The role of nature in the development of civilization. About the problems of nature and civilization. Modern ideas about the nature of mushrooms

V. A. Mukhin

Mycology, or the science of mushrooms, is a field of biology with a long history and at the same time a very young science. This is explained by the fact that only at the end of the twentieth century, in connection with a radical revision of existing views on the nature of mushrooms, mycology, which had previously been considered only as a branch of botany, received the status of a separate field of biology. Currently, it includes a whole range of scientific areas: taxonomy of fungi, mycogeography, physiology and biochemistry of fungi, paleomycology, ecology of fungi, soil mycology, hydromycology, etc. However, almost all of them are at the stage of scientific and organizational formation, and largely for this reason, the problems of mycology remain little known even to professional biologists.

Modern ideas about the nature of mushrooms

What are mushrooms in our modern understanding? First of all, it is one of the oldest groups of eukaryotic organisms1, appearing probably 900 million years ago, and by about 300 million years ago all the major groups of modern fungi already existed (Alexopoulos et al., 1996). Currently, about 70 thousand species of fungi have been described (Dictionary ... 1996). However, according to Hawksworth (1991), this is no more than 5% of the number of existing fungi, which he estimates at 1.5 million species. Most mycologists estimate the potential biological diversity of fungi in the biosphere at 0.5-1.0 million species (Alexopoulos et al., 1996; Dictionary ... 1996). High biological diversity indicates that fungi are an evolutionarily thriving group of organisms.

However, today there is no consensus on the question of which organisms should be classified as fungi? There is only a general awareness that fungi in their traditional sense are a phylogenetically heterogeneous group. In modern mycology they are defined as eukaryotic, spore-forming, chlorophyll-free organisms with absorptive nutrition, reproducing sexually and in asexual ways, having filamentous, branched thalli, made of cells with hard shells. However, the characteristics included in the above definition do not provide clear criteria that make it possible to confidently separate mushrooms from fungal-like organisms. Therefore, there is such a unique definition of fungi - these are organisms that mycologists study (Alexopoulos et al., 1996).

Molecular genetic studies on the DNA of fungi and animals have shown that they are as close as possible to each other - they are sister (Alexopoulos et al., 1996). This leads to a paradoxical, at first glance, conclusion - mushrooms, along with animals, are our closest relatives. Fungi are also characterized by the presence of characteristics that bring them closer to plants - hard cell membranes, reproduction and dispersal by spores, and an attached lifestyle. Therefore, the previously existing ideas about the belonging of mushrooms to the plant kingdom - considered as a group of lower plants - were not entirely without foundation. In modern biological systematics fungi are classified into one of the kingdoms of higher eukaryotic organisms - the kingdom Fungi.

The role of fungi in natural processes

“One of the main features of life is the circulation of organic substances, based on the constant interaction of opposing processes of synthesis and destruction” (Kamshilov, 1979, p. 33). This phrase in an extremely concentrated form indicates the meaning of the processes of biological decomposition of organic substances, during which the regeneration of nutrients occurs. All available data clearly indicate that in the processes of biodestruction the leading role belongs to fungi, especially basidiomycetes - the department Basidiomycota (Chastukhin, Nikolaevskaya, 1969).

The ecological uniqueness of fungi is especially visible in the case of the processes of biological decomposition of wood, which is the main and specific component of forest biomass, which can rightfully be called wood ecosystems (Mukhin, 1993). In forest ecosystems, wood is the main repository of carbon and ash elements accumulated by forest ecosystems, and this is considered as an adaptation to the autonomy of their biological cycle (Ponomareva, 1976).

Of all the diversity of organisms existing in the modern biosphere, only fungi have the necessary and self-sufficient enzyme systems that allow them to carry out complete biochemical conversion of wood compounds (Mukhin, 1993). Therefore, we can say without any exaggeration that it is the interconnected activity of plants and wood-destroying fungi that underlies the biological cycle of forest ecosystems, which play an exceptional role in the biosphere.

Despite the unique importance of wood-decaying fungi, their study is carried out only in a few scientific centers in Russia by small teams. In Yekaterinburg, research is carried out by the Department of Botany of the Ural State University together with the Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and in recent years with mycologists from Austria, Denmark, Poland, Sweden, and Finland. The topics of these works are quite extensive: the structure of biological diversity of fungi, the origin and evolution of the mycobiota of Eurasia, the functional ecology of fungi (Mukhin, 1993, 1998; Mukhin et al., 1998; Mukhin, Knudsen, 1998; Kotiranta, Mukhin, 1998).

An extremely important ecological group are fungi, which enter into symbiosis either with algae and photosynthetic cyanobacteria to form lichens, or with vascular plants. In the latter case, direct and stable physiological connections arise between the root systems of plants and fungi, and this form of symbiosis is called “mycorrhiza.” Some hypotheses associate the emergence of plants on land specifically with symbiogenetic processes of fungi and algae (Jeffrey, 1962; Atsatt, 1988, 1989). Even if these assumptions do not change their factual confirmation, this will in no way shake the fact that land plants from the moment of their appearance are mycotrophic (Karatygin, 1993). The vast majority of modern plants are mycotrophic. For example, according to estimates by I. A. Selivanov (1981), almost 80% of higher plants in Russia symbiose with fungi.

The most common are endomycorrhizae (fungal hyphae penetrate root cells), which form 225 thousand plant species, and slightly more than 100 species of fungi of the Zygomycota department act as symbiont fungi. Another form of mycorrhizae - ectomycorrhizae (fungal hyphae are located superficially and penetrate only into the intercellular spaces of roots) - has been registered for approximately 5 thousand species of plants of temperate and hypoarctic latitudes and 5 thousand species of fungi, belonging mainly to the department Basidiomycota. Endomycorrhizae were found in the very first land plants, and ectomycorrhizae appeared later - simultaneously with the appearance of gymnosperms (Karatygin, 1993).

Mycorrhizal fungi receive carbohydrates from plants, and plants, due to the mycelium of fungi, increase the absorbing surface of the root systems, which makes it easier for them to maintain water-mineral balance. It is believed that thanks to mycorrhizal fungi, plants are able to use mineral nutrition resources that are inaccessible to them. In particular, mycorrhizae are one of the main channels through which phosphorus is included from the geological cycle into the biological one. This indicates that land plants are not completely autonomous in their mineral nutrition.

Another function of mycorrhizae is the protection of root systems from phytopathogenic organisms, as well as the regulation of plant growth and development processes (Selivanov, 1981). Most recently, it was experimentally shown (Marcel et al., 1998) that the higher the biological diversity of mycorrhizal fungi, the higher the species diversity, productivity and stability of phytocenoses and ecosystems as a whole.

The diversity and significance of the functions of mycorrhizal symbioses makes the issues of their study one of the most pressing. Therefore, the Department of Botany of the Ural State University, together with the Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, carried out a series of works to assess the resistance of coniferous mycorrhizae to environmental pollution with heavy metals and sulfur dioxide. The results obtained made it possible to cast doubt on the widespread opinion among experts about the low resistance of mycorrhizal symbioses to aerotechnogenic pollution (Veselkin, 1996, 1997, 1998; Vordova, 1998).

The great ecological significance of lichen symbioses cannot be doubted. In high-mountain and high-latitude ecosystems they are one of the edificatory organisms and have great importance for the economy of these areas. It is simply impossible to imagine, for example, sustainable development reindeer husbandry - the basic economic sector of many indigenous peoples of the North - without lichen pastures. However modern tendencies in the relationship between man and nature lead to the fact that lichens are rapidly disappearing from ecosystems subject to anthropogenic influences. Therefore, one of the urgent problems is the study of the adaptive capabilities of lichens in relation to this class of environmental factors. Research carried out at the Department of Botany of the Ural State University made it possible to find out that lichens, which are plastic in morphological and anatomical terms, and also have stable reproduction systems, are preadapted to urban conditions (Paukov, 1995, 1997, 1998, 1998a, 1998b). In addition, one of the important results of the research was a lichen indicator map reflecting the state of the Ekaterinburg air basin.

The role of mushrooms in the development of civilization

The emergence of the first civilizations is associated with the transition to agriculture and cattle breeding. This happened about 10 thousand years ago (Ebeling, 1976) and radically changed the relationship between man and nature. However, the formation of early civilizations was also associated with the emergence of bakery and winemaking, where, as is known, yeast fungi are used. Of course, there can be no talk of conscious domestication of yeast fungi in those ancient times. Yeast itself was discovered only in 1680 by A. Leeuwenhoek, and the connection between it and fermentation was established even later - in the second half of the 19th century by L. Pasteur (Steinier et al., 1979). Nevertheless, the early domestication of mushrooms remains a historical fact and, most likely, this process occurred independently in different centers of civilization. This is supported, in our opinion, by the fact that in the countries of Southeast Asia, cultivated yeasts belong to zygomycete fungi, and in Europe - to ascomycete fungi.

Scientists have long noticed that all ancient civilizations arose in special climatic conditions: their zone covered territories with tropical, subtropical and partly temperate climate. It means that average annual temperature in such areas it was quite high - about +20 °C. Its greatest fluctuations were in some areas of China, where snow could fall in winter. Only a few thousand years later, the zone of civilizations began to spread to the north, where nature is more severe.

But can we conclude that favorable natural conditions are necessary for the emergence of civilizations? Of course, in ancient times, having still imperfect tools, people were very dependent on their environment, and if it created too many obstacles, this slowed down development. But the formation of civilizations did not take place under ideal conditions. On the contrary, it was accompanied by severe trials and changes in the usual way of life. In order to give a worthy response to the challenge that nature threw at them, people needed to look for new solutions, improve nature and themselves.

Many Old World civilizations were born in river valleys. Rivers (Tigris and Euphrates, Nile, Indus, Yangtze and others) played such a huge role in their lives that these civilizations are often called river civilizations. Indeed, the fertile soil in their deltas contributed to the development of agriculture. Rivers connected different parts of the country together and created opportunities for trade within it and with neighbors. But taking advantage of all these advantages was by no means easy. The lower reaches of the rivers were usually swamped, and a little further the land was already drying up from the heat, turning into a semi-desert. In addition, river beds often changed, and floods easily destroyed fields and crops. It took the work of many generations to drain the swamps, to build canals for a uniform supply of water to the entire country, and to be able to withstand floods. However, these efforts bore fruit: yields increased so sharply that scientists call the transition to irrigation farming an “agrarian revolution.”

The theory of “call and response” was formulated by the famous English historian A. Toynbee (1889-- 1975): the natural environment, by the very fact of its existence, sends a challenge to people who must create an artificial environment, fighting with nature and adapting to it.

“Rivers are the great educators of humanity.” (L.I. Mechnikov, Russian historian, 19th century).

Of course, not all ancient civilizations were riverine, but each of them faced difficulties depending on the characteristics of the landscape and climate.

“Challenge encourages growth... too good conditions tend to encourage a return to nature, a cessation of all growth.” (A. Toynbee).

Thus, Phenicia, Greece and Rome developed in a special geographical situation - coastal civilizations. Agriculture here did not require (unlike many civilizations of the East) irrigation, but the peninsular position was another challenge of nature. And the answer to this was the emergence of navigation, which played a vital role in the life of these maritime powers.

So, with all the diversity of natural conditions in which ancient civilizations existed, the civilizational process everywhere proceeded in inextricable connection with the development and transformation of the natural environment.

The civilizations of the ancient world have a number of common features. This stage of human development, as we will see later, differs significantly from subsequent eras. However, even then two large regions stood out - the East and the West, in which civilizational features began to take shape, which determined their different fates in ancient times, in the Middle Ages, and in modern times. Therefore, we will consider separately the civilizations of the Ancient East and the Mediterranean civilizations, on the ruins of which Europe was born.

Biological evolution and cultural genesis

The problems of modern civilization that threaten the existence of humanity and life on the planet - the danger of nuclear war, environmental disaster, depletion of non-renewable resources, drug addiction and much more - are the result of the long evolution of society, changes in its place and role in the history of our planet . They are generated by the active activity of mankind and the peculiarities of human “nature” formed over millions of years, which also requires consideration of the formation of civilization within the framework of global or universal evolutionism. In other words, penetration into the nature of civilization, the search for its foundations, reflections on the future of civilization, on the possible prospects for the existence of the human race require reliance on a certain general vision of the world, and such a “picture of the world” should include the principle of evolution and man himself. This means that the past, the history of man and his civilization, should be illuminated from the standpoint of universal evolutionism, when earthly life arises in the course of cosmic evolution, when biological evolution leads to the emergence of man and civilization.

