other primate. Moreover, activation of brain development is manifested not only in size, but also in the degree of differentiation of the cerebral cortex of the forebrain, enhanced development of not only motor and sensory zones, but also especially intensive development of associative zones. An essential feature of man as a biological species is the rapid growth of the brain after birth. Unlike other mammalian species, whose brain volume does not more than double in the postnatal period, the human brain quadruples in size after birth.

Development retardation- a significant lengthening of the initial stages of ontogenesis, delayed growth and puberty of individuals, slow biomass growth, a long period of childhood and physical dependence, slow development of behavioral adaptations.

The weight of a newborn brown bear does not exceed 700 g, a newborn lion weighs about 2 kg, a newborn wolf - a little more than 1 kg. The basis of the increase in body weight in all these animals occurs during the first year of life, and by the age of three they are already fully grown and sexually mature (!). An adult bear weighs over 300 kg, a lion over 200 kg, and a wolf over 60 kg. That is, man is very seriously behind most medium and heme larger mammals in terms of the rate of biomass formation. And in the development of adaptive behavior, a person is clearly an outsider. Born blind and deaf cubs of predators and rodents in a month already actively move, master the technology of autohygiene, are able to switch from mother's milk to other types of food. A person, not only in a month, but even in a year, is not able to fully move, observe personal hygiene and get his own food. The weight of a child in the first year of life increases only three to four times, and the increase in length is 50-60%, which is absolutely not comparable with other animals. The main factor in developmental delay is the pineal hormone melatonin, which inhibits growth and puberty. And the main reason is the flagrant underdevelopment of the brain, especially its higher parts - the cerebral cortex. In newborn mammals, no matter how helpless they look, the head of the brain at birth has reached its mature state by 60-80%. And in humans, the volume and level of maturity of the brain does not exceed 20-25%. Such a brain is capable of providing only the most basic level of survival; it does not have full-fledged innate adaptive programs for recognition and differentiation of stimuli, movement, and self-preservation. And the formation of all this "software" is extremely slow and depends on the conditions and circumstances of the early stages of development. Probably, the process of developmental retardation is a consequence of postnatal hypercephalization. Regardation of development is also manifested in large great apes, but the rate of their growth, development, and maturation is still twice as high as in humans.

Lability of basic sensory and motor matrices- mobility, conditionality, ambiguity, individual diversity of the body's sensitivity in the perception of the characteristics of the external environment, as well as a huge inter-individual diversity of people in motor skills.

Sensory is a system of physiological mechanisms that ensure the body's ability to perceive the external and internal environment. The sensory capabilities of most organisms are genetically predetermined and are uniquely determined by the species characteristics of the sense organs. Feelings of comfort or discomfort, warmth and cold, preference for light or darkness, selection of attractive (or repulsive) shapes and color combinations, sounds, smells, taste preferences, landscape characteristics, night or day lifestyle, single or group living, etc. etc. are congenital and, as a rule, similar for all representatives of the same species (or subspecies). Inadequate environmental conditions for sensory matrices of comfort can undermine the health of an animal, shorten life expectancy, and reduce reproduction, but they can hardly affect its preferences. A cold-loving animal will not become a heat-loving animal, and a predator will not switch to vegetarianism, a nocturnal animal cannot be re-educated for a daytime lifestyle, and single organisms cannot survive in an overpopulated space. And only man has a huge range of options in preferring the most diverse environmental characteristics from the poles to the equator, from swampy lowlands to mountain peaks and deserts, from absolute vegetarianism to exclusively animal food. The concepts of "warmth", "cold", "heavy", "easy", "loud", "quiet", "beautiful", "ugly" have such a pronounced group, individual and even intrapersonal variability depending on the situation, what to speak of their species specificity is almost impossible. Very many human abilities to differentiate the characteristics of the environment depend on his earliest life experience, since the formation of individual sensory standards occurs at the end of prenatal and in the first two or three years of postnatal development and is directly related to both the maturation of the sensory zones of the cerebral cortex and specific conditions of the development environment.

The hypertrophied cerebral cortex captures not only the characteristics of the environment, but also the physical and emotional states associated with them, giving these matrices the qualities of "good" or "bad", attractive or repulsive, thus two people developing in the same space, may have diametrically opposed feelings from him. In addition to primary sensations, a system of their conditional interpretation is also developing. Colors, shapes, orientation of objects in space, loudness, tonality, phonemic structure of sound - everything becomes conventional symbols of the second signal system. Its main difference from the signs used by animals is again that its symbols are not based on innate matrices, they need to be assimilated, learned in a certain way organized space. A deaf and blind newborn kitten, who has not been in contact with cats since birth, raised among people or picked up and fed by a dog, after gaining the ability to hear and see, will perceive meowing, purring, snorting, hissing quite adequately to its species matrix and will begin to reproduce all these sounds without any training and pattern. He will neither speak nor bark. The same can be said about the vast majority of communicating animals (except for mockingbirds).

