Control work outlook and antiquity. The general concept of worldview and its main types
What is a worldview? What is its structure, content and levels?
philosophy worldview cognitive life
Worldview - a set of views, assessments, principles that determine the most general vision, understanding of the world, a person's place in it, as well as life positions, programs of behavior, actions of people.
When studying the worldview, the stages of worldview development of the world are also distinguished: “worldview”, “worldview”, “worldview”.
Attitude - sensory perception of the world through emotions, feelings, etc.
Worldview is a worldview, it is based on a person's preferences, his ideals, beliefs, positions, etc.
World outlook -- a system of ideas about the origin and structure of the world; about the factors that create and maintain the connections and relationships observed in it; about the causes and nature of world changes and the place of man in the world.
Alignment levels:
- 1. Everyday - practical (it is formed spontaneously, it is influenced by religious, national factors)
- 2. Theoretical worldview (everything is based on evidence, philosophy and sciences are at this level)
Philosophy and Science: Relationship and Difference of Cognitive Functions
Philosophical worldview performs a number of cognitive functions related to the functions of science. Along with such important functions as generalization, integration, synthesis of all kinds of knowledge, the discovery of the most general patterns, connections, interactions of the main subsystems of being, which have already been discussed, the theoretical scale of the philosophical mind also allows it to carry out the heuristic functions of forecasting, forming hypotheses about general principles , development trends, as well as primary hypotheses about the nature of specific phenomena that have not yet been worked out by special scientific methods.
Based on the principles of a rational worldview, philosophical thought groups everyday, practical observations of various phenomena, formulates general assumptions about their nature and possible ways of knowing. Using the experience of understanding accumulated in other areas of cognition, practice (transfer of experience), it creates philosophical "sketches" of certain natural or social realities, preparing their subsequent concrete scientific study. At the same time, a speculative thinking through is carried out in principle admissible, logically, theoretically possible. The cognitive power of such "sketches" is the greater, the more mature the philosophical understanding is. As a result of the "culling" of options that are implausible or completely contrary to the experience of rational cognition, selection (selection), substantiation of the most reasonable assumptions, is possible.
The function of "intellectual intelligence" also serves to fill cognitive gaps that constantly arise due to incompleteness, varying degrees of knowledge of certain phenomena, the presence of "blank spots" in the cognitive picture of the world. Of course, in a concrete scientific sense, these gaps will have to be filled by specialist scientists, but their initial comprehension is carried out in one or another general system of world outlook. Philosophy fills them with the power of logical thinking. The scheme of experience must first be sketched out by thought, Kant explained.
Man is already so arranged that he is not satisfied with poorly interconnected fragments of knowledge; he has a strong need for a holistic, unbroken understanding of the world as coherent and unified. A separate, concrete thing is understood much better when its place in the whole picture is realized. For the private sciences, each occupied with its own field of research with its own methods, this is an impossible task. Philosophy makes a significant contribution to its solution, contributing to the correct formulation of problems.
Integration, the universal synthesis of knowledge is also associated with the resolution of specific difficulties, contradictions that arise at the boundaries of various areas, levels, sections of science when they are "joined", harmonized. We are talking about all sorts of paradoxes, aporias (logical difficulties), antinomies (contradictions in logically provable positions), cognitive dilemmas, crisis situations in science, in understanding and overcoming which philosophical thought plays a very significant role. Ultimately, such difficulties are associated with the problems of correlating thought (language) and reality, that is, they belong to eternal philosophical problems.
In addition to tasks related to science, philosophy also performs special functions inherent only to it: understanding the most general foundations of culture in general and science in particular. Sufficiently broadly, deeply and on a large scale, science itself does not clarify itself, does not substantiate.
Specialists who study all sorts of concrete phenomena need general, holistic ideas about the world, about the principles of its "arrangement", general patterns, etc. However, they themselves do not develop such ideas. In specific sciences, universal mental tools are used (categories, principles, various methods of cognition). But scientists are not specifically involved in the development, systematization, comprehension of cognitive techniques and means. The general ideological and epistemological foundations of science are studied and worked out in the field of philosophy.