In accordance with the concept of universal evolutionism, 15-20 billion years ago, all the matter of our Universe (the case of a “closed” model) was concentrated in a “singularity” - a certain physical condition, not subject to the usual laws of physics (in the case of an “open”, infinitely extended model of the Universe at the beginning of the expansion era, a singularity is inherent in every point of infinite space). The latest research at the intersection of cosmology and high-energy elementary particle physics shows that this “singularity,” or “overthrow,” was created from “nothing,” and from this “overthrow,” according to some internal laws of development, the currently observed The Universe with its unimaginably complex structure and processes, including the processes of intelligent life. Our Universe was born from a “singularity” as a result of the “Big Bang” (a fiery flash); its evolution naturally led to the emergence of earthly life. The latter itself began to evolve, as evidenced not only by paleontological data, but also by the teachings of Darwin, which in the 20th century was modified into the synthetic theory of evolution (along with it, there is the concept of “evolution without selection” formulated by the Swedish biologist A. Limade-Faria). , the biological revolution associated with the discovery of the structure of DNA, and gene theory.

Science has established that life is a continuous metabolism, which is specifically expressed in the interaction of synthesis and decay of organic matter. This implies the assumption that life in the early stages of its formation was associated not with individual organisms, but with the formation of the earth’s biosphere. According to the teachings of V.I. Vernadsky, the origin of life is actually the origin of the Earth’s biosphere - a complex self-regulating system that performs various geochemical functions.

The biosphere is a single, integral, self-organizing system that includes the life activity of living organisms, humans and their civilization.

It is the entire biosphere as a whole that evolves, not the species, as Russian scientist V.A. showed. Cordyum; this is due to the exchange of information between all organisms on the planet. Moreover, the exchange itself occurs not only with the help of genetic information processes, but also through energetically weak and ultra-weak signals, without which any living cell and all living things cannot function. This is emphasized in the works of A.G. Gurvich, V.P. Kaz Nacheev and his staff. During the evolution of the biosphere, the following points are usually highlighted: in the Cambrian period, the appearance of skeletons in a number of groups of animals; the emergence of plants on land in the Devonian period created at the same time the prerequisites for the migration of animals to land; During the Quaternary period man emerges. The last event is very significant - it marked the beginning of a sharp acceleration in the evolution of the biosphere and its transformation into the noosphere. The appearance of man is not accidental, it is an inevitable result of the natural process of evolution of the biosphere, lasting billions of years, its integral part.

The scientific literature notes that cosmic radiation generated by the galactic core, neutron stars, nearby star systems, the Sun and planets permeate the biosphere, permeate it all and everything in it. In this flow of various radiations from the Cosmos, the main place belongs to solar radiation, which determines the fundamental features of the functioning of the biosphere mechanism, which is cosmoplanetary in essence. IN AND. Vernadsky writes the following about this: “The sun has radically reworked and changed the peak of the Earth, permeated and embraced the biosphere. To a large extent, the biosphere is a manifestation of its radiations; it constitutes a planetary mechanism that transforms them into new and diverse forms of earthly free energy, which radically changes the fate of our planet.” And if the ultraviolet and infrared rays of the Sun indirectly influence the chemical processes of the biosphere, then chemical energy in its effective form is obtained from the energy of solar rays with the help of living matter - a set of living organisms that act as energy converters. This means that earthly life is by no means something accidental; it is part of the cosmoplanetary mechanism of the biosphere.

The evolution of the biosphere is accompanied by the death of some species, the survival of others, and the emergence of new ones. For example, dinosaurs became extinct, corals survived, and mammals appeared. In the course of evolution, those organisms remain whose vital activity increases the free chemical energy in the biosphere, i.e., evolution proceeds in a certain direction. IN AND. Vernadsky emphasizes the significance of the American geologist D. Dan’s statement that “in the course of geological time, in modern language... there is (intermittently) improvement - growth - of the central nervous system (brain), starting from crustaceans, on which it is empirically and established Dan forged his principle, both from mollusks (cephalopods) and ending with man. Once reached, the level of the brain (central nervous system) in the achieved evolution is not it's already underway backwards, only forward*. Thus, the emergence of man is a natural result of the development of the biosphere and the functioning of its cosmoplanetary mechanisms 1 . It is in the light of the latter position that the problem of the origin of man, which is one of the most important issues of worldview and science, should be considered. According to modern scientific data, the most adequate reality is the evolutionary theory of the origin of man from an animal ancestor. We are not even talking about the fact that in ancient times the idea of ​​the origin of man from animals was unconsciously recorded in mystical beliefs, in myths, legends and fairy tales. Studies in the field of comparative human anatomy and physiology indicate the kinship of humans with the animal world.

Polish researcher M. Rashkevich, in his first book, “Inhabitants of Alternative Worlds,” substantiates the thesis that “in the history of life on Earth there were many groups of animals from which a thinking creature could emerge,” and in his second book, “How to Become Human—an Evolutionary Prescription “proves the opposite thesis, according to which the entire history of the Earth contributed to the emergence of man. Thus, the researcher uses the same facts to justify two mutually exclusive concepts regarding the appearance of man on our planet. It should be noted that man is one of Nature’s many attempts to “create” intelligent structures similar to her - a successful attempt under the conditions of the Earth. It is also interesting that there is much in common between modern data about the Cosmos, the biosphere, their development and universal human ethics. In any case, one thing is certain - the evolution of the biosphere was moving towards intelligent being and animals, embryology, iridology, genetics, molecular biology and neurobiology. Culture owes its existence and its history to man’s ability to adapt to any changing conditions, which itself is a purely human trait. E. Hart calls it the “Promethean gene,” acquired by a person as a result of a threefold increase in his brain compared to his ancestor. Culture is transmitted not through biological inheritance, but through communication between generations.

If we consider our planet as an all-encompassing system, then the current attempt to understand culture from a biosphere point of view is legitimate, that is, we should take into account the fact that cultural genesis naturally follows from biological evolution. In biology, two types of knowledge about the external world are distinguished: knowledge of the species of one’s own ecological niche and knowledge of neighboring niches; Moreover, during the evolution of the biosphere, some complex supracellular structures with high evolutionary plasticity were able to quickly penetrate into other adaptive zones. It was the human species that managed to make a breakthrough into a new adaptive zone and thanks to a culture that differentiated within itself into different kinds cultures, get an idea of ​​the biosphere as a whole, which allows the human species to survive in a changing environment and adapt to it.

Currently, the idea of ​​an analogy between the evolution of cultures (albeit at a different level) and the process of biological evolution has become fully established. One cannot but agree with the statement of the American culturologist P. Ricks-Marlow that, like a biological species, each type of culture should be considered as a unique chronicle of attempts to adapt to an ever-changing environment, and to acquire energetic advantages over others in it.” This scientific approach to the study of culture is recognized by thinkers as diverse as Lorenz, Skinner, Dawkins and Erikson: it has great heuristic potential.

This approach shows that cultural genesis is associated with the evolution of the hominid brain, which reached its greatest volume in humans. The evolution of the hominid brain during the Pleistocene should be considered a very special process for at least two reasons. Firstly, in connection with its pace: it was one of the fastest, most violent processes of macroevolution in the history of vertebrates, or perhaps in the history of the animal world in general. Secondly, in connection with its phenomenal consequences: this process led to the emergence of a unique phenomenon in the animal world of the biosphere, which is the human psyche, integral to culture. Here we are talking about the following interconnected properties: 1) operating with images and concepts, the content of which is free from the limitations of space and time and can relate to imaginary events that never exist anywhere; 2) cognitive ability, based on penetration into the structure of the world and building a model of the world; 3) the ability to comply with existing moral standards behavior, and to destruction and self-destruction; 4) self-awareness and self-reflection, manifested in the ability to contemplate one’s own existence and be aware of death.

The problem arises of explaining the characteristics of the human psyche (and, accordingly, cupturogenesis).

Science has put forward a number of hypotheses that try to solve this problem: mutations in the brain cells of hominids caused by hard radiation from a Supernova explosion, or inversions of the geomagnetic field, or a mutant among hominids appeared as a result of heat stress.

Let us briefly consider these hypotheses in the order presented.

Within the framework of such a direction of scientific research as “cosmic catastrophe” that has recently emerged, a hypothesis has been put forward about the emergence of modern man (and human civilization) in connection with the outbreak of a nearby Supernova. A very surprising fact has been recorded that the outbreak of a nearby Supernova in time (once every 100 million years) approximately corresponds to the age of the oldest remains of “homo sapiens” (about 35-60 thousand years ago). In addition, a number of anthropologists believe that the emergence of modern man is due to mutation, and the impulse of gamma and X-ray radiation from the outbreak of a nearby Supernova is accompanied by a short-term (within a year) increase in the number of mutations. As a result, these hard radiations could cause irreversible changes in the brain cells of some animals, including hominids, which led to the formation of mutants of the “Homo sapiens” species. In any case, the Supernova explosion is associated with: 1) the formation solar system, 2) the origin of life and 3) perhaps the origin of the modern type of man with his civilization.

Another hypothesis comes from the fact that modern man is a mutant that arose as a result of the inversion of the earth's magnetic field. It has been established that the geomagnetic field sometimes weakens, and then its poles change. During such reversals, the degree of cosmic radiation on our planet increases sharply; it is known that over the past 3 million years the Earth’s magnetic poles have changed places four times. Some discovered remains of primitive people date back to the era of the fourth geomagnetic reversal. This unusual combination of circumstances leads to the idea of ​​the possible influence of cosmic rays on the emergence of man. This hypothesis is strengthened by the fact that man appeared at that time (3 million years ago) and in those places (Southern and East Africa), in which the strength of radioactive radiation turned out to be most favorable for changing great apes. This approach is quite legitimate, because the role of the geomagnetic field in the life of organisms, including humans, is known.

An original and interesting hypothesis is the increase in brain mass in hominids due to its adaptation to extreme heat stress. Its content boils down to the following provisions: 1. It is likely that the earliest form of hunting among hominids was hunting in an individual way, an “endurance competition”, used before them, for example, by the Bushmen. Such a hunt requires numerous forced marches in the tropical savanna and must cause severe heat stress, which threatens to disrupt the activity of neurons in the cerebral cortex. The latter are very sensitive to temperature increases - as a result, a temporary disturbance of spatial orientation and memory occurs. 2. The adaptation of hominids to this stress, unlike animals (they have special adaptations to maintain a constant temperature in the vessels of the brain), was based on the creation of additional cortical neurons and an increase in the number of connections between them. Everything is aimed at ensuring that the functioning of the brain as a whole remains effective even when the activity of some neurons is disrupted. This adaptation follows from the theory of J. von Neumann, according to which the stability of the functioning of a complex system consisting of unstable elements can be achieved by increasing the number of elements and the number of connections between them. 3. This kind of natural selection is designed to create a brain that is not so much “intelligent” as it is resistant to periodic, extreme heat stress. The resulting brain has increased intellectual potential, but this is only a side effect of resistance to heat stress. 4. These new potentials were then used for purposes for which it was not initially intended, i.e., “abstract thinking,” symbolic communication, etc. From that moment on, the further evolution of the hominid brain took place through selection for “ reasonableness." In general, this hypothesis can be very fruitful in elucidating the origin of man, since it is associated with the processes of thermoregulation of living matter in the biosphere.

The stochastic model of cultural genesis, put forward by one of the most subtle thinkers of the 20th century, S. Lem, deserves attention; it deals with the physical, biological and social determinants of culture (258, 123]. According to this model, based on the understanding of culture as a game, culture arises because Nature is an “arena” of disturbances and non-algorithmic (unpredictable) changes. Evolution - This is an ongoing process, and each evolutionary strategy is both uncertain and compromise. The compromise, dictated by the uncertainty of species decisions and the tendency to minimization, which is imposed by selection, is carried out within the framework of a bipolar alternative. Organisms can “perceive" a change in environmental conditions as transitional. or as long-term, in which case the distinction between fluctuation and stationary state cannot be made. That is why they react to change in a reversible way (phenotypically) or irreversibly (genotypically)... In the first case, the strategy of organisms has the advantage that it allows one to abandon the decision made, however, the adaptive plasticity of phenotypes has limits; during their transition, irreversible genotypic changes occur. The second case is attractive because genotypic changes make it possible to make a transition on a scale from a clone to a person,

but they prohibit “reconsidering” decisions made. The same clone, unlike death, can “enter” under unfavorable conditions into a state of reversible death, forming a stable figure.