But not about a person! His ability to understand speech, writing, music, the symbolism of notes or mathematics, etc. will not develop if he was outside the human community during the first years of life. But he can learn to bark, squeal, howl, meow, hoot, like a chimpanzee or a gorilla, in short, to master any communicative environment in whose society he managed to survive.

Motor skills- the ability of organisms to any kind of movement. "Born to crawl cannot fly." The same kohenok will jump and climb, clinging to carpets, curtains, cabinets, windows, even if his educators give him absolutely no examples of this, and a puppy, even brought up by a cat, is unlikely to climb a tree, even if he his adoptive mother will try very hard. Mother-raised ducklings swim despite the hen's warning, worried clacking, while duck-raised chicks do not, despite her calls and stimulation. Animals adapted to the aquatic environment do not experience any fear of it, even if they breathe air and, in principle, can choke, the swimming matrix is ​​activated in them reflexively. And terrestrial land animals avoid deep water whenever possible. Dart frogs, tree jumpers, flyers and planners are perfectly oriented at any height, and their head is not spinning, and their movements are very clear and coordinated (although the kitten reflexively “flies” only up the tree, and down - you have to learn), while ground creatures hold on as far as possible from any height, it would never occur to them to jump from branch to branch, or jump down from a great height, or walk over an abyss along a rope. Someone weaves outlandish nests, someone builds dams, someone cultivates mushrooms or breeds domestic insects, someone harvests hay, grain, berries, mushrooms, paralyzed spiders, sticks prey on bush thorns to “wilt”. The animal world gives us amazing examples of active adaptive activity, which not only ensures the survival and reproduction of the animals themselves, but also contributes to the reproduction of biocenoses suitable for them: pollination of flowers, planting seeds of tree species, stocking water bodies, creating conditions for the life of other species. But all these are again innate patterns of behavior that are reproduced not only in suitable, but also in completely unsuitable conditions. Animals practically do not learn them, but only master the innate matrix as it matures in suitable environmental conditions and subsequently do not have the ability to radically rebuild it. A bird may never learn how to fly if kept in a cramped cage and constantly clipped its flight feathers, but it still won't learn how to use its wings in any other way. This is not about the fact that animals cannot learn anything at all, but only that the basic foundations of their behavior are strictly defined and cannot go beyond species boundaries.

Human species-specific motor skills include bipedal locomotion, labor activity with hands, articulation (speech pronunciation). But unlike the species-specific motor matrices of animals, these matrices are not given to us from birth, but must be formed on the basis of some reflex reactions in the course of individual development. Instead of upright walking, movement on all fours, brachiation, tree climbing, half-bent walking with support on one of the arms, and swimming can develop. All this can be the motor equipment of a completely healthy person who grew up in a different, inhuman environment. The labor activity of the hands can include the blow of a karateka breaking boards and bricks, and the virtuoso violin playing, the jewelry technique of a microsurgeon and the work of a hammerer. And a person must learn how to write, and sew, and cook food, and the elementary extraction of splinters. He can only scratch, rub his eyes and pick his nose reflexively without example and training, even in the community of wolves or dogs that never pick their nose with their finger.

As for speech pronunciation (articulation), for a person, mastering this action is a long and complex process that lasts for years and is largely determined by the language environment of the child’s immediate environment, which significantly distinguishes our speech from any meowing and barking of animals, although these sounds are also for humans can become a form of speech.

Genetically compatible polymorphism- significant morphological diversity of people, both individually and racially and ethnically. Man is an extremely polymorphic species. People differ in body size, skin color, and the degree and nature of hair growth, body types and proportions, the degree of resistance to various adverse factors, activity, mobility, temperament, fertility, and many, many others. Most of these traits are genetically determined and inherited. But, nevertheless, the whole variety of human characteristics is combined and recombined, a person does not have reproductively isolated races or subraces that reinforce genetic differences and lead to a stable intraspecific divergence of human morphotypes. And this compatible diversity plays an important role in the mechanisms of resistance. Such a variety of intraspecific forms is not typical for natural species, but usually for domestic animals, the breeds of which are genetically determined, are very diverse and capable of free hybridization. Thus, the shaping of a person is more reminiscent of artificial than natural ogbor.

Kr-reproductive strategy- a strategy for the reproduction of children, combining long-term care for offspring with the highest possible intensity of reproduction for the species.