Finally, science does not substantiate itself in terms of value either. Let us ask ourselves the question, can science be attributed to positive, useful or negative, harmful phenomena for people? It is difficult to give an unequivocal answer, because science is like a knife that does good in the hands of a surgeon-healer, and terrible evil in the hands of a murderer. Science is not self-sufficient: itself in need of value justification, it cannot serve as a universal spiritual guide of human history. The task of understanding the value foundations of science and the socio-historical life of people in general is solved in the broad context of history and culture in general and is of a philosophical nature. In addition to science, political, legal, moral and other ideas have the most important direct effect on philosophy. In turn, philosophy is called upon to comprehend the whole complex complex of the socio-historical existence of people or culture.
Worldview– it is a complex, synthetic, integral formation of social and individual consciousness. It contains various Components: knowledge, beliefs, beliefs, moods, aspirations, values, norms, ideals, etc. Worldview– a world view is the most general idea of a person about the world around him and his place in it.
By character worldviews distinguish 2 level(layer) worldview: life-practical and theoretical .
- Vital-practical the level develops spontaneously, based on common sense, everyday experience. The formation of this level is influenced by national, religious traditions, the level of education, culture, profession, etc. It includes the customs, traditions and skills, as well as the experience of each person. The life-practical worldview helps to navigate in life, but is not marked by systematicity, validity. The presence of prejudices is characteristic.
- Theoretical - A higher level of worldview, it is scientifically substantiated, i.е. implies a scientific basis for knowledge about the reality of the norms and values that determine human behavior. Along with science, philosophy also belongs to this level of solving worldview problems.
We perceive only as a whole (in logic, you can split a phenomenon). Integrity is one of the features of the worldview. Content outlook can be:
scientific and non-scientific, materialistic and idealistic, conservative and reformist, revolutionary and liberal. M. m.b: mythological, religious, scientific, philosophical, etc. In a cognitive sense: dogmatic and skeptical (skeptics doubt the legitimacy of the existing picture of the world, they are correlated with destructive power). M. m.b. collectivist (altruistic) or egoistic (reasonable egoism is better than unreasonable collectivism). M. m.b.: optimistic and pessimistic; systemic (on one doctrine, religion) and unsystematic; consistent or inconsistent; rational and intuitive, etc. Worldview is a personal factor and has a way out through practice (we don't care what he thinks, but we don't care what he does).
M structure: worldview (worldview) and worldview . 1. Worldview. Based on sensory-visual (emotional-figurative) perception. Determines the emotional mood (optimism-pessimism, friendship-enmity, etc.) 2. Worldview. Based on cognitive, practical human activity. The main elements are: true knowledge and delusion. Knowledge arises for a reason - the experience of a particular person + the practice of the whole society.
Philosophy and worldview. Worldview as a holistic view of the world is wider than philosophy. Philosophy claims to provide a worldview. This claim gives her the right to assert that philosophy is the theoretical core of the worldview. Philosophy is such a form of social and individual consciousness, which is constantly theoretically substantiated, has a greater degree of scientificity than just a worldview. Philosophy- a system of fundamental ideas as part of the worldview of a person and society.
The main components of the philosophical worldview: scientific and theoretical knowledge; spiritual practice; value orientation.
The emergence of philosophy. Subject area of philosophy.
The term f-ya originated in ancient Greece - in Russian. "love of wisdom"
Philosophers called people striving for knowledge as independent. prices. human knowledge.
The development of the ancient f-ii was interrupted as a result of the crash. slave system, the collapse of the Roman Empire, wars, etc., but these social upheavals contributed to the strengthening and spread of religion, P - becomes the dominant form of social consciousness for many years. Various competitors. flowing. in the struggle for minds, they tried to win philosophers over to their side, using the experience of f-th analysis to substantiate the truth of their teaching.
The Christian Church believes that F-I should only be a theologian's servant. This dramatically changes the problematics, the very subject of F-U. The place of physics is occupied by the knowledge of God. ethics is subject to the tasks of religious education. On the mat. dialectic develops in divine discussions, giving rise to modern logic and scholasticism.
® Gradual liberation of f-and from the dictates and guardianship of religion until the emergence of f-whom atheism. But this does not exclude the fact that many f-fs remain faithful to religion. There is, as it were, a disintegration of the former problems: the knowledge of nature, of man, of the very process of cognition. From this time f-iya acquires the status of science. Antich. physics becomes naturf-her or f-her nature.