But evolutionary progress is both gain and loss, risk and gain. How does evolution solve this dilemma? It uses a special technique called neutralization of organisms: being in the grip of phenotypic insufficiency and genotypic irreversibility, evolution finds a new compromise - it creates organisms that are strongly determined genotypically, but very plastic phenotypically.

This compromise is, writes S. Lem, the brain, because it, determined by the genotype, enhances phenotypic adaptability.” It is the brains of human individuals that create culture as a survival strategy, when a “homo” species can change strategies without losing its genotypic identity.

At the anthropological level, strategic decisions are no longer “made” in the environment of hereditary material (bioplasm), but in the cultural system. Culture makes possible what is biologically impossible - the creation of strategies that are both revolutionary and reversible, that is, making it possible to revise decisions and transform the environment at a pace inaccessible to hereditary plasma. After all, the differentiation occurring in this plasma requires millions of years. At least a million years will be required for the evolutionary consolidation of a new biological species. In culture, specialization (differentiation) occurs in a maximum of a thousand years, and when cultural genesis accelerates, then several decades are enough for the largest strategic transformations. This kind of million-fold acceleration The pace of evolution on our planet gives rise to various kinds of dangers and no one can be blamed for this, because in accordance with the rules of game theory and the theory of nonlinear programming, evolution has done everything in its power.

Cultural genesis is associated with the stochasticity of the world and the existence in it of bifurcation mechanisms associated with the uncertainty of the world evolutionary process. The biosphere in its development gave birth to man with his culture and society; its place in the global evolution of N.N. Moiseev defines it as follows: “At a certain stage of the development of the Universe as a unified system, it began, with the help of man, his Mind, to know itself and acquired the ability to purposefully influence the course of its own development.”

The formation of culture (culturogenesis) is the result of the reverse evolution of the biosphere, a long process of mutual influence of biological and social evolution, and it is man who acts as the only subject of culture, simultaneously creating it and being formed under its influence. The world of culture is closely connected with the process of hominization, with the process of transition from animal to human, one of the aspects of which is the transition from certain instinctive, reflex reactions of the animal to the world to the uncertainty of human knowledge. Indeed, an animal has instincts associated with learning that regulate its behavior at every moment of life. Research in ethology shows that the behavior of some animals living in a relatively stable and unchanging environment is largely pre-programmed and follows a strict pattern, while the behavior of other animals in a changing environment requires deviation from the standard and a choice of several behaviors. alternatives We can say that in an animal the world of perceptions and the world of actions (behavior) are connected. In humans, these two worlds are mediated by the world of social history, and in connection with this, only the person is often in a situation where he really does not know what he should do.

Thus, a person has a need to make a reliable decision and determine this reliability. It is this need that underlies cultural genesis (the origin of mythology, religion, art, science, etc.), when a person has an arsenal of various physical and spiritual techniques at his disposal. Only culture allows a person to build his behavior on the basis of predicting future, not yet existing events using various strategies. Culture has a gap (a band of freedom) in relation to Nature, which explains the existence of purely culturally changeable forms and meanings. S. Lem writes about this: “The stochastic model of cultural genesis assumes that the space of freedom that the world leaves at the disposal of an evolving society that has already fulfilled the duty of adaptation, that is, a set of indispensable tasks, is filled with sets of behaviors, initially random. However, over time, they freeze in the processes of self-organization and develop into such structures of norms that form an internal cultural pattern of “human nature”, imposing on it schemes of obligations and duties. Man (especially at the beginning of his historical path) grows into accidents, which decide what he and his civilization will be like. The selection of behavioral alternatives is essentially a lottery; but this does not mean that the composition of what will come out is just as lost.” In other words, a person at the starting point is an axiologically neutral being, and whether he becomes a “monstrous savage” or an “innocent simpleton” depends on the cultural code, which is different in different civilizations. After all, the codes, or languages, of cultures correlate and stabilize the behavior of social organisms, express cultural meanings and show the degree of commensurability and incommensurability of cultures and civilizations. Culture codes are inextricably linked with the characteristics of a particular civilization, which requires clarification of the genesis and essence of civilization.

The origin of civilization and its character

Clarification of the nature of civilization is impossible without addressing the question of its genesis, and it is necessary to take into account the connection between the concepts of “civilization” and “culture”. We should not forget that these concepts are among the unusually capacious and polysemantic, that they are characterized by semantic multicolor. In this regard, the diversity in science of ideas about civilization and culture, the relationship between them, and, consequently, the difference in the interpretation of historical processes becomes understandable.

In culturological and historical-methodological literature, two extreme points of view can be distinguished on the relationship between civilization and culture.

One of them identifies them, considering these concepts synonymous; This position is most consistently presented in the work of E.S. Markaryan, moreover, preference is given to “culture” as the fundamental basis of human existence. This kind of cognitive attitude is quite legitimate in the course of studying the objectified activities of people belonging to a particular culture, and it is used in ethnography and archeology. However, as a methodological installation in the study of the world cultural-historical process, it is questionable, because it “smears” the subtle dialectical relationships and interactions between civilization and culture, contributes to a deformed “perception” of the history of mankind and eliminates the problem of the origin of civilization, identifying it with cultural genesis.

Another point of view is presented by O. Spengler in his famous work “The Decline of Europe”; she crosses the paradigm social progress, developed by rationalists and enlighteners of Western Europe in the 18th century, and is based on the scheme of a plurality of equivalent cultures. This is how colorfully he describes the entire peaceful history: “But “humanity” has no goal, no idea, no plan, just as there is no goal for the species of butterflies or orchids. "Humanity" is an empty word. One has only to exclude this phantom from the circle of problems of historical forms, and in its place an unexpected wealth of real forms will be revealed before our eyes... Instead of a monotonous picture, a linear-shaped world history... I see the phenomenon of many powerful cultures... and each of them imposes on its material - humanity - its own form and each has its own idea, its own passions, its own life, desires and feelings, and finally, its own death. Here are colors, light, movement, such as no mental eye has yet discovered. There are flourishing and aging cultures, peoples, languages, truths, gods, countries, just as there are young and old oaks and pine trees, flowers, branches and leaves, but there is no aging humanity. Each culture has its own possibilities, expressions that arise, mature, wither and never repeat themselves. There are numerous, in their very essence separate from each other, plastic arts, painting, mathematics, physics, each with limited vital activity, each closed in itself, just as each type of plant has its own flowers and fruits, its own type of growth and death. These cultures, living beings of a higher order, grow with their sublime aimlessness, like flowers in a field... In world history I see a picture of eternal formation and change, the miraculous formation and dying of organic forms.” Here, world history is described as the life of many cultures by analogy with the world of living nature in its multicolor and mosaic.

At the same time, it is essential that each of the many cultures, having gone through the stage of growth, reaches the stage of necrosis, or civilization, that is, civilization is the logical conclusion and outcome of culture, a kind of its antipode. According to O. Spengler, characteristic features civilizations are: the emergence of a world city with its huge concentration of people, the transformation of peoples into faceless masses, the degradation of art and literature, the development of industry and technology, which are demonic forces: “Pure civilization, as a historical process, is a constant development (by ledges , as in mines) that have become inorganic and dead forms." Thus, civilization is the fate of culture, loses its “soul” and turns into a dead, inorganic body. Civilization means the death of culture with all the ensuing consequences in terms of understanding the processes of world history; What is significant for us is that the genesis of civilization is associated with the transition of culture into the phase of death, when the soul of culture is destroyed, when pure intellect dominates.

These extreme points of view on the relationship between civilization and culture capture very real aspects, but they are absolutized. The truth, as a rule, lies in the middle - the origin of civilization is determined by the contradictions in the development of primitive society, when “in the course of cultural evolution, man ceases to be content with simply maintaining his own life and the existence of his species. He is characterized by a constant search for new forms of behavior in order to increase his competitiveness in the struggle for life. We are faced with the problem of the relationship between culture and human nature, which is at the center of discussions initiated by sociobiologists. In his book “Civilization and Its Discontents” 3. Freud emphasized that biological motives are in conflict with the demands of culture. He believed that civilization requires a person to suppress such biological impulses as sexuality and aggression. A different position is taken by the famous ethnologist B. Malinovsky, who views social institutions as inventions that allow a person to satisfy his desires. For example, family and courtship legitimize sex, while organized sports provide an outlet for aggression without harm to others. Be that as it may, one thing is obvious, namely: cultural evolution in conditions of primitive life led to the emergence of civilization.

Research into the ancient civilizations of the Old and New Worlds gave rise to the Russian scientist V.M. Masson to conclude that “from the point of view of cultural genesis, the formation of civilization can be considered as a kind of cultural revolution, which is in the closest causal connection with the formation of class society and the state.” This cultural revolution occurred due to the internal differentiation of culture and the emergence of cultural innovations, as well as a crisis in the development of primitive, or “primitive” (A. Toynbee), society. It was cultural innovations, whatever their origin, that gave a fundamentally new look to the first civilizations and integrated into them; as a result, from the moment of its appearance, civilization becomes a way of being of culture, i.e. the development and functioning of culture becomes possible only on the basis of civilization, and therefore, in a certain sense, the concepts of “civilization”, “higher culture”, used in cultural literature, are identical . In any case, one thing is certain: the concept of civilization is connected in one of its aspects with the recording of a qualitative turning point in the history of human society.

Another thing is that there is no single point of view on the nature of the genesis of the first civilizations - we have a scattering of different opinions and judgments. Thus, A. Toynbee believes that “independent” civilizations are the result of mutation of “primitive” societies; Moreover, it comes from the importance of mimesis in primitive societies and civilizations: in the first, mimesis is focused on the past, on custom, thereby preserving society and giving it a static form; in the second, mimesis is associated with the future, stimulates the activity of creative individuals, dynamizing society. “Dynamic movement,” writes A. Toynbee, “is characteristic of civilization, while “a static state is characteristic of primitive societies.” However, if you ask whether this difference is permanent and fundamental, the answer will be negative. Everything depends on time and place ". In other words, A. Toynbee was not able to fully reveal the reasons for the origin of civilization, although he captured certain points correctly, namely: the origin of primary civilizations is the result of a mutation of primitive societies associated with a transformation in the functioning of social memory.

This is interesting and worthy of attention, but it is still unclear why primitive societies transformed and turned into civilizations. After all, A. Toynbee himself very figuratively and clearly shows the colossal difference between both. Likening them to rabbits and elephants, he points out that there are many primitive societies, that they are small, few in number, take up little space, do not last long and quickly increase in number through segmentation, that is, giving rise to new ones. Civilizations, on the contrary, are characterized by a large population and territory, long existence, etc. At the same time, an attempt to reduce the entire complexity of the problem of the genesis of civilization to the activities creative personalities, constituting a minority of society, is a simplification, and therefore A. Toynbee turns to his favorite mythology “Challenge-Response”, which plays a “key role” in his “picture of human relations”. This concept has two layers of history - “sacred” and “secular”. In the “sacral” layer, each “Challenge” is an incentive for people to make an absolutely free choice between Good and Evil, which God provided them with. In the “worldly” layer, “Challenge” is a problem that civilization (society) faces on the path of historical development: deterioration of natural conditions (cold snap, the onset of desert, jungle, etc.) and changes in the human environment. A. Toynbee explains the genesis of civilization with the concept of “Challenge-Response”: The “Challenge” of nature and the “Response” to it on the part of man played the decisive role of the initial push and set into motion the entire complex mechanism of interacting factors, which led to the genesis of civilization. .