In the animal world, there are two extreme variants of reproduction strategies. For primitive short-lived species, it is characteristic r-strategy, its essence lies in the fact that all the energy of mature individuals is invested in reproduction, to the detriment of individual survival. The main thing is to leave as many descendants as possible, and what will happen to each of them, no matter if anyone survives. The parents themselves, leaving to bend, thousands, and sometimes bend thousands of eggs, die, because their life resource has been exhausted, and the goal - reproduction - has been achieved. At the same time, it is obvious that the number of the species does not normally increase, which means that these thousands of descendants are eaten and died. There are as many individuals left as correspond to the resources of the given biocenosis and the initial number of adults. Why these thousands of eggs? For natural selection, to provide trophic chains. Therefore, species following the r-strategy produce nutrient biomass for other species.

Long-lived species have gone the other way. They reproduce the necessary minimum of offspring, reducing intraspecific competition, but they invest their resources in maximizing the survival of offspring. To do this, they themselves must maintain viability, thus increasing the value of the individual characteristics of the individual, including individual life experience. For this strategy ( K-strategy) it is not the quantity that matters, but the quality of the descendants left behind. The contribution of parent individuals to each is very large. But the death of any individual is a significant damage to the gene pool of the entire population. Species with an extreme version of the K-strategy (whales, elephants, great apes) are very few in nature due to low reproduction rates. The K-strategy is characterized by the birth of one cub, long care for offspring, a long period of childhood, complex behavior, complex mechanisms of social adaptation and communication. The more complex the behavior, the longer the cub has to master it, the larger the brain should be and the longer its development, the more attention and reproductive time it takes from the female.

Puberty and the reproductive period in female chimpanzees occur after the age of nine years and continue until death. Chimpanzees live in nature for about 30 years. The gestation period for all large anthropoids is 40 weeks, milk feeding lasts one to two years. The female cannot have a new baby until the previous one begins to live independently, so much attention and vital resources are required for the cub. Therefore, each cub takes six to seven years of the female's life. For the entire reproductive period (about 20 years), respectively, the female can raise three offspring, because she raises them sequentially, one after another, she has no one to share the burden of parenthood with. If the chimpanzee's brain grew even larger and the childhood period also lengthened, the female could raise no more than one or two cubs, such a population would become endangered.

Thus, in their entire life, females breeding according to the K-strategy manage to raise at best three or four cubs. In the event of sudden changes in the natural environment, catastrophes, outbreaks of massive infectious diseases, etc., such species cannot quickly compensate for losses and, despite their developed brain, are on the verge of extinction. The number of these populations, even under favorable conditions, practically does not grow and does not stimulate the development of new conditions and territories. These species clearly lose out to less “brainy” and intelligent, but more productive and rapidly maturing animals. It turns out that for most species, natural selection has blocked the path of too active growth and development of the brain. Therefore, the majority of animals made a certain compromise between the quality and quantity of offspring, between the rate of maturation and the degree of brain development.

How did a person get around this obstacle? Human brains are at least three times the size of chimpanzee and gorilla brains and take twice as long to develop, maturing only by 16-18 years of age. The period of childhood and parental care in humans is also significantly longer than in large great apes. Chimpanzees become autonomous from their mothers at 5-6 years old, and gorillas and orangutans at 7-9 years old, while humans acquire social autonomy from their parents at 18-21 years old. But human populations are constantly growing! In the 20th century alone, man more than tripled his number on Earth, bringing it from 2 to 6.5 billion. And this is in the presence of two world wars, many local conflicts, huge disasters, mass epidemics, etc.

S. P. Kapitsa notes that the growth of human populations follows different laws than those of animals: “It is significant to note that in terms of our number we exceed animals comparable to us by five orders- 100 thousand times” (italics mine. -BUT. G.).

At the same time, the reproductive potential of a person is as small as that of great apes: as a rule, only one child is born and born at the same time, the period of physical helplessness of which lasts at least two years, and psychological helplessness - five to seven years. That is, throughout this period, it is dangerous to leave a child unattended and controlled. A person becomes absolutely independent (in the physical and mental sense) and independent of parental care much later. If a person raised his offspring consistently (the second baby would appear only after the first one becomes completely independent), then the evolution of our species would hardly have taken place. But human offspring appear and grow parallel to each other. The mother gives birth to the next baby, not yet raised the previous one. Thus, the childhood of everyone is not reduced, but the number of children increases. In fact, in a traditional society that does not know contraception, the reproductive potential of women is used to the maximum - she either breastfeeds or is pregnant throughout her reproductive period, reproducing from 7 to 20 children in her life, far bypassing elephants, and gorillas, and chimpanzees. At the same time, the mortality of offspring is reduced by all available means, usually not exceeding 50% of those born, which is certainly higher than in any animals. This is called Kr-strategy of reproduction - to give birth to the maximum possible, and to grow up to the maximum born.

However, the question arises why the “parallel childhood” characteristic of humans has not been mastered by other animals with K-strategy? Due to intra-group competition and individual technology for rearing offspring. Each female raises her baby alone. Therefore, the female monkey does not have enough life resource for the second cub. She literally lacks one more pair of hands to carry and nurture the baby! The quality of growing two is much worse than growing one, most likely one of them will die, and both may die. Where does the additional resource come from? There are several sources, and all of them are of a biosocial nature.