® Gradually knowledge of natural phenomena. specialization, academic more and more busy. the collection of factual material by its systematization and classification, and gradually the process of the formation of sciences and their separation from philosophy takes place. Formed science the study of specific material, and f-ia ceasing to be a "science of sciences" became borrowed. worldview questions.
Worldview, its structure and role in human life. worldview levels.
Worldview. - a system of views, values, I am convinced. man on the world and man's place in this world.
O. worldview. the questions are:
How did the world come about
Whether the world was created by God or a friend. noun or noun. eternal
Is the world changing
Worldview features. in. concluding in the fact that they do not, in principle, or at this point in time, unambiguously confirm. resolved.
In various phil. worldview systems-th issues are resolved in different ways.
3. Historical types of outlook. The specificity of philosophy as a theoretical worldview. The specificity of philosophy as a theoretical worldview.
Historically, the 1st form of the worldview. knowledge yavl. myvology
Mythology - represents comprehension and representation. world and man in science fiction. images and stories.
The main forms of magic: fairy tales, legends, fictions, rumors, etc.
At the heart of the primitive and antique. mythology lies the personification. nature, i.e. likening it to a man, a human way of existence.
Explained. nature and societies. revealed. as a result of the action of supernatural beings. forces.
Myth-making takes place where it is absent. real experimentally confirmed. knowledge that is replaced by fictions and assumptions.
Myth-making can also be artificial in nature, deliberately implied. so that instead of real. having dostov. inform. offer inappropriate valid opinions and assessments.
Religion was formed in the depths of mythology.
Religion - the form of the worldview. explained the world of man, through connection with supernatural beings. creatures, this is the similarity of mythology and religion.
The difference lies in the fact that mythology simply offers its own picture of the world, while religion prescribes to believe it Þ the main feature of religion is belief in supernatural beings.
Ex. various organizations and institutions for the formation and maintenance of such a faith, allegedly providing. contact with supernatural (cult practice) called. provide religious education, mind control of people.
Ph-I arose as an alternative to mythology and religion. The first philosophers sought rejection. from the recognition of supernatural powers, and explained. the world on the basis of it soma, but in conditions. absent possible experienced or experiment. By testing certain assumptions, logic and common sense have been the dominant method for their persuasiveness.
For explanation. peace phil. pretext. causes and circumstances that are not contradictory. experience, since the possibilities of experimental knowledge of phenomena, then dominations were limited. subject and at the same time. the tool of knowledge and analysis were the concepts in which the correspondence was fixed and called. thing. Therefore f. was the main form of conceptual theoretical thinking.
According to the nature of formation and method of functioning, two levels are distinguished:
1) vitally practical or the level of everyday consciousness.
2) theoretical.
+ The 1st is based on common sense and extensive everyday experience and develops spontaneously, this level is called. life philosophy. 1st ur. extremely heterogeneous, because its carriers are not homogeneous. On the form. this level of prov. influence of the national and religious traditions, levels of images., intellect. and spiritual culture, the nature of prof. active and friend. This ur. includes the skills, customs and traditions of the advanced. from generations. in a generation and the cognized experience of each particular individual.
- not excellent deep thoughtfully, systematically, substantiated. overcome these shortcomings. at the 2nd level of theory.
2: Relevant to this level. and f-i. F-I claims to be a theoretical substantiation of both the content and the method of achieving generalized. knowledge, as well as norms, values and ideals defined. goals, means and nature of human activity. F=I sees its task in making a worldview. the subject of theoretical analysis.
The ratio of these levels can be built in the historical. sequence, and in this case
1st level corresponds to mythology and religion
2 - mu - philosophy.
4. The problem of the main question of philosophy and various options for its solution.
O.v.fs. there is a question about the relationship between thinking and being, spirit and nature, objective and subjective, mental and physical, material and ideal, matter and consciousness, etc.
O.v.fs. has two sides:
1) what is primary, what is secondary
2) the cognizable world (or how thoughts about the world around us relate to this world itself, or whether a person’s thinking is able to cognize the world as it is reflected in his mind)
When solving the first side, 2 main directions stood out: materialism and idealism
M. believes that matter is primary (the basis of consciousness), consciousness is secondary (derived from matter)
Idealists think the opposite.