Not everything in A. Toynbee’s concept is satisfactory; it has many weak points, which caused not only criticism, but also the emergence of other concepts and approaches. The weak points of A. Toynbee's concept were revised in the works of some of his followers; Among them, the first place belongs to the work of R. Coulborne, dedicated specifically to the origin of civilizations. In it, based on an analysis of a number of material factors, several new provisions are formulated. First of all, it is noted that the most necessary condition for the emergence of civilization is grain farming, which represents the main type of employment of the population. However, this was not enough for the genesis of civilization, because the emergence of a new sociocultural phenomenon required a whole complex of favorable conditions. Among them, R. Coulborn includes, firstly, the natural climatic factor - the presence of fertile river valleys with their alluvium and periodic floods, with ample opportunities for irrigation (in them, in fact, all primary civilizations arose); secondly, the process of genesis of the centers of these primary civilizations was facilitated by the mixing of tribes and cultures in a relatively compact and limited territory, that is, primary civilization is the result of the amalgamation of primitive collectives. their level of culture; thirdly, the genesis of civilization is also determined primarily not by urbanization or writing, but by the ability to rapid change, external influences (diffusion of cultures), cyclical development and the power of control over the environment; fourthly, the new religion that was formed in the depths of each emerging civilization, which was a conglomerate of elements of old religions, played a role;

fifthly, the new civilization developed its own style, which has elements both similar to others and its own, inherent only to it, and this point is very significant.

In the work of R. Culbourn, in fact, everything that played an important role in the process of the origin of the primary centers of civilization was noted. However, one question did not receive an answer, namely: what is the mechanism of the process of the genesis of civilization, called by the famous archaeologist G. Child “urban revolution,” which emphasizes the revolutionary role of this most important qualitative leap in the history of the development of human society. At the same time modern science has data that indicates that this “urban” or “second” revolution is itself a derivative of the Neolithic revolution that preceded it, which prepared the material and technical prerequisites for the “urban revolution”. Domestic researcher G.F. Sunyagin notes “... the emergence of civilization was preceded by a radical revolution in labor as a method of metabolism between people and nature, which is called in science the “Neolithic revolution” and which ultimately led to the replacement of the appropriating economic system with a producing one. The very fact that we do not know a single civilization that arose on the basis of hunting and gathering, as well as the fact that the most ancient civilizations were formed on the basis of centers of ancient intensive agriculture, allows, in our opinion, to conclude that civilization is a product of a productive economic system, and in this sense, the problem of the genesis of civilization is, first of all, the problem of the genesis of agriculture as a qualitatively new existence, comparable to the hunt, of the “tribal essential forces” of man.” In this regard, it is necessary to identify the reasons for the appearance of agriculture in the history of human society, especially since it determined the main path of history.

The emergence of agriculture is a rather complex problem; its solution required the use of botanical, archaeological, historical, ethnographic, theological, geographical and other evidence. After all, “the explanation of the process of transition from a hunting-gathering economy to the cultivation of plants and the domestication of animals lies in a deep understanding of the associated participation in this process of several factors - geological (palaeographic), floristic, faunistic and anthropological - which acted both sequentially and synchronously." IN Quaternary period the geological (determining) factor led to cooling and aridization; the latter caused the displacement of perennial tree forms by herbaceous forms with an annual life cycle. The wide distribution of herbaceous integuments has prepared the necessary conditions existence and development of man. And when, at the end of the Late Paleolithic, at the end of the Ice Age, man occupied all the hunting grounds on the planet, when the hunting-gathering economy reached its limit, then our biological species was faced with a situation - an increase in the number of hunters and gatherers and a reduction in the food obtained . As a result, notes P. Kuusi, “humanity as a species acquired the ability to master new forms of behavior... and gradually switched to agriculture.”

It was the “agrarian revolution” that led to changes in man - civilizations and cities grew on an agricultural basis. G. Child lists their characteristics in the following order: 1) settlements with a large and dense population; 2) specialization of crafts and labor; 3) concentration of wealth; 4) monumental public architecture; 5) a society built on classes; 6) writing and number systems; 7) the birth of science; 8) high art styles; 9) long distance exchange; 10) the emergence of states. These signs show the nature of changes in human behavior; We are facing a radical transformation in the development of mankind. One cannot but agree with the statement of N.N. Moiseev about two bifurcations (restructurings) - the Mesolithic and Neolithic revolutions: “As a result of the first, intraspecific struggle and natural selection faded, the nature of the evolutionary process radically changed: purely biological evolution gave way to the evolution of social forms of human existence. As a result of the second, private property arose, and again the nature of evolution changed qualitatively, but now of society itself. Social relations have become different - new incentives for its development have appeared. In both cases, there was a sharp acceleration of all development processes."

However, it was not the emergence of agriculture in general that led to the emergence of civilization, but one of its specific variants, which allowed the primitive homogeneity to be broken and the first center of civilization to emerge. This, as is known, is the Middle Eastern variant, the study of which underlies the formation of the concept of “Neolithic revolution”. It was here, in the Middle East, that intensive agriculture served as the basis for a radical transformation of the entire society. According to G. Sunyagin, the emergence of civilization was facilitated by the following points: 1) unique circumstances that developed in a fairly limited area; they are associated with the explosive capabilities of agriculture as the first productive form of economic management; 2) a unique circumstance is that the Middle East is an intercontinental crossroads with a rich genetic fund; 3) no less significant is that the increase in aridity forced various human groups to descend from the foothills and settle nearby, thereby shaking totemic traditionalism; 4) the development of wetlands in the Mesopotamian cauldron required the concentration of human efforts and tied individuals to a specific place; 5) the basis of agriculture turned out to be the most promising crops - wheat and barley in combination with the most promising animals that can be domesticated; 6) the absence of stone in the swampy valley - the traditional material of primitive society, and therefore they began to develop “non-traditional” materials. All this significantly accelerated the pace of cultural evolution and led society to a fundamentally new qualitative state - civilization.

In those regions where there were no circumstances conducive to the emergence of civilization in addition to intensive agriculture, the latter simply did not arise. So, due to the impossibility of transition to sedentary lifestyle life (Central Africa), due to the lack of promising plants for cultural development in the region (Southeast Asia), due to the disunity of individual agricultural communities (Mountain Bukhara) and other reasons, the primitive producing economy was integrated into the system of unique social institutions and could not give rise to civilization.

According to other researchers, the idea of ​​the Neolithic revolution as a transition from one qualitative state of society to another characterizes a necessary, but not sufficient condition for the genesis of civilization. A typical example is the Tripoli culture (it existed on a vast territory from the Lower Danube to the Dnieper between 4000 and 2200 BC), which formed large, multi-thousand-strong agricultural settlements, but was unable to overcome the barrier of civilization. That is why the search for conditions sufficient for the genesis of civilizations is carried out.

They are pointed out by domestic researcher V.L. Glazychev in his work “The Genesis of Civilization: Activity and Its Social Organization.” Firstly, one of the conditions for the genesis of civilization is the limited spatial expansion - the condition of spatial stationarity. Secondly, the availability of sufficient resources for the leap to civilization. The third is the existence of a thousand-year “caesura” between the high cultures of small valleys and the civilizations of great valleys, i.e., a specific transition period of active socio-cultural innovation. Fourthly, the emergence and separation of the most innovative activity (it is sometimes called proto-project) of a person from the reproducing one and its consolidation in a socially organized form. Fifthly, the isolation of socially sanctioned means of implementing the results of innovative activity and its autonomy from the actual labor processes of reproduction.

This approach makes it possible to abandon focusing on the objective features of civilization listed above. We know civilizations in which there was no fortified city opposed to the village (Ancient Egypt): civilizations in which neither military nor religious power was able to win the struggle for monopoly and a class-determined legal organization came to the fore (Mesopotamia) , while in others the law is not isolated until its late and violent introduction from the outside (Ancient Egypt). We know of civilizations where the class hierarchy was not connected with private property (Iranian Empire) and writing of the “classical” type did not develop, etc. In these cases, objective characteristics do not “work” as a criterion. The genesis of civilization can be fully explained by the conditions indicated above and, above all, by the isolation of innovation activity and the isolation of one or another social mechanism for implementing innovation in practice. Within the framework of the presented approach, it is concluded that “civilization is determined by the phase of the existence of culture, marked by the established forms of isolation of production activities and the introduction of innovations in all types of material and spiritual production.” The situation, favored by fan writers, of transferring innovative activity to extra-human intelligence means the end of the existence of civilization thus understood.

In the specialized literature, an opinion is expressed that identifies the emergence of the first, or primary, civilizations with the first cities. This is based on the fact that in the era of the existence of the tribal community, cities simply could not exist and they really did not exist, despite the existence of a unique complex hierarchical organization in the community. Domestic scientists V.V. Verbovsky and V.A. Kapustin believe that “civilization is the result of the division of labor between the peasant, artisan, merchant, warrior and priest, the result of the exchange between the labor classes of peasants and artisans, on the basis of which the non-labor classes of merchants, warriors and priests are born.” The logic of the argument here is as follows: the city is the product of a radical change in the primitive mode of production and the resulting no less radical change in the forms of division of labor. Commodity production begins to develop, a surplus product appears, which serves as the basis for the emergence of the first non-labor class - the merchants, on whose trade income a city with temples, paved streets, water pipes, etc. is formed.

However, the process of enrichment of some is accompanied by the impoverishment of others, and a polarization of wealth and poverty occurs. And if some of the poor serve the rich, others slide to the social bottom. As a result, such indispensable attributes of civilization as “the beggar, the prostitute and the thief” appear. To protect his wealth, the merchant creates a police force; To protect it, security is organized along the caravan routes. But wealth also causes greed among entire nations (just remember the Vikings, Mongols, etc.), who carry out devastating raids on cities. With necessity, armies appear, consisting of professional soldiers well trained in military affairs. A complex hierarchy of the city arises - the merchants, the top of the army, the service sector of the merchants and the army, the urban plebs; it needs a control system, which the priests take into their hands. After all, historically it has developed that the priesthood is not only a religious corporation, but also an institution for storing and multiplying knowledge, and a governing body.

As a result, classes and the state emerge, and culture is stratified into professional and lumpen cultures. That is why civilization is identified with culture (after all, it stimulates it) and at the same time they are contrasted - civilization corrupts and distorts culture. The last moment is captured by A.P. Skripnik in his monograph “Moral Evil”: “Robbery and acts of vandalism

are a typical way of self-expression in a society where family nobility and place in the social hierarchy are valued above all else. The colossal senseless waste of wealth created by people, and of human lives themselves, is an incurable ulcer of such a civilization.” Thus, civilization is born and develops thanks to the production of surplus product, surplus labor that creates social wealth and the city, i

The prominent orientalist L.S. also offers his own scheme for the genesis of primary civilizations. Vasiliev in his monograph “Problems of the Genesis of Chinese Civilization.” He represents the process of evolution of man and his culture in the form of a unique multi-stage pyramid. The lower tier is the Upper Paleolithic era, within which numerous hordes evolve, striving to rise to the next step of the pyramid, symbolizing the Mesolithic era. Due to a number of favorable conditions (warm climate, abundance of food, etc.), a certain series of interacting hordes breaks through into the Mesolithic. Others do not have time to do this; they are pushed aside, assimilated and destroyed (like the extinct Tasmanians).

The same picture is observed when trying to advance from the second stage to the third. Some highly advanced Mesolithic cultures took advantage of Neolithic innovations to occupy the best places for agriculture and began to quickly spread throughout the ecumene. A complex and motley picture of the population of the ecumene emerges, including advanced and somewhat lagging farmers, tribes with developed cattle breeding, non-agricultural tribes, familiar and unfamiliar with the complex of Neolithic innovations. In the course of cultural contacts, this diversity was leveled out, but over time, the action of this mechanism slowed down. And finally, the fourth step of the pyramid is the genesis of the centers of primary civilizations, where the same principle operated. But there is some specificity here: “The process of the genesis of civilization, which can most of all be likened to mutation, was distinguished by the fact that the main direction of development of this primary center of civilization did not go in breadth, as had happened before, but in depth.” In other words, the role of external contacts becomes smaller, and a significant role is given to internal development (in some cases, closed civilizations arise). The very centers of primary civilizations (Mesopotamian, etc.) influenced the genesis of new centers of civilization through such important impulses of evolution as migrations, diffusion of cultural innovations and the convergent (independent) development of technology and culture within a given community, which led to the diversity of ways of development of civilizations, the division of the world cultural continuum into a number of alternative civilizations.

Divergence (biol.) - divergence of characters during the development of something
any species of animal or plant, resulting in
new species, genera, families, etc. ..-

Stochastic (from the Greek stochastikos - able to guess) - random, probabilistic, in disorderly motion.

Phenotype is the totality of all the characteristics and properties of an organism formed in the process of individual development.

Genotype is the hereditary basis of an organism.