First, the expansion of the maternal instinct while suppressing reproduction in an unfavorable period. It is known that in nature, offspring most often die in too young and too old females. The delay in puberty of females with the early development of the maternal instinct is beneficial for slowly breeding species. Immature daughters and sisters are involved in the process of caring for the offspring of their mothers and older sisters. The longer the period of maturation, the more resource of help the female at the effective age receives and the more experience the young female receives. Menopause - the cessation of the reproductive activity of females long before the end of the life path, while maintaining the maternal instinct, gives rise to the institution of grandmothers, which is extremely valuable for the preservation of offspring. With individual reproduction, such an expenditure of one's own energy to preserve someone else's offspring is difficult to explain, but for species in which each individual counts, such a level of integration is socially and biologically justified. Females with a genome, with the expansion of the maternal instinct, with a narrowing of the reproductive period due to mutual assistance, made a greater contribution to the population than "individuals" losing offspring, and won, as they brought and retained the maximum offspring in the most favorable period of their reproduction.

Secondly, it is the involvement of males in the rearing of offspring. The parental instinct in male great apes is little expressed, it comes down to protecting the territory from strangers and predators. Males do not feed their cubs, do not take care of them, they do not particularly distinguish them from other individuals of the community, fortunately, they do not beat them badly and do not kill in haste. It is difficult to call them caring fathers. How did female human ancestors manage to attract males to care for their offspring? His hypersexuality. Unlike female animals, who are sexually receptive and active only during certain periods of their life cycle, human sexuality is not limited by the season, or by pregnancy, or by feeding, or by the presence of immature offspring. A feature of a person is also a demonstrative female attractiveness (in other species, males demonstrate themselves). A high level of sex hormones provides an accentuated and vivid expression of signs of sexual dimorphism and reproductive readiness in females. High breasts, wide hips, red lips, shiny dilated eyes, an attractive smell - all this actively attracts the male to the female and inspires him to various actions to attract her attention. And she agrees to sexual behavior in return for caring for her offspring. And it takes a long time to take care of it. This means that the female must constantly take care of her sexual attractiveness. In sexually attractive females, offspring may have a better chance of being cared for by a male.

Socialization of offspring, that is, the collective concern of the entire community for their offspring.

Apart from maternal childhood When the cub is directly dependent on the care of the mother, the institution of social childhood develops, when the cub is controlled, instructed not so much by the mother as by relatives, neighbors, peers and older children, as well as mentors specially selected by the community, passing on their life experience to the younger generation. Thus, children cease to be only a genetic continuation of their parents, they become a collective continuation of society. The more strongly social childhood and its institutions are expressed, the further the humanoid being is from the beast and closer to man.

It is possible that at the initial stages all these mechanisms acted mostly involuntarily and unconsciously, were selected and improved by natural selection, had purely biological grounds, but over time they were increasingly provided with cultural mechanisms - prohibitions, rules, traditions, laws. There are concepts of family, marriage, parenthood, kinship, mentoring, teaching. There are taboos on many reproductive relationships that go beyond the rules established by society. Human reproduction is less and less limited by nature and more and more regulated by the community. The question may arise: “And what is the reproduction strategy that is characteristic of modern humanity?” The developed countries of Europe, North America, Asia are characterized by K-strategy, but this is less than 1/6 of humanity, for the remaining 5/6 it is still characteristic Kr-strategy. And so far, in the competitive struggle, the Kr-strategy is clearly replacing the K-strategy, penetrating more and more into the territory of the latter. True, the carriers of the K-strategy are usually better off, more consciously planning the growth of the family, which can become an example for migrants with the Kr-strategy. But if the number of offspring is two or less offspring per woman, then the reduction of such populations is inevitable. How this will affect abundance, evolution, and the choice of breeding strategies in the near and distant future is not yet clear.

Culture as a special human form of sociality. culture (lat. cultura - cultivation, upbringing, education, veneration) - processing, cultivation by a person of space and objects of nature in order to create conditions for their own existence, the formation of a "second nature" - the inner living space of human communities. Culture is traditionally divided into material(subjects, objects, conditions) and spiritual(ideas, world views, technologies, knowledge, art, rituals, traditions, laws, religions).

Culture is not so much the process of hewing stones or loosening the earth, domesticating animals, but the process of cultivating the person himself - his attitude towards himself, other people, other living beings and the whole world around him. In other words, culture is the active basis of anthropogenesis - the process of collective co-creation by a person of himself and the world for himself.