Varieties of idealism:
1) objective id. believes that consciousness, spirit existed before, outside, regardless of man: Plato, Hegel
2) subjective id. - the direction of the philosopher. which takes as a basis the individual consciousness of a person: Berkeley, Mach, Avinarius
common between the object. and subject. idealism in solving the first aspect of O.v.fs. is that they take the idea as a basis.
Feuerbach (German) "Matter is not a product of the spirit, but the spirit is only the highest product of the development of matter" - materialist (sometimes not)
Kant believed that matter is the lens. reality (was an agnostic)
3) Philosophers treated the decision of the second side in different ways.
subjective. id. proceeded from the basic position: the world is a complex of my sensations, to perceive means to exist (the world is not fully cognizable, sensation is the only source of knowledge)
Hegel recognized the cognizability of the world, but believed that thought, thought, are cognizable. man, absolute idea and spirit.
Feuerbach, the process of cognition begins with the help of sensations, but sensations do not give a complete, fragmented idea of the surrounding reality and the further process of cognition occurs with the help of perceptions (materialist)
Franz. materialists of the 18th century: Tolon, Helvetius, Holbach, Diderot ... - the process of cognition occurs with the help of the senses, and the human mind is not able to cognize what is beyond the senses (the position of sub. idealism)
Kant is an agnostic .
Agnosticism - a direction that doubts the possibility of knowing the world
Kant believed that the world is knowable as a phenomenon, but not as an essence.
Phenomenon - knowledge of the subject from the outside, i.e. Kant stood in the position of the subject. idealism.
5. Philosophy as a form of worldview knowledge. Functions of philosophy.
Depending on what role philosophy has performed or is performing in society, regarding the elements of the spiritual culture of society, the following functions are distinguished:
1) logical (its content is the analysis of concepts, judgments, theories from the point of view of their compliance with the laws of logic)
2) methodological (consists in a conscious systematic analysis and choice of the expediency of ways and methods of cognition of the subject)
3) heuristic (heur - theories designating the area of research. regularities of scientific and technical creativity) (manifested in the possibility of obtaining new knowledge, new research results in the course of a philosophical analysis of the problem and ways to solve it)
4) worldview (the main function of function, since it coincides with its main content, is to form, systematize. substantiated., worldview knowledge in the possibility of forming the worldview of people through philosophical images)
5) critical (the function does not stop at the results achieved, it constantly strives for advancement and critical analysis of more and more new possible approaches)
6. Philosophy and science.
The history of the relationship between philosophy and science was not unambiguous, and nevertheless, there are the following stages of their relationship:
Syncretic, i.e. indistinguishable, the unity of science and philosophy. They do not differ in subject matter, method, or results achieved (6th century BC - 17th century AD).
The beginning of the difference between the subject area of philosophy and science. The idea that philosophy should be engaged in the education of man, and the study of nature should be left to science (17-19 centuries)
A variety of suggestions about what philosophy should do:
a) f-ia should give a single picture of the world, based on the latest achievements of natural science;
b) function must represent a person in all its diversity of manifestations;
c) f-ia is a theory of knowledge, a theory of scientific knowledge, a theory of science;
d) function can be a preliminary study, research, formulation of problems in the study of any phenomenon (19-20 centuries).
Today, there is a shared opinion that science prefers to tackle any problem that can be verified experimentally. Otherwise, the problems are called unscientific, and in this capacity they remain under consideration by the f-ii. In the Soviet period, such problems were called ideological.
Now f-ia provides sciences with diverse assistance:
1) Helps to form new subject areas of scientific research.
2) Helps to form explanatory principles and ideas, comprehend and analyze the resulting contradictions.
3) Helps to critically comprehend the results obtained.
4) Systematizes scientific knowledge, helps the sciences to determine their position in the knowledge of the world, establish contacts and interactions.
5) Provides procedures for the dissemination of knowledge, creates conditions for understanding new theories, concepts, ideas, and this is cultural function f-ii.
6) Helps to assess the social significance of scientific results.
We live in an era when problems have become aggravated, on the solution of which the answer to the Hamlet question depends: to be or not to be a man and humanity on Earth.
You can, of course, try to hide from these painful problems according to the principle, “my hut is on the edge” ... But is it worthy of a person?