Bifurcation is a division or branching of something.

Mimesis - imitation; a term from ancient Greek philosophy that characterizes the essence of human creativity.

Aridization - dehydration, transformation into a desert.

The ecumene is the totality of those areas of the globe that are inhabited by humans.

Unity and diversity of civilizations

Associated with the genesis and development of civilization in various regions of our planet is the question that has arisen in all its urgency about the meaning of universal history - whether the universal history of humanity is a dream or a reality. Moreover, F. Fukuyama’s article “The End of Stories?” created a lot of noise, which affirms the thesis about the end of human history, and in “the post-historical period there is neither art nor philosophy; there is only a carefully guarded museum of human history.” That is, we are talking about the end of civilization with its North Atlantic and Asian branches. All this presupposes consideration of the concept of the world-historical unity of modern civilization and the presence of common basic laws of its development and an alternative in the form of the theory of “pluralism of civilizations.”

The next stage of the hierarchical pyramid shows the understanding of civilization as a certain and fairly high level of culture, satisfying the above characteristics and contrasted with the pre-civilization level of culture, which is sometimes called savagery and barbarism.

The third stage is represented by several civilizations called L.S. Vasiliev conditionally “traditions-civilizations” and acting as their daughters to the civilization that unites them all, which is a step higher. We should not forget that a formation takes on its specific appearance within the framework of a tradition-civilization, that one formation can replace another within the framework of the same, for example, European civilization. And finally, the fourth stage of the hierarchical pyramid of the semantic field of the concept of civilization includes those of the most private and local nature, closely associated with one or another of the ethnic groups or states - Japanese, Russian, German, ancient Greek, Sumerian, etc. In more In the narrow sense, the concept of “civilization” is usually no longer used. Based on this remark, we move on to consider concepts that emphasize the unity of civilizations or insist on the pluralism of civilizations, as well as representing a synthesis of alternative approaches.

For a long time, Western philosophy of history was dominated by Hegel’s point of view, according to which all peaceful history is the process of self-realization of the “world spirit” in the objective world, and that the development of human culture (civilization) consists of a progressive transition from one phase to another in linear time. Many cultures seem to have a parallel evolution, focusing historically and logically within them universally and rationally human elements and absorbing the achievements of the common cultural heritage of humanity. In this case, civilization is like a bright, multi-colored tapestry, where the socio-historical development of local culture is woven into the broad march of humanity.

Hegel's philosophy of history has a number of features that follow from the essence of the philosophical system of the great dialectician. Firstly, it is a philosophy of progress, for history is purposeful and moves towards the triumph of reason and spirit, or towards “absolute knowledge”. Secondly, we have before us a dialectical philosophy: each stage of social development is transitory in nature, since internal contradictions inevitably lead to a crisis and transition to a new stage. Thirdly, this is a philosophy of necessity, which recognizes only the only goal of a historical individual (an individual or an entire people): the implementation of the requirements of the “world mind”, adequate to a given historical moment, without any attempts to overtake, stop or reverse this movement. “Great people (Alexander the Great, Caesar, Napoleon) and great families (Greeks, Romans, Prussians) owe their fate,” notes E. Terre, “to the fact that they were able to feel these demands, take them as a basis, and thus thereby contribute to the forward movement towards the triumph of the “spirit”.

The triumph of “spirit” for Hegel means the achievement of “absolute knowledge,” i.e., it actually marks the end of the history of mankind, the history of civilization. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that the end of history itself represents an unclear prospect like the second coming. Christ or some more specific dates - there is no definite answer here. In any case, one thing is certain - the unity of civilization in Hegel’s philosophy of history is based on the purposeful linear, progressive development of the “world mind”, embodied in the earthly forms of its “otherness”. It is essential that the basis of universal history so understood is the progress of European civilization, which absorbed the achievements of the Mediterranean civilizations that preceded it. This means that the history of mankind was, as it were, reduced to the history of Western civilization, taking on a Eurocentric character and thereby ignoring the equality and originality of other non-European civilizations. It is not surprising that the modern Indian researcher R. Mukherjee in his book “The Fate of Civilization” qualifies the Western philosophy of history, based on Hegel, as erroneous. For the sake of historical justice, it should be noted that one of the first to criticize the Hegelian philosophy of history was our wonderful scientist and thinker of the last century, N.Ya. Danilevsky. More than 120 years ago, he wrote the book “Russia and Europe”, in which, based on rich empirical material, he put forward the theory of “cultural-historical types”, which had an exceptionally great influence on modern Western philosophy of culture. This theory is a theory of the plurality and diversity of human cultures (or civilizations). The domestic scientist is characterized in the West as the founder of the now popular approach there to the spatio-temporal localization of cultural phenomena. In addition, N.Ya. Danilevsky expressed a critical attitude towards the Eurocentric, unilinear scheme of social progress, which was then taken up by such thinkers as O. Spengler, F. Northrop, A. Schubart, P.A. Sorokin and A. Toynbee.

In his work “Russia and Europe” it is noted that the forms of historical life of mankind diversify according to cultural and historical types, or civilizations, and we can talk about historical movement relative to the limits of civilization. All original civilizations are divided into three large classes: positive, negative figures and civilizations serving other people's goals. The first class is composed in chronological order: Egyptian, Chinese, Assyrian-Babylonian-Phoenician (Ancient Semitic), Indian, Iranian, Jewish, Greek, Roman, Arabian (New Semitic), German-Romanovian (European) and Slavic. To these should be added the Mexican and Peruvian civilizations, which have not yet completed their development. These cultural and historical types represent positive figures in the history of mankind; they contributed to the progress of the human spirit. The second class is formed by negative cultural and historical types (Huns, Mongols, Turks), which help “to give up the spirit of civilizations struggling with death.” The third class includes those civilizations that are beginning to develop (the Finns, etc.), which are not destined to play either a constructive or destructive role in the history of mankind, because they became part of other civilizations “as ethnographic material. .

According to the theory of N.Ya. Danilevsky, humanity is by no means something unified, a “living whole”; it is rather a living element, cast into forms similar to organisms. The largest of these forms are “cultural-historical types” or civilizations that have their own lines of development. Between civilizations there are common features and connections that express a universal humanity that exists only in a nation. This is what he writes: “The peoples of each cultural-historical type do not work in vain; the results of their labor remain the property of all other peoples reaching the civilizational period of their development, and there is no need to repeat this work.” Thus, “the development of positive science about nature is precisely the most significant result of the German-Romanov civilization, the fruit of the European cultural-historical type; just like art, the development of the idea of ​​beauty was predominantly the fruit of Greek civilization; law and the political organization of the state are the fruit of Roman civilization; the development of the religious idea of ​​the one true God is the fruit of Jewish civilization.”

The originality of the main idea of ​​N.Ya. Danilevsky is that a single thread in the development of humanity is rejected, the idea of ​​history as the progress of a certain “common” or “world” mind, a certain common civilization, which is identified with the European one, is rejected. There is simply no such civilization; there is a variety of developing individual cultural and historical types, each of which contributes to the common treasury of humanity. ^And although these civilizations come and go, humanity lives on, constantly using these common treasures, becoming more and more rich. This is the area in which and what progress in the general course of history was recognized by the theory of our compatriot.

Concept of N.Ya. Danilevsky had a strong influence on the work of the German thinker O. Spengler, anticipating many of the provisions of the author of the famous book “The Decline of Europe”. It delivers a harsh verdict on modern Western civilization for its naked technicalism and lack of life-giving organic principles. O. Spengler distinguishes between possible culture as an idea and actual culture in the form of the body of an idea, accessible to human perception: actions and moods, religion and state, art and sciences, peoples and cities, economic and social forms, languages, law, customs, characters, facial features and clothing. History, like life in its formation, is the realization of a possible culture: “Cultures are organisms. The history of culture is their biography... The phenomena of individual cultures following each other, growing in a row, touching, shading and suppressing one another, exhausts the entire content of history. The history of culture is the realization of its possibilities” (227, 111).

In Spengler's concept, cultures are incommensurable with each other, because each of them has its own primordial symbol (soul), its own specific mathematics, its own art, etc. For example, there is no mathematics that would be mandatory for all cultures: “Number in itself does not exist and cannot exist... We encounter Indian, Arabic, ancient, Western European number types, each in its essence completely unique and unique... Thus, there are several mathematicians.” World history as a whole is like a motley meadow in which completely different flowers grow, not similar to each other.

At the same time, it should be noted that, like organisms, cultures have their own phases of development, namely: spring, summer, autumn and winter. In relation to spiritual life, this means, respectively, the awakening of the dream-shrouded soul and the creation of powerful works by it, consciousness close to maturity, the highest point of strictly mental creativity and the extinction of spiritual creative power. This leads to the death of Western civilization. By the very title of his work, O. Spengler emphasizes the doom of European civilization. However, the general reader is not very aware that at the end of his life, O. Spengler revised his views regarding the disappearance of Western civilization and came to the conclusion that the West will be reborn in the future, literally it sounds like this: “The Rise of Europe”. In the history of O. Spengler's philosophy, cultural relativism is visible; the prerequisites for nihilism and catastrophe are observed in it.

An attempt to overcome relativism in culture is made by the German thinker Jaspers in his work “The Origins of History and Its Purpose”; here the central concepts are “unity of theory” and “unity of humanity”, revealed by the concept of the “epoch of turning”, or “axial time”. In Jasper’s understanding, “Axial Age” denotes a special period of world culture in the history of China, India and the West, between 800 and 200 BC. BC e. “A lot of extraordinary things happen at this time. Confucius and Loa Tzu lived in China at that time, all directions of Chinese philosophy arose, Mo Tzu, Zhu An Tzu, Le Tzu and countless others thought. The Upanishads arose in India, Buddha lived; in philosophy - in India, as in China - all possibilities of philosophical comprehension of reality were considered, right up to skepticism, materialism, sophistry and nihilism; in Iran, Zarathustra taught about a world where there is a struggle between good and evil; the prophets Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Deutero did not speak in Palestine; in Greece this is the time of Homer, the philosophers Parmenides, Heraclitus, Plato, the tragedians, Thucydides and Archimedes. Everything that is associated with these names arose almost simultaneously over the course of a few centuries in China, India and the West, independently of each other.

The question arises: what do these three geographically separated cultural worlds have in common?

Firstly, what connects them is, first of all, the new that has arisen, which boils down to the fact that a person is aware of being as a whole, himself and his boundaries. The other pole of this awareness is a person’s setting of goals and problems, his desire for freedom, comprehension of absoluteness and “clarity of the transcendental world.” The awareness of the freedom of existence is born: a sharp distinction between existence and transcendence appears, and individual consciousness sprouts and develops.

Secondly, these mentioned cultural worlds are connected by self-awareness that first emerged in history, reflections on thinking itself.

Thirdly, the time has come for the universalization of reason and religion. In this era, universal, fundamental and still used categories of thinking and understanding of world religions appeared.

Fourthly, the time has come for reflection, skepticism, criticism of tradition and its changes.

Fifthly, the era of “Axial Time” crowns the end of a mythological period imbued with peace and evidence of basic principles. Rational thought examines the myth, rationalizes it, finds out its reasons, but does not destroy it, but metaphorically transforms it and creates new myths. There is a rebellion in the sphere of morality against polytheism, a desire for a monotheistic religion, and demythologization occurs. A person feels his uncertainty, which makes him open to new unlimited possibilities of experience, but the problems he poses remain insoluble. K. Jaspers gives this unsolvability a universal, transcultural character.

Sixth, in the era of the “Axial Age,” philosophers appeared as outstanding individuals for whom, despite different ways of expression, they shared spiritual autonomy and the ability to view things from a distance, a rebellion against people. God and the transcendental world. Before us new type a person capable of the subtlest abstractions, striving for freedom and happiness on earth and trying to achieve them by soaring to the idea, ataraxia, meditation, self-reflection, nirvana. Tao or God. A feeling of loneliness is formed in a person, the ability to turn away from the world of society. Under the influence of great people (authentic man), the masses change, and as a result, humanity as a whole makes a leap.