Culture is a form of integration of human beings into communities with a single information and communication system, a scale of values ​​and priorities, rules of coexistence, a single collective memory that transmits information from generation to generation in a non-genetic way. Any physically full-fledged human baby who finds himself in any human culture is able to fully integrate into it, learn the language, worldview, technologies and values ​​with all his ethnic and genetic characteristics, of course, if the culture itself accepts this growing person as its own. Culture does not cancel the genetic flow of information, does not ignore it, but actively uses its diversity for its own purposes, creating many functional niches in its internal space. Just as in a multicellular organism, all cellular diversity develops from initially totipotent blastomeres and, specializing in different functions, reaches the heights of differences in structure and life cycles, so in developed human cultures, the stratigraphy of society is extremely diverse. Single genome of the species Homo sapiens gives rise to an abundance of constitutional, psychological and ecological types of people and their communities, sometimes in many ways alternative to each other. But all elements of a single system are interdependent and closely interconnected, even when they look like antagonists. Culture induces niches of human adaptations, like a developing organism - the main ways of specializing its cells, and biocenosis - a variety of ecological niches, and any person, like any living being, seeks to master the most suitable adaptation space for himself. But this system can exist only as a single integrated whole, even if the individual elements of the system are not able to fully reflect, and even more so realize these numerous relationships. The special amazing lability of the human nervous system, which allows him to conditionally create the basic matrices of sensory and motor mechanisms, long development, a huge brain, high activity and mobility, universal motor abilities of the hands, developed communication systems - all this makes a person an exceptional student, object and subject of cultural induction. Culture creates from a human cub a person as a specific representative of his place and time, and a person creates culture around him throughout his life as a continuous space-time of his being.

Outside the conditions of culture, the formation of a human being leads to completely different results. Being genetically homo sapiens, being physically completely healthy and viable, such a creature not only cannot live among people, but actually manifests itself only as an animal, not having signs of human reactions in behavior. It is almost impossible to develop upright posture, speech, labor activity, human thinking and consciousness in such a creature (unlike the fabulous Mowgli and Tarzan).

Inextricably linked with culture and morphological and behavioral neoteny person. In biology, neoteny is called the "stuck" of ontogeny at the larval stage. That is, even after reaching sexual maturity, individuals of some species can retain organs or structural features characteristic of larvae. A person has many such "infantile" traits - a large head, a brain growing up to 16 years old, almost naked skin, weakly expressed defense organs (small jaws, short fangs), unformed instinctive behavior, emotional dependence on other individuals, and most importantly - flexibility, ability learn and develop. All of this can only manifest itself in most mammals in the very early stages of development in a very protected environment. Growing up - the transition to vital autonomy - makes the individual much more rigid, inert, stable, independent, as far as possible isolated from the influences of the external environment. Thanks to culture, a person remains in the internal environment of the human community all his life, retaining the features of a developing being.

What is the origin of culture? What's this? A random mutation of genes that determine behavioral characteristics, or a natural stage of supraorganismal social integration? A consequence of the eternal activity of monkey hands or hypertrophied primordial human brains? The result of creative labor activity? A new, alternative to the genetic, way of accumulating and transmitting information? A gift from the alien gods?

A number of authors (3. Freud, D. Johanson, O. Lovejoy, Yu. I. Novozhenov, 11 and others) believe that the main energy source of human culture is the natural hypersexuality of a person, associated with a constantly high level of sex hormones in the blood, but tabooed by society and sublimated in a variety of activities to transform oneself and the world in order to increase all the same sexual attractiveness - sexual status. Thus, from the standpoint of these authors, sexuality (libido), sublimated into the development of culture, is the main engine of human evolution.

From our point of view, culture is a special human a form of co-knowledge of a living system. Moreover, different human cultures gravitate more towards the fourth or fifth level of consciousness. As long as the culture only cares about human reproduction, that is, the monogenome reproduction of its own population, this is co-knowledge of the fourth level. When, for the preservation and development of culture, it is necessary to preserve and reproduce the gene pool of domesticated plants and animals (and even fungi and bacteria), when organisms appear in culture that are not found in nature and are unable to survive in the natural environment without human care and care, we we are talking about co-zpanie fifth level.

Agriculture, animal husbandry, winemaking, baking, obtaining lactic acid products - all these are processes of deep and high-tech integration of human communities with other organisms. It is difficult to say who had a greater influence on whom - the one who tamed, or those who were tamed. No wonder they say that "it was the dog that brought the man into the people"! And "a man is what he eats, drinks and dresses." Wool, silk, linen, cotton are all part of the culture.

Science, on the other hand, clearly reaches the sixth (biospheric) level of consciousness, which reflects the inseparability of the connection between the space of culture and the space of a self-regulating natural environment, the dependence of the development of human communities on the characteristics of surrounding ecosystems, energy flows, cycles of matter, the diversity and sustainability of natural communities, their ability to regenerate (self-heal). The development and main approaches of modern ecology orient the development of culture towards caring not only for domestic organisms, but also for wildlife, the confrontation with which at the present stage can have an extremely adverse effect on the development of mankind. The age-old alternative of culture and nature has reached a crisis and awareness (if not by all of humanity, then at least by part of the scientific community) of the most urgent need for mutual integration.