And the search for answers to all the new large-scale questions put forward by life - the problems of man and nature, man and society, the technosphere and the biosphere, many questions of the relationship between social systems and states, etc. - requires the ability to self-determine, to find out ways to solve these and many other issues, and most importantly, to find one's place and role in these complex processes. But this requires such a prerequisite as the ability to think, a fairly broad view of things as a condition for a conscious, reasonable orientation in the surrounding reality.
However, the ability for rational thinking is not innate, it must be formed and developed, and one of the best ways to do this is to master the achievements of philosophical culture. We will see with you later - but for now this will have to be taken on faith - that philosophy is not at all something hovering in the clouds of pure thought. On the contrary, its main purpose is connected with the solution of the fundamental questions of life itself. After all, in the final analysis, the center of philosophy is the question of man and his place in the world, his place in society, the meaning of his life. And the main purpose of philosophy is to help a person navigate the endless complexities of life, in solving those equations with many unknowns that constantly arise on the path of life.
It can rightfully be said that the study of philosophy is a school that helps to cultivate a culture of rational thinking, the ability to freely guide the movement of thought, to prove and refute. It is clear that the science of thinking cannot be rented, mastering it requires effort, straining intellectual abilities.
Of course, this is not at all simple and requires, in particular, an acquaintance with the history of philosophy, in order to trace step by step how the "eternal problems" were solved over many centuries, and most importantly, to prepare oneself to understand the ways of solving them in modern philosophy, in including in dialectical materialist philosophy.
The role of philosophy today is also great in the implementation of humanistic ideals, because only through the prism of humanism can scientific and technological progress acquire the necessary orientation, global problems can be solved in the interests of man and mankind - from removing the threat of thermonuclear war to eliminating the threat to the genetic foundations and human psyche .
At the same time, our philosophy should not continue to be artificially fenced off from the philosophical process in other countries, because we are not at all the owners of the ultimate truth on any issue. Here, exchange and systematic acquaintance with the achievements of modern world philosophical thought are necessary.
Let us now turn to questions directly concerned with philosophy. The central task of philosophy is to solve a whole range of worldview problems, to develop a system of generalized views of the world as a whole from the standpoint of reason. What are these problems that can rightfully be called eternal?
What forms the basis of the world?
How does the world work, how are the spiritual and material correlated in it? Did the world have a beginning in time, or does it exist forever?
Is there a known order in the world, or is everything in it chaotic?
Is the world evolving or is it constantly revolving in one unchanging circle?
Is it possible to know the world?
Do these questions arise before man and mankind by chance? No, not by chance. They arise from the need for a general orientation in the world.
Solving them one way or another, a person, as it were, sketches out a coordinate grid within which both his activity and the work of his thought will unfold. The theoretically substantiated solution of these and other worldview problems is the purpose of philosophy, and at the same time the significance of its development.
Philosophy is also important for better orientation in your future specialty, and most importantly - for an in-depth understanding of life in all its complexity. These two points are closely related - the philosophical aspects of technical knowledge and scientific and technical progress and, no less important, a broad philosophical outlook that goes far beyond the narrow framework of the specialty.
We can say that the worldview is the core, the core of the consciousness and self-awareness of the individual. It acts as a more or less holistic understanding by people of the world and themselves, their place in it. Everyone has it. But its level, its content, form, etc. different. But more on that later. Here we note, firstly, that the worldview is historically concrete, since it grows on the soil of the culture of its time and, along with it, undergoes serious changes. Secondly, society in every era is socially heterogeneous, it is divided into different groups and communities with their own interests. In addition, people themselves differ not only in their place in society, but also in their development, their aspirations, and so on. In other words, the worldview of each era is realized in a variety of group and individual variants.
In addition, the worldview as a system includes a number of components. First of all, it is knowledge based on truth, and along with this, values that are most clearly expressed in the moral and aesthetic components of the worldview, which have goodness and beauty as their basis.
Not only our mind, but also our feelings participate in the development of a worldview. This means that the worldview includes, as it were, two sections - intellectual and emotional. The emotional-psychological side of the worldview is represented by attitude and worldview, and the intellectual side is represented by worldview.