G. Ferrari’s model has not received wide recognition due to a number of obstacles, namely: the lag of Western historical research on “non-Western” peoples and civilizations, further “ common sense”, which allows for synchronicity in the development of civilizations, subject to their contact and exchange of information. In addition, the development of world history, which covers the entire world, is uneven and depends on the characteristics of local civilization. We should also add here the invisibility of worldwide parallels and synchronicities due to the fact that new history is of a very “Western” character (although this period of world history is an exception). Finally, the “Ferrari model” is brilliant, but premature, because a theory based on world rhythms has not yet been developed. In other words, countless attempts to create a true picture of world history have so far been unsuccessful.

In this regard, the approach of A. Toynbee, who undertook a search for a way to model history that is alternative to linear progressivism and dispelled Eurocentric illusions, deserves attention. It is characterized by a synthesis of the concepts of local civilizations and the universalism of history, a dialectical method that combines what seems incompatible. “The constant and regular element in history,” writes Toynbee, “is human nature.” Hence the leitmotif of his philosophical and historical system - the Augustinian idea of ​​man’s belonging to the Earthly City and the City of God, interpreted by him in the Christian spirit of Chinese mythology Yin-Yang. In the Chinese tradition, Yin and Yang, when combined, form the foundation of the universe of harmony; in A. Toynbee, they often sharply oppose each other as Evil and Good. Thus, he places the final goal of history in the harmonious, consistent “kingdom of Yin.” In accordance with his anthropocentrism, man is a connecting link between different civilizations.

A. Toynbee emphasizes that “civilizations differ in their way of thinking, and, fortunately, there are ample opportunities to regulate relationships between representatives of different civilizations.”

It is man who is the basis of A. Toynbee’s attempt to synthesize cyclical and linear modeling of history - repeating civilizational cycles reflect the pattern of the historical existence of the Earthly City as a prerequisite for the spiritual progress of humanity on its path to the City of God. “In the action of those forces that weave the fabric of human history, one can indeed discern an element of simple repetition,” writes A. Toynbi, “... However, the shuttle that constantly scurries back and forth along the loom of Time, in its movement creates fabric - and here “purposeful progress” is obvious, and not just “endless repetition”... The movement of the wheel... is repeated in relation to its axis, but the wheel itself is made and mounted on the axis so that the carriage of which the wheel moves - only a part, and it did not move along the trajectory of the carousel...” History in this case appears before us as a nonlinear process in which local and world civilizations are organically interconnected through the nature of man - a two-faced Janus, one face of which is turned to the future, while the other peers into the past.

It is the existence of a single human nature that underlies the interrelation of various civilizations and the tendency towards their globalization, towards the formation of a planetary civilization. This tendency is already evident in embryo at the dawn of human society, when cultural evolution necessarily led to the genesis of civilization. After all, the mastery of a certain environment (part of the land, islands, tropics or the Arctic) by any human group, the creation of some kind of weapon that serves man’s struggle for existence (and civilization is such a unique weapon), has its significance in the implementation of a single goal humanity, which is its general development, dominance in nature and integration into one very complex integrity. In a certain sense, the history of humanity, with the exception of its prehistory, can be represented as a replacement of cosmogenic civilization by technogenic one, which is now threatened with death, which, however, does not mean the end of history, as F. Fukuyama thinks, but the becoming “anthropogenic” (G. Diligensky ) civilization, the beginning of a new history. The change of civilizations is based on a combination of various factors of sociocultural and natural order, and recently the importance of nature in the evolution of civilization as such has attracted increasing attention, regardless of whether it is global, local, tradition-civilization or ethnic. Therefore, let us move on to consider the role of nature in the development and functioning of civilization, which is especially important on the threshold of the 21st century, which is fraught with a whole range of environmental threats.

Civilizationand nature

The significance of nature in the existence and evolution of civilization follows from the fact that, first of all, man is a system-forming factor of civilization, that man has a dual socio-natural essence. At the same time, it is necessary to take into account that the nature of man, despite the variety of theories, still remains unclear; it is fraught with many secrets and mysteries. In the variety of theories, concepts and images of man, nothing is visible; similar graphic image The Mandelbrot set is a grandiose plexus of patterns reminiscent of trees, eyes, nebulae and electrical discharges. All this is due to the fact that human nature is multidimensional, nonlinear and multi-story, like the Universe, whose reflection and expression it serves: therefore, we are talking about universal human nature with its unity of order and chaos.

At the same time, man is also a social being; in him, society with all its possible states is “given” in a collapsed form: man is society in miniature. The nature of man (they often talk about the essence of man) in this case has two aspects: rigidly determined and randomly probabilistic. Consequently, in the development of civilization it is necessary to distinguish between hard (order) and soft (chaotic) programs. They correspond to repetition and irreversibility in human history. After all, humanity (world civilization) and nature are components of the biosphere of our planet. Random moments are determined by the mass of potentialities, and rigid determination is given by the code that programs the development and functioning of bio- and social systems.

Human nature is cosmo-bio-psycho-sociocultural, for he lives not only in the social world and the sphere of culture, but is also a product of the Universe, the natural world, infinite in space and time. The entire sum of accumulated knowledge over the entire history of mankind shows the process of emergence on our planet as a result of cosmic evolution and the formation of the social world, the noosphere, within the biosphere. It is in the sphere of thought that many scientists see the salvation of humanity from future dangers generated by modern technogenic civilization. So E. Hart writes: “We come to see in “thought” the third partner, the top of the triangle: gene - thought - culture, a new powerful agent that has its own evolutionary laws that differ from the laws of genetic and cultural evolution. The invention of thought as a control system between "is" and "ought" is, after all, not so different from the invention of "chance" to explain the tumbling of a die. But the thought... is not clear enough and deserves respect. But it is not strange in the Cartian sense of isolation from matter and independence of the brain. Rather than subscribing to mind-body dualism, I rather see thought as being physically based on a vast, complex system of billions of neurons, reflecting the long evolutionary history of humanity and also containing all the images that have ever passed before our senses. . This physical basis... is the source of its implausible dynamics.

There is one more aspect of the mind that cannot be omitted. Humans have consciousness (obviously self-awareness - V.P.), which is another term we have invented to refer to another set of poorly understood phenomena. Whatever the source of this unique ability, whatever brain mechanism is responsible for it... it gives us the most powerful means for shaping our destiny. Erwin Schrödinger, in his essay “Thought and Matter,” calls consciousness a mentor who oversees the upbringing of a living substance.”

It is the sphere of consciousness, including reason and self-awareness, that gives a person the opportunity for introspection and self-determination, which allows him to master the evolution of civilization and serve as the only means of survival.

And although the sphere of consciousness has its own characteristics that are not reducible to social, biological and physical grounds, it is essential that science has established the existence of a certain analogy between the structure of the Universe, living organisms and society. Indeed, in all systems - cosmic, biological and social - there are multilayer structures of a hierarchical type, whose functioning is impossible without coordination and subordination of various levels and unity with the environment. In this sense, the approach of K. Lorenz, starting from a biosphere angle when considering culture, is legitimate. In his book “Beyond the Mirror,” he postulates that, firstly, the subject of evolution is integral systems, and secondly, more complex systems have properties that are irreducible to the properties of the simple systems of which they consist; on this basis, he attempts to trace the history of the evolution of systems, starting from simple cells and ending with complex cultures. “Society,” writes K. Lorenz, “is the most complex of all systems existing on earth... direct comparison of animal species with cultures usually causes opposition from people who are keenly aware of the difference between higher and higher systems. low levels organizations. However, the undeniable fact that cultures are highly complex, intellectually based systems, supported by symbols that reflect cultural values, often makes us - especially with our tendency to think in opposites - forget that they are natural structures that evolved naturally. In other words, cultures (and civilizations) are part of the biosphere, which itself is a particle of the Universe. Nevertheless, systems and supersystems (which is the Universe) are nonlinear dynamic systems that are characterized by chaotic behavior and which become unpredictable within relatively large time intervals, which is associated with the irreversibility of time and the emergence of new properties in systems.

In the Universe, the biosphere and society there is a continuous “struggle” between the forces of chaos and order - explosions of Supernovae occur, collisions of galaxies, violent processes in active galactic nuclei, catastrophes are observed in the biosphere and its parts (populations and organisms), the history of human society appears before us as a constant struggle of interests of individuals and groups, which often results in wars, armed conflicts, revolutions and counter-revolutions, riots and rebellions. And since the history of society, as we know, is the activity of a person pursuing his own goals, it is man who is the bearer of chaos and order. After all, man is “inscribed” in the structure of the Universe, he is a child of the Universe, he potentially contains the entire history of the cosmos.

In each of the many socillating oscillations of the human body, the pulsations of the Universe are manifested, in each of his breaths the “currents” of the cosmos are connected, each of his movements occurs along with the rotation of the planets, the sun, galaxies, clusters of galaxies and the Universe itself, every second the human body perceives cosmic radiation and waves carrying information about the world. Thus, studies have shown that the development of science is influenced by various factors, including solar activity, which “determines the electromagnetic characteristics of the Earth, affecting the functioning of the entire biosphere, including the creative activity of scientists.” Spontaneous creative “insights” that arise as a result of peculiar random mutations in the scientist’s thinking depend on solar activity, which significantly affects the earth’s biosphere. Solar activity has a cyclical nature of about 11 years and manifests itself on Earth in the form of magnetic storms, bursts in the intensity of cosmic rays, etc.

In the history of science, this is manifested in the recurrence of eras of periods of “storm and stress”, when fundamental discoveries were mainly made, for example, in 1905 - the creation of the special theory of relativity, in 1915-1916 - the general theory of relativity, in 1925-1927 . - quantum mechanics.

Correlations of this kind were also found in the activities of composers: “... Bursts of creative and solar activity, as a rule, always occur synchronously.” It should be remembered that we are talking about new physical and musical ideas, not experiments.

Man and the cosmos constitute a single whole, which, due to chaotic processes, is fragmented and differentiated and which manifests itself in the activities of man: creating his own world of civilization. However, the world as a whole is by no means “embedded” in the individual, as one of its principles, according to Confucius, is not a predetermined “standard-scheme” or “monad” that should develop, as G. Leibniz believed. Cosmic “vortices”, which are an interweaving of myriads of elemental forces and energies, are found in the human inventor. His creativity is the construction of something that does not yet exist in reality, which can arise as potential in an ever-becoming integral nature. It is precisely thanks to the eternal formation of nature, which constantly generates more and more new possibilities (in man and civilization this manifests itself in the form of a fan of alternatives), that there is a “free” space in it, which serves as the ontological basis of human creative activity, his free development. If the free space of civilized existence sharply narrows, due to the maximum orderliness of the social system, then society turns into a dead, ossified structure, incapable of creative existence.

But in accordance with Tod’s rule, chaos is always born in any ordered system, therefore, thoughts, ideas and illusions about the reorganization of the civilizational order begin to appear in the heads of individuals. In the social world there is a process of “overflow” of these thoughts, ideas, illusions and hypotheses from the sphere of subjective reality, which is spiritual world person into the sphere of social reality through their materialization (objectification). This process of materialization of ideas occurs not so much in the sphere of production activity, but in the field of various kinds of social movements, the struggle between social groups and layers that have their own interests and needs. Of course, this also covers all spheres of culture, where styles in art, concepts in science, religion, politics, etc. change.

And the most interesting thing is that civilizational shifts in the history of mankind correspond to a cosmic correlate, manifested primarily in solar activity. Indeed, in the doctrine of the biosphere (humanity, we remember once again, is a component of the biosphere) V.I. Vernadsky highlighted not only its global geological scale of functioning, but also emphasized that the organization of the biosphere is an element of cosmic organization. Cosmos is a complex, hierarchically structured (multi-level) unified system that has a diverse impact on each of its subsystems (or systems, if the Universe is considered a supersystem). Here we can highlight a number of the most important system-wide factors, which include:

Information - cosmic influences on the Earth and in particular on the biosphere are perceived through planetary structures (geospheres), including a complexly organized system of positive and negative connections: the latter are capable of regulating the direction of the main energy flows in the geospheres and are themselves subject to the influence of cosmic factors. Under certain conditions, this system can enhance the influence of space;

Time cycles - there is a hierarchical system

time cycles of different scales; terrestrial cyclical processes can be synchronized by cosmic ones; Mutual synchronization of parallel terrestrial processes is also possible when “resonant” relationships are established between them; processes occurring in cycles of different time scales are qualitatively different;

Cumulativeness - there are different phases of cosmic dynamics and, accordingly, the dynamics of earthly processes - a phase of increased activity, during which there is an increase in the number and diversity of various active events, their connection and mutual reinforcement (cumulation), as well as a relatively passive phase, during which the previous connections , which arose due to synchronization, can partially disintegrate, being replaced by a more “random” system of relations;

Asymmetry and dissymmetry - in all the systems of the Cosmos, geospheres and living matter that interest us, at all the main structural levels of their organization, asymmetry and dissymmetry of the most important forms can be traced; for space systems and geospheres, these are various vortex formations in which there are selected directions of rotation and redistribution and transformation of angular momentum occurs; some analogue of the polarity characteristic of a vortex apparently also occurs for living matter, in particular for the information field in some biologically active state;

Directionality of evolution - a long process of joint directed evolution takes place space system, which includes the Earth, the Earth itself (the system of geospheres) and living matter, although this process is greatly complicated by time cycles; Therefore, some fundamental trends in the development of the biosphere are determined by the corresponding cosmic trends of change, as well as the main forms of asymmetry of cosmic dynamic structures. In other words, cyclical changes of a civilizational nature depend on cosmic rhythms acting on the earth’s biosphere; history pulsates thanks to the “vortexes” of all-existence.