World religions and concepts of V. I. Vernadsky and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin are trying to substantiate the seventh - cosmic level of co-knowledge. The biosphere with elements of human awareness of itself as a unique integrity of the Earth in the universe of space is called the realm of the mind or noosphere. Humanity at this level is self-determined as a holistic integrated planetary consciousness of the Earth (Earthly Image of the Creator), inseparable from a single living organism of the planet.

Through evolution Reasonable man Gaia achieves self-consciousness and becomes a unique creative force, actively mastering the Cosmos. Of course, at this stage in the development of culture, such statements are only dreams and good wishes. The self-consciousness of humanity is still very far from integration, it constantly generates internecine wars within itself, it is preoccupied with the creation of more and more deadly weapons for the destruction of both cultural and natural communities. The "mastering of nature" is proceeding in an extremely irrational destructive way, giving rise to natural disasters and cataclysms and causing more and more fear of the forces of nature among both ordinary and higher representatives of human communities. The idea of ​​cultural self-isolation from external enemies, as well as "complete and absolute independence from the elements", the creation of a "great cultural wall" that saves from dangerous animals, diseases, natural disasters, space aliens, death and the laws of nature, in general, is becoming a very common paranoid idea " little man" dreaming of becoming a superman. How far from the values ​​of Taoism, Buddhism and early Christianity with their love and acceptance of all life and all that exists as the highest mercy of being ...

Nevertheless, it is culture that is the most important fundamental feature that distinguishes Homo sapiens from the rest of the animal kingdom, and not the number of chromosomes, brain size, naked skin, speech, upright posture or labor activity. All of the above signs can be formed in people to varying degrees, or some of them may be completely absent, but we will deal with a person if he has mastered at least the basic general features of the surrounding culture, or with a non-human if the fundamental cultural the values ​​of our community are alien to him.

Consciousness is the ability to ideally reproduce reality in thinking. Consciousness is the ability of a person to create his own separate mental reality, reflecting the events happening to him and his internal states in a unique and individual way. A hypertrophied brain with an abundance of associative zones, flexible formation of connections between neurons, an abundance and complexity of conditioned reflexes, control by the cortex of the underlying mechanisms of behavior, an assessment of what is happening that is formed in individual life experience - all this is the basis of the subjective reflection of the objective world. Of course, each of us has general species structural and morphological limitations in perception. The human sense of smell is weaker than that of most mammals, vision is less sharp than that of diurnal birds of prey, color discrimination is different than that of insects, hearing is worse than that of bats and birds, electromagnetic orientation in the fields of the Earth is weakly expressed. But our sensor matrices can be tuned to the desired parameters in a wide range and interpret sensations based on life experience. We don’t have wings, we swim and dive worse than dolphins and seals, we run slower than horses, antelopes, cheetahs, we don’t climb trees well, we don’t know how to jump from branch to branch, but our brain has formed a very special organ - mind, who can learn all this if there is an airplane, scuba gear, car or other suitable equipment. A person's emotional reactions to events that occur largely depend on how aware the mind is in this particular situation. - can whether he solve this problem. The same situation can make you feel bewilderment fear, excitement and excitement, calm interest, fun, anger, aggression, despondency and longing, boredom. All this, in essence, is the stages of mastering by the mind a certain skills. The most important characteristics of the mind are its individuality, experience, flexibility, creative activity (“ inventive, howl”, imagination, creativity?), organization and diligence (the tendency to train oneself). Sharpness is also recognized as very valuable. (wit?), and volume (breadth and depth?), and courage, and even beauty. These characteristics make the mind look like various animal adaptations - teeth, horns, tails, stomachs. But unlike them, the mind is a virtual, mental organ, it cannot be measured with physical instruments, it is by no means analogous to the volume of the brain or the thickness of the cortex.

People always walk next to the mind the senses, but these are not at all reactions of the sense organs (sight, hearing, etc.), but very complexly organized emotional states and experiences. Among them are those that we call conscience, duty, responsibility, inspiration, friendship, faith, hope, love, although the names for them have been invented for a very long time, it is extremely difficult to describe what they mean, because everyone experiences them individually, in your own way.

And now we come to the most important thing! The main sign of a person is that he has a sense of himself - his "I".

“I” is the core of the ego, the center of an individual picture of the world, the center of mental reality, that reference point and unit of measurement from which the crystallization of the human worldview begins. It is the “I” that enters into relations with the information field of culture and becomes its active element (both the object and the subject of cultural interaction). And although a saying from school childhood constantly climbs into my head, “I” is by no means the last letter in the alphabet of culture. The feeling of one's "I" and the ability to realize oneself, one's qualities, properties, main characteristics are fundamental basis of the human personality.

Where is the ego "I" formed? What do its qualities depend on? From genes, brain embryogenesis, characteristics of infancy and early childhood, cultural environment, karma (predestined from above by fate), random coincidences, happy or tragic historical events, laws of nature, lawlessness of the elements, grimace of mutations, God's will, personal choice itself " I"?

Science, religion, life experience, and each of us have very different answers to this question. What is behind our "I"? A purely individual, inimitable, unique single reality, limited by the terms of our ontogeny? A regular basic matrix common to all representatives of a species (a set of archetypes, innate gestalts, etc.), only differentiated by culture and individual life experience? An immortal (eternal!) soul (in the image and likeness of God)? Holographic reflection of a single consciousness Universe (microcosm reflecting the macrocosm)? Everything can be...

What is spirit? The exuberant imagination of a hypertrophied brain, a collective sense of responsibility generated by a highly integrated society, when the individual is sacrificed to the whole, a supra-individual conscious or unconscious world reflection, a “property of highly organized matter” or the highest form of being of all that exists? I'll leave fundamental question of philosophy no answer. Because I don't know the answer.

But I know for sure that my “I” (let my ego!) exist in me. And there is a better soul and even worries and hurts periodically (I'm not sure, it seems, of my immortality). AND sense of spirit is present, although it is problematic to express it in words. Most of all, the ego is like a ray of light directing my inner movement, quite rigid and indifferent to my feelings - the eternal imperative of inner choice. What does all this have to do with objective reality? Perhaps none! Exactly my feelings...

A person's feelings primarily depend on how he sees himself in the world and how he assembles the world in relation to himself. The objective characteristics of reality are practically inaccessible to our subjective reflection, filled with refractive lenses of numerous installations, loaded into us by culture and the characteristics of our individual sensory matrices. Everything is relative! Everything depends on the point of view (or assemblage point?) - this is the greatest discovery of man about himself and the world he reflects. We are the greatest wizards and can create ourselves and the world as we can imagine: attractive or repulsive, creative or destructive, pitiful or monstrous, happy or suffering. And the world, and people, and life, and death around us, we create with our own mind, feelings and hands. At least we think so...

Respectively, our subjective picture of the world is our mental reality (consciousness) and is the main source and form of our adaptation (or disadaptation) to the surrounding world.

How are consciousness and culture related? It is obvious that they are closely interconnected and interdependent, but are not reducible to each other. Culture generates a great variety of individual variants of consciousness, each of which contributes to culture (sometimes absolutely unique, sometimes massive and very standard). As a result of cultural and historical integration, a collective mental reality of an ethnos, people, era is born, reflecting the continuous development of the worldview of an entire human community, which directly determines the development of culture. We can say that the processes of formation of mental reality and culture are based on reciprocal mechanisms: consciousness arises as a result of internalization ("absorption") of culture, the transformation of its objects into subjective images - idealization, and culture is formed by translating the thought images of individual consciousness into specific objects and phenomena social life - materialization.

So, let's sum up. Of course, many common features in the field of general morphology, biochemistry and genetics make it possible to systematize Reasonable person as a representative of the animal kingdom, such as chordates, a class of mammals, a detachment of primates, but this is only at the level of the structure and general plan of the organism of an individual. Chechovek, on the other hand, is a supraorganismal concept and is determined by a special interorganismal interaction - culture and a special form of subjective reflection of the surrounding world - consciousness. Without culture and consciousness, a human being is not a person, even if all other morphological, biochemical, and genetic features are present.

Probably, the proximity of man and monkey is as great (or small) as the similarity of cells of the same type (muscle, nerve, spermatozoa) in animals of different classes and even types. Or the similarity of any variants of spermatozoa with representatives of the class of flagellates. The structures are similar in structure, functions and, possibly, in origin, but are integrated into completely different systems. And it is necessary to determine the systematic position not only by the structural elements of the system, but also by the nature and level of their system integration.

The human community is a new evolutionary level of integration of the Earth's organisms. How close to it, how similar to it and how different are other social communities of organisms, to what extent they are able to create analogues of culture and consciousness, perhaps, with time, social biology and social ecology and other areas of scientific knowledge will establish.

Questions and tasks for preparing for seminars

• 1. Justify the systematic position of a person.
• 2. Describe the modern taxonomy of the order of primates.
• 3. Specify the specific features of development in ontogeny and functioning of the human brain.
• 4. Name the features of the human reproductive strategy as a biological species.
• 5. Determine the basis of human resistance to a variety of environmental conditions.
• 6. Culture as the main species-specific human adaptation.

Man as a biosocial species

General ecological patterns determine the relationship with the outside world of all living beings on Earth, including humans.

Man is one of the 3 million biological species now known on Earth. Its place in the system of the animal kingdom is determined: a class of mammals, a detachment of primates, a family of hominids, a genus of man, in which only one species has survived to this day - Homo sapiens.