In this case, P. Sorokin’s construction of cultural types in his work “Sociocultural Dynamics” deserves attention. Based on a thorough study of the two-thousand-year period of ancient (Greco-Roman) and European culture, he identifies two main types of culture - ideational and sensual. The first type is characterized by the presence of culture bearers who base their views on dominant ideas, even if they are primitive: the second - by the dominance of tangible objects in life. Between these two main types, two transitional types are found, one of them P. Sorokin called idealistic: it is a combination of two main types (an example is the Golden Age Ancient Greece from V to IV centuries BC. e. and the Renaissance, covering the XII - XIV centuries); the other represents the opposition of elements of the main types (the state of Europe in the first centuries AD, when the sprouts of Christianity opposed the still strong paganism). These types are “adequate” to the provisions of the theory of cultural and social dynamics, where a wave-like change in cultures is recorded - from the ideational type to the mixed type and further to the sensory type, after some time the reverse movement; consequently, the central themes of cultures are repeated in all the diversity of the latter. At the same time, P. Sorokin believes that his theory of the “wave-like movement of cultures” is applicable to Egyptian, Indian and Chinese cultures, into which he makes brief excursions.

But why do cultures (or civilizations) change?

According to P. Sorokin, the movement of cultures is immanent, it does not depend on the action of extraneous factors, as evolutionists assumed. Cultures change due to their nature - the carriers of culture strive to exhaust the forces inherent in it and bring them to the limit; then we have to turn to other principles and move towards a different type of culture. However, from the principle of the unity of space and man it follows that the “wave-like movement of cultures” or civilizations is based on cosmic factors, refracted through the prism of the conditions of our planet. Back in 1929, in a letter to V.I. Vernadsky, developing his doctrine of the biosphere, P.V. Florensky came to the idea “of the existence in the biosphere, or perhaps on the biosphere, of what could be called the pneumatosphere, that is, the existence of a special part of matter involved in the circulation of culture, or more precisely, the circulation of spirit.” He points out “the special durability of material formations worked out by the spirit, for example, objects of art.” This approach has found unexpected confirmation in studies of modern astrophysics.

In this regard, the results of studying the course of solar activity over the past 5,000 years, carried out by the American astronomer J. Eddy, are of great interest. At the same time, a not quite regular cycle was discovered on average of about 500-700 years based on the analysis of radioactive carbon, although the situation is complicated by the peculiarities of the dynamics of the geomagnetic field, which are determined both by cosmic factors and by processes occurring in the depths of the Earth, which are very inertial in time nor in relation to cosmic factors. And although Eddy’s results will be somewhat corrected in the future, they are undoubtedly a good first approximation and “can be used to analyze the laws of solar activity and the features of solar-terrestrial connections. What is significant for us is that over the past 5,000 years there has been no less at least 12 sharp deviations in solar activity; the names of these deviations in ancient times correspond to historical eras, and the rise and fall of all climatological curves occurs in accordance with long-term changes in solar activity... As a rule, the time interval between neighboring maxima of solar activity is no more than 600 years. It is interesting that in the structure of Eddie's cycles one can trace something like a 900-1200-year cycle, which probably consists of two half-cycles - a long one (“600-700 years”) and a short one (“200-300 years”). The structure of these cycles is surprising correlates in a way with the movement of cultures in the theory of P. Sorokin. For example, in our time the level of solar activity begins to increase, following the so-called Maunder minimum, and at the same time the “sensual” culture of the 15th - 20th centuries. approaches its limit, it begins to be replaced by an “ideational” culture, i.e., a civilizational shift occurs, characterized by a number of social cataclysms of the 20th century. So, there is an inextricable connection between nature and civilization: which should be taken into account when considering unrealized scenarios of history.

Ataraxia - equanimity, peace of mind.

Human society owes its development completely and entirely to nature and its resources. All stages of the history of the development of society are the history of interaction between nature and society.

The interaction between society and nature is accumulated in human labor activity. Labor in the broadest sense is “the process of metabolism between society and nature.” The stages of development of the relationship between society and nature as a whole are determined by revolutions in production and the productive forces of society. Productive forces include the subject of labor, the means of labor, the subject of labor (a person endowed with certain knowledge and labor skills).

You can select three revolutionary revolutions in the productive forces:

The so-called Neolithic revolution, associated with the transition from an “appropriating” economy to a producing one, with the emergence of agriculture and cattle breeding.

Industrial Revolution - the transition from manual craft labor to machine production.

The scientific and technological revolution that began in the middle of the 20th century, which should in the future eliminate routine “inhuman” labor from the life of society.

First stage begins with the emergence of Homo sapiens. During this period, man influences nature only by the very fact of his existence; he lives by hunting, fishing, and gathering. This period is an “appropriating” economy, although man is already producing extremely primitive tools. Nature practically determined all the features of life in the primitive human community; natural determination was predominant. The nature of the activities of community members, the rate of growth in the number of community members, and the need for migration and relocation to a new place depended on natural conditions. The difference in “starting” conditions for different nations in the early stages of human history determined the diversity of the historical process, differences in the destinies of peoples, the uniqueness of traditions and customs of different countries.

Second phase in the interaction of nature and society begins in the primitive era and continues until the emergence of bourgeois relations. The starting point of the new stage is the emergence of agriculture and cattle breeding. There is a transition from an appropriating to a producing economy. Man begins to actively intervene in nature and plan the results of his activities. Forests are being cut down and irrigation systems are being built. At the same time, work activity is still dependent on weather conditions, soil, and terrain.

The influence of nature on man is thus already mediated by social structures and means of production. Man is already beginning to have a destructive impact on nature - he left behind trampled pastures, scorched forests, transferring his activities to other territories. Soil salinization in the Tigris-Euphrates valley was the result of irrigation works. In turn, the deterioration of soil quality led to the decline of the peoples inhabiting these territories. However, human influence on nature in the early stages was still local in nature and was not global.

Already at the second stage of interaction between society and nature, contradictory trends emerge in this process, which are expressed in the emergence of two types of societies - traditional and technogenic.

For traditional societies characterized by slow changes in the production sphere, a reproducing (rather than innovative) type of production, the stability of traditions, habits, lifestyle, and the inviolability of the social structure. This type of society includes Ancient Egypt, India, and the Muslim East. Spiritual guidelines presuppose the kinship of the natural and the social, non-interference in natural processes.

Technogenic type society flourishes third stage interaction between nature and society, which begins with the industrial revolution of the 18th century in England. Technogenic civilization is based on the principle of man's active relationship to the world. The external world, nature, is considered only as an arena of human activity that has no independent value. In turn, nature is understood as a bottomless storehouse, miraculously created for man, accessible to his understanding. Human activity ensures both the possession of the products of his labor - the transformed elements of nature, and the right to dispose of them at his own discretion. Man becomes the master of nature, and his power should expand in the future. The thirst for novelty, the constant imbalance between society and nature, “improvement”, “expansion”, “deepening”, “acceleration” of the impact on the environment, the understanding of the conquest of nature as progress is also characteristic of technogenic civilization.

New, fourth stage relationship between society and nature, which began in the 20th century, marks an attempt to overcome the opposition of man and society to nature, to create a new, unprecedented harmony between them, to harmonize the “strategy of nature” and the “strategy of man.”

Enormous opportunities are opening up in improving relations between society and nature, in the so-called “information society” emerging before our eyes. For example, the seemingly strong connection between a person’s place of residence and place of work is destroyed. Electronic means of communication allow the employee to get rid of daily trips to work, and the employer to get rid of the costs of collective organization of work. Significantly new opportunities are opening up for the creation of new educational strategies. The city, a source of environmental pollution, may disappear altogether. In the 20th century, a transition is planned from physical models of the world to biological ones. The world is an organism, not a mechanism. For a “biologically formed consciousness,” the world appears as information-oriented, holistic, and capable of adaptation. Biotechnologies make it possible to rid humans of diseases, provide plant protection, and become the basis of a “green” revolution, as a result of which, perhaps, the food problem will be solved. At the same time, the successes of biology give rise to problems that confront a person who is accustomed to thinking in terms of a technogenic society in confusion. How to determine the boundaries of natural and artificial in the body, the boundaries of living and nonliving, what are the boundaries of human intervention in heredity, etc.

The need to change the principles of relationships between society and nature was expressed by V.I. Vernadsky in his doctrine of the noosphere.

Chapter 7. Civilization and nature

History of the development of civilization

We are accustomed to the separation of artificial and natural. For example, a stone lying on the road is natural; the clothes that a person wears are artificial. Man lives in two worlds - the world of nature (natural) and the world of civilization (artificial). These two worlds seem very different and different from each other, but are they so different? After all, clothing is made from natural materials, and civilization is ultimately impossible without nature, both in its origin and in its current existence. Civilization and nature are not two worlds opposite to each other, but rather one and the same world, expressing itself in two parts - civilization and nature. They interact and influence each other in complex ways, but none of these parts can ignore the other today.

The history of civilization is, it would seem, the history of the increasing separation of man from nature. In the beginning, man was practically a species of animal, and his existence was not much different from the life of other animals. Then man began to use tools for hunting, tools for farming, began to domesticate animals, and so a distance began to arise between the natural life of an animal and the life of a person. Trying to escape unfavorable conditions climate, man began to build houses. Trying to protect himself from hunger, man began to cultivate fields and raise livestock. He burned forests, created pastures and arable lands in their place, and diverted rivers. That's it more people began to change nature at his own discretion, creating his own world around himself, a “second nature” - civilization. Today, things have reached the point that a city dweller may not see “first” nature in his entire life; he may be born, grow up and die in the artificial world of the city. Thus, some kind of buoyant force acts in a person all the time, which drives him more and more out of natural nature and forces you to create your own world, the world of civilization. It was this force that separated man from the animal world, raised him above nature, and today threatens to completely tear him away from his natural habitat. But it would be untrue to reduce the entire development of civilization only to the action of this buoyant force. More and more isolated from nature, man has not yet flown into space and ascended to heaven; he continues to live on his native planet and is increasingly spreading his sphere of influence on it. Standing out from nature, man increasingly extends himself to nature - not only is pushing out from the natural world active in man, but the power of immersion in nature is just as actively manifesting itself in him. It is civilization that gives man the opportunity not only to isolate himself from the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms, but also to penetrate more and more deeply into them, to know their laws, and to expand the surface of contact of these kingdoms with man. We know much more about nature today than our ancestors - and this is also connected with the development of civilization. Man is not just increasingly disconnected from nature, he does this in order to penetrate and understand it better. Man is called upon to continue nature in the forms of civilization. To do this, he must first separate himself from nature, in order to then merge with it again, mutually raising himself and nature to the level of some wiser and moral state of civilization-nature. From this point of view, the development of relations between nature and civilization has passed through a stage in which separation prevailed, the establishment of civilization on its own soil prevailed. The child must stop holding on to his mother if he wants to learn to walk, so that he can then come to her again, firmly holding on to two legs. Previous history is the first independent steps of civilization, when it gradually became more and more detached from Mother Nature and learned to walk on its own legs. Recently, a new attitude towards nature has been growing in people, they are beginning their great return to it. This is expressed in concern about the environmental crisis, and in the softening of morals towards animals, and in the birth of a synthesis between the natural and human sciences. All these signs ultimately indicate that civilization is coming to the end of its aggressive confrontation with nature. People must gain new wisdom and understand their responsibility for those they have tamed (A. de Saint Exupery).