From an ecological point of view, humanity is a global population of a biological species, an integral part of the Earth's ecosystem. But it is obvious that this species is special, significantly different from all other inhabitants of the planet. As a result, difficult environmental issues arise. Does humanity obey the laws of fundamental ecology? If so, wholly or partially? If partially, how much?

The second part of the textbook is entirely devoted to the peculiarities of the manifestation of general ecological patterns in relations with the outside world of only one species - man. Modern environmental problems facing humanity require urgent consideration and solution. Only on the basis of a deep and comprehensive understanding of the interrelationships between humanity and nature is it possible to rationally and optimally regulate them. And this is necessary in order to prevent a crisis and self-destruction, ensure the sustainable development of nature and society, preserve the integrity of the global ecosystem and guarantee the existence of mankind in the future.

The biological nature of man is manifested in the inherent desire of all living things to preserve their lives and continue it in time and space through reproduction, to ensure maximum safety and comfort. These natural aspirations are achieved through the constant interactions of humanity with the environment. All humans consume food and excrete metabolic products, defend themselves against enemies and avoid other dangers, compete for vital resources, and promote species that are beneficial to them. In other words, humanity is characterized by the whole range of ecological connections. This is the main ecological similarity of mankind with the populations of all other biological species.

In the philosophical literature, there are two positions on this issue. According to one, human nature is entirely social. According to another, it is not only social, but also biologically loaded. At the same time, we are not talking about the fact that human life activity also has biological determinants that determine the dependence of a person on a set of genes, the balance of hormones produced, metabolism, and an infinite number of other factors.

Everyone recognizes the existence of these factors. The question is whether there are biologically programmed protosocial schemes of human behavior.

Despite the significance of the social essence of man, it cannot be separated or opposed to the natural, biological principle. Man is a complex natural formation, a living organism with biological needs, functions, higher intellectual and other forms of the psyche. He is in a complex biological relationship to other people, as biological beings, to the animal and plant worlds and inorganic nature. The biological nature of man constitutes the necessary level of human essence. To be a social being, a person must first be a living being, possessing the most complex biology among living beings. Today, in the era of scientific and technological revolution, the biological foundations of a human being are subjected to a powerful deforming effect. Neuro-psychological stress, environmental pollution, etc. made one of the global problems the preservation of man as a biological species. It makes you rethink a lot. the problem of the relationship between the biological and the social in man.

As a biological species, man is extremely plastic. Unlike animals of other species, the biological organization of man allows him to adapt to a very wide range of external conditions. However, its possibilities are not unlimited - now we are close to the thresholds beyond which the biological organization of a human being undergoes irreversible, destructive changes. Never before has the human environment been so saturated with ionizing radiation and contaminated with chemicals that are harmful to its very existence and extremely dangerous for its future, since the mutation process has intensified, and its negative impact on human heredity has increased. The current situation is particularly complicated by the fact that the harmful effects of many factors (for example, radiation) are not directly felt by people and will affect only in the future. All this makes neglect of human biology unacceptable. Moreover, the biological organization of a human being is something intrinsically valuable, and no social goals can justify violence against it.

On the other hand, it should be emphasized that the successes of modern science in the study of biology, genetics and the human psyche open up opportunities for him to better adapt to new factors of the natural and artificial environment and even, to a certain extent, transform his biological nature in relation to new tasks in the field of knowledge and practice. This, in turn, raises a number of questions: will the appearance of a person change and in what direction? Will some new forms of human existence arise, connected with cybernetic devices? Is humanity entering a new stage of its evolution with the direct participation of genetic engineering and biocybernetics? and others. These questions concerning the biology, genetics and psyche of the human of the future are actively discussed in modern science.

Thus, man is both a natural and a social being.

2. Biosocial nature of man and ecology

Rice. 4. The uniqueness of man as a biosocial species (Khabarova E.I., Panova S.A., 2001)

Man is the highest stage in the development of living organisms on Earth. He, according to I.T. Frolov (1985), "a biosocial creature genetically related to other forms of life, but separated from them due to the ability to produce tools of labor, possessing articulate speech and consciousness, creative activity and moral self-awareness."

Biosocial nature of man expressed in the fact that his life includes both biological and social elements. This necessitates not only his biological, but also social adaptation, i.e. bringing interindividual and group behavior in line with the norms and values ​​prevailing in a given society by acquiring knowledge about this society. The biological adaptation of a person seeks to preserve not only his biological, but also social functions with the increasing importance of the social factor. The latter circumstance is of great ecological importance and is reflected in the ecological approach to the definition of the concept human .

Man is one of the species of the animal kingdom with a complex social organization and labor activity, to a large extent “removing” (making inconspicuous) biological, including ethological (primary-behavioral) properties of the organism (N.F. Reimers, 1990).