The history of civilization contains a great mystery. If we look at history, we will see how huge civilizations arose in history. Once upon a time, the civilizations of Babylon and Egypt, Greece and Rome, and the civilizations of the peoples of Latin America possessed great power. Each of these civilizations was once born, reached its peak and sooner or later began to fade away, increasingly losing strength and gradually decaying. Why did once mighty civilizations decline? Historians are still arguing about this and cannot find a definitive answer to this question. For example, the mighty Roman Empire, which conquered vast territories, contained in its arsenal great army, possessing inexhaustible for those times economic resources, by the beginning of our millennium and in the first centuries after the birth of Christ, it begins to increasingly lose some internal strength and gradually declines. The famous Russian historian Lev Nikolaevich Gumilyov believed that every nation has a reserve of some internal energy, which he called “passionarity.” Until the supply of passionarity is exhausted, the growth and development of the people will occur. As soon as this supply comes to an end, the people leave the historical scene, apathy and skepticism develop in people, they cannot be inspired by some great idea and stop striving for something large-scale. The spirit of history leaves this people, and they either dissipate or begin to play a secondary role in history, losing their former greatness. When the charge of passionarity began to leave the Roman Empire, moral decline, apathy, and a craving for luxury and sensual pleasures spread in Rome; monster emperors such as Caligula and Nero came. To ensure the combat effectiveness of the army, the Romans had to increasingly attract barbarians to military posts, since the Romans themselves were already losing their stamina and strength of character. So power left the great Rome, and the empire moved faster and faster towards its end.

The philosophy of history of the German philosopher and historian Ostwald Spengler is also close to this point of view. Spengler believed that the history of mankind is the history of Cultures. Each Culture is a large historical organism, including one or more peoples, united by a common historical destiny, a common worldview, religion, and economy. Each Culture goes through its own life cycle in history - from birth to death, and the average life span of a culture is approximately 1000 years. In world history, Spengler identifies 8 Cultures: 1) Egyptian, 2) Indian, 3) Babylonian, 4) Chinese, 5) Apollonian (Greco-Roman), 6) magical (Byzantine-Arabic), 7) Faustian "(Western European), 8) Mayan culture. In its development, each Culture goes through stages of development: 1) the stage of emerging culture, 2) the stage of early culture, 3) the stage of metaphysical-religious high culture, when all forms of Culture reach their maximum development without losing organic synthesis among themselves, 4) the stage “ civilization" - the stage of old age and death of culture. Spengler considered the main features of the stage of “civilization”: 1) the development of mass culture, 2) the spread of pragmatism, the loss of the highest meaning of life, 3) the degeneration of creativity into sports, 4) the hypertrophy of politics, 5) the predominance of the extensive (quantitative) over the intensive (qualitative), 6) the spread of skepticism and relativism in the minds. Having analyzed Western European culture, Spengler concluded that it had passed the stage of its heyday and entered the stage of “civilization” - the stage of old age and death. Hence the name main work O. Spengler - “The Decline of Europe”.

Finally, we find similar views on history in Russian philosophy - in the works of V.S. Solovyov, L.P. Karsavin, S.L. Frank, V.F. Ern and others. For example, Vladimir Frantsevich Ern believed that in history alternates between periods of slow quantitative growth and sharp qualitative leaps. This nature of historical development is due to the fact that there are, as it were, two levels in history - the level of the highest historical prototypes (historical plans) and the level of their implementation in our sensory world. History is driven by certain “vital forces”, the source of which is the highest level of history. For example, V.F. Ern writes: “Both in the life of nature and in history, we know too many cases when the growth of forces occurs only up to a certain point, and then the forces decline. In Greece, vitality grew until the 4th century BC, and then all-round decomposition began; the same thing took place in more grandiose forms in Rome. Rome grew both internally and externally until about the 3rd century, and then began decomposition and decline to the point of complete decrepitude and senile impotence. The barbarians came and laid the vital foundations for a new growth of historical forces - a pan-European one” (V.F. Ern “The Idea of ​​Catastrophic Progress” // Literary Studies, 2/91. – pp. 133-141, p. 134). What determines the presence or absence of “vital forces” in history? History, according to Ern, is the expression of the Highest Principle in the forms public life. The Higher Beginning is the goal towards which history moves, which fills history with meaning and allows us to talk about development in history. Expressing itself in history, the Highest Principle must express itself in concrete forms. Each such form is finite, and it cannot contain the entire infinite fullness of the Supreme Principle, but only some “portion” of it. It is this “portion” that spends itself in the life of specific historical forms - Cultures and civilizations. When a “portion” of the Highest Principle is spent within the framework of a particular civilization, this civilization fades away in history and abruptly gives way to new civilization, carrying a new “portion” of “vital forces”. But this change of civilizations does not occur automatically, it may not succeed, and then the end of History as a whole may come.

Today we are on the verge of another death of old historical forms. The great civilization of Analysis is dying, the main principle of which was the principle of dividing history into warring peoples and cultures. " Vitality“The era of Analysis is coming to an end. Further continuation of civilization is possible only along the paths of Synthesis and unification of previously hostile peoples and cultures. Will humanity be able to let in a new “portion” of the Highest Principle, to discover new horizons of development for itself? modern form Hamlet's question “to be or not to be” for all of us today...

^ Knowledge and cognition of Nature

Throughout previous history, pushing man out of nature seemed much more practical than incorporating him into it. So far, this inclusion has been expressed either purely spatially - in the development of new natural spaces, or mainly speculatively - in the form of an increasingly deeper knowledge of natural processes. Nevertheless, the experience of knowing nature is a unique experience of the harmony of civilization and nature, albeit on a purely intellectual basis. It is impossible to know nature if the scientist’s consciousness is not tuned into resonance with natural processes and their laws. Nature allows itself to be known only to those who have become close to it, who feel the currents of its existence, and have merged themselves with it. When Newton created the great theory of universal gravitation, he could do this only because at the moment of creativity he himself became infinite space and time, felt the force of gravity of all material bodies towards each other as the force of Divine love. When Darwin created the theory of natural selection, he could do this only because at that moment he himself felt himself at the very center of the mystery of biological evolution, in the struggle and aspirations of billions of living beings. Nature can reveal its secrets only to those whom it trusts, in whom it does not feel an element alien to itself. The main condition for any scientific discovery is the experience of awe before the greatness of nature, admiration for its perfection and harmony. Only this awe allowed scientists of all times and peoples to make great discoveries and penetrate deeply into the secrets of nature. But then this chain of natural piety was broken as soon as it came to the practical implementation of open knowledge. The achievements of science were used to conquer and violate nature. Nevertheless, until some time it was impossible to do without this, and nature, even to its own detriment, allowed civilization to develop and strengthen its independence. The expression of this deep wisdom of nature is the development of scientific knowledge. Increasingly breaking away from harmony with nature at first, scientific knowledge is increasingly beginning the great rapprochement of nature and civilization in recent times. As F. Bacon said, only small knowledge removes a person from God, great knowledge again brings a person closer to the Creator. Not just the accumulation of knowledge, but precisely its qualitative development, the process of cognition, is increasingly becoming today the key to our restoration of harmony with nature. The development of cognition is a special case of historical development, in which periods of quantitative growth and qualitative leaps can also be distinguished. Only that area of ​​knowledge develops in which qualitative transformations arise, in which the Highest Truth continues to express itself in “portions” of its increments in new ones. scientific discoveries and theories. Simple quantitative accumulation of knowledge, in which there are no qualitative transformations, cannot be considered development. V.F. Ern wrote: “First of all, what is the progress of knowledge? Of course, not a simple accumulation of them, not just a quantitative increase. Astrology has existed for thousands of years, during which astrological “knowledge”, of course, increased and grew, so why would no one argue that progress was made in astrology from the Chaldean period to the Middle Ages? Of course, because a simple quantitative increase is not a qualitative increase. A qualitative increase in knowledge occurs only when knowledge increases in it” (V.F. Ern “The Idea of ​​Catastrophic Progress” // Literary Studies, 2/91. – pp. 133-141, p. 135).

^ 21st century – bifurcation point

In the development of any complex system, sooner or later there come moments when the system reaches the point of choosing strategies for its further development, and the entire further development of the system largely depends on the choice made at this point of bifurcation (bifurcation). The 21st century is one of the most important bifurcation points in the development of human civilization. In this century, people will need to finally decide on their future relationship with nature and choose their future destiny for many centuries to come. Civilization is already so strong that it will be impossible for it to treat nature in the same way as it did before - nature will simply perish. On the other hand, a change in attitude towards nature cannot be achieved simple solution even the world government. To do this, you need to change the type of person, his worldview, and create new forms of human life in nature. Will civilization be able to solve this problem, will people have enough strength and abilities, flexibility and wisdom to reach new levels of their existence in the world? There are no ready-made answers or recipes; moreover, the decision will largely depend on what people can decide on and how deeply they understand the changes taking place.

a common problem further forms of the relationship between civilization and nature includes many particular problems. These are: 1) an ecological crisis, the need to create a new type of global production, coordination of technogenic and biosphere flows of matter and energy, 2) demographic problems associated with the continued growth of population, 3) problems of the emergence of a post-industrial (information) type of society associated with the development of world communication networks, computerization and the emergence of the “global village” phenomenon, 4) the rapprochement of different cultures, the formation of a single planetary community of people and a new synthetic worldview, 5) the rapprochement of natural science and humanities knowledge, etc.

All these and many similar problems ultimately confront human civilization with one task: the practical development of forms of life that are more consistent with nature. Transforming into a geological force, civilization can no longer contradict too much the integral laws of the biosphere without threatening its existence (V.I. Vernadsky).

^ Values ​​of Life

Modern civilization is experiencing so many problems that they often talk about its crisis. The basis of this crisis is the old system of values, which was suitable for the era of the predominant separation of civilization from nature and ceases to work for the new era of the predominant harmonization of civilization and nature.

Analyzing the crisis of modern civilization, the famous German philosopher Edmund Husserl came to the conclusion that main reason This crisis is due to the too great separation of modern culture from the world of everyday life. Modern culture is so specialized that in order to achieve something in life, a person has to direct too much of the energy of his spirit in a narrow and special direction (science, art, politics, religion). This leads to the emergence of abstract consciousness in a person, divorced from the values ​​of ordinary human life. It is necessary, Husserl believed, to return to the evidence of everyday life. Man lives in many worlds of experience. All these worlds can be divided into marginal worlds and the medial world. The marginal worlds of human experience are the worlds of science, art, politics, and religion. They require special training to master. The medial world is the world of our ordinary everyday life, which does not require special training and is the same for all people. This is the world of communication with friends, everyday life, communication with nature - animals and plants. All marginal worlds originated from the medial world, once stood out from it, but then diverged in different directions, specialized and isolated from each other. Therefore, the relationship between the marginal and medial worlds can be depicted as follows:

The basis of the crisis of modern civilization, Husserl believed, is that the marginal worlds have become so hypertrophied that they began to destroy and suppress the values ​​of the medial world from which they originated and from whose forces they feed. As a result, by destroying the world of everyday life, marginal worlds destroy themselves. The strength of the medial world lies in its synthetic nature. His weakness is his isolation from marginal worlds. Husserl called for a return to the values ​​of the medial world (“life world”, “life”), but to return at a new level - at the level of synthesis with marginal worlds (in particular, with philosophy). Thus, the problem of new values ​​of the future civilization is the problem of the synthesis of old values ​​- the values ​​of marginal worlds (science, art, religion, etc.) and the values ​​of the everyday world of man. A new medial world (“life world”) must emerge, within which both the old medial world and the marginal worlds of human experience will find a common basis. From this point of view, the development of human civilization can be represented in the form of three main stages:

Representatives of the Russian philosophy of unity (V.S. Solovyov, P.A. Florensky, S.N. Bulgakov, etc.) saw the synthesis of all the principles of human culture as a way out of the crisis of modern civilization. IN historical development human society V.S. Solovyov identified three stages-forces: 1) the first force is the force of undifferentiated synthesis of all the principles of human culture, 2) the second force is the force of analysis and differentiation of culture, which we experience today, 3) the third force is the force of differentiated synthesis , in which the future civilization must find its unification.