Naturally, the ratio of these aspects is different at different levels of worldview, their representation in the worldview in different eras is not the same, and finally, the proportions of these sides are also different in the worldview of different people.
Moreover, the very emotional coloring of the worldview, expressed in feelings, moods, etc., can be different - from joyful, optimistic tones to gloomy, pessimistic tones.
The second level of worldview is worldview, based primarily on knowledge, although worldview and worldview are not given just next to each other: they are, as a rule, one. This unity is seen in their beliefs, where knowledge and feeling, reason and will are given together, where a social position is formed, for the sake of which a person is sometimes capable of much.
The strength of beliefs lies in a person's trust in their essence and meaning. And this means that the worldview includes confidence in its structure, and therefore faith (this can be religious faith, and faith in ghosts and miracles, and faith in science, etc.).
Reasonable faith does not exclude doubt, but is alien to both dogmatism and boundless skepticism, which completely deprives a person of strongholds both in knowledge and in activity.
Now let's turn to the typology of worldview. First of all, two levels of worldview should be singled out: life-everyday and theoretical. The first is formed spontaneously, in the process of everyday life. This is the worldview of the broad strata of society. This level of worldview is important, it must be taken into account, although it differs: 1) insufficient breadth; 2) a kind of interweaving of sober positions and attitudes with primitive, mystical, philistine ideas and prejudices; 3) a great emotional burden.
These disadvantages are overcome at the theoretical level of understanding of the world and outlook. This is a philosophical level of outlook, when a person approaches the world from the standpoint of reason, acts based on logic, substantiating his conclusions and statements.
If approached historically, philosophy as a special type of worldview was preceded by mythological and religious types of worldview. Myth, as a special form of consciousness and worldview, was a kind of fusion of knowledge, albeit very limited, of religious beliefs and various types of art.
The interweaving of elements of knowledge about the world with religious and artistic fantasy in the myth finds its expression in the fact that within the framework of the myth, thought has not yet gained complete independence and is most often clothed in artistic and poetic forms, which is clearly visible in the "Myths of Ancient Greece", in " Iliad", "Odyssey", national folklore, etc. And at the same time, a picture of the world as a whole was already drawn in the myths in the form of theosophy, there was a search for ways to assert the unity of nature and society, the world and man, past and present, and ideological problems were solved in a peculiar form.
The further development of the worldview went along two lines - along the line of religion and along the line of philosophy.
Religion is a form of worldview in which the development of the world is carried out through its doubling into earthly, natural and otherworldly, supernatural, heavenly. At the same time, unlike science, which also creates its second world in the form of a scientific picture of nature, the second world of religion is based not on knowledge, but on faith in supernatural forces and their dominant role in the world, in people's lives. In addition, religious faith itself is a special state of consciousness, different from the certainty of a scientist, which is based on rational foundations; in religion, faith is realized in the cult and through the cult.
The reason for religion is the dependence of people on natural, natural and social forces beyond their control. It acts as an illusory replenishment of a person's weakness in front of them. The long evolution of religion has led to the idea of God as the manager of earthly and heavenly affairs. Religion once played a positive role as a means of social regulation, the formation of awareness of the unity of the human race, universal values.
The common thing that unites religion and philosophy is the solution of worldview problems. But the nature of the approach to these problems within their framework, as well as their solution itself, is profoundly different. In contrast to religion, with its emphasis on faith, philosophy has always relied on knowledge and reason. Already the first step of philosophy consisted in the search for the unity in everything, in the search for the fundamental principle of the world not outside of it, but in itself.
philosophy wisdom aristotle
38. The problem of the correlation of social and biological in man. Concepts of the origin of man: religious, scientific and philosophical. Anthroposociogenesis and its complex nature.
The social and biological are in an inseparable unity in a person, the sides of which are the personality as its “social quality” and the organism, which constitutes its natural basis.
From the side of its biological nature, each individual is determined from the very beginning by a certain genotype a set of genes received from parents. Already at birth, he receives one or another biological heredity, which is encrypted in the genes in the form of inclinations. These inclinations affect the external, physical data of the individual, his mental qualities. However, one should not conclude from this that only the natural conditioning of human abilities. Makings are just the prerequisites for human abilities that cannot be reduced to the genotype. Abilities are determined, in general terms, by the unity of three factors: biological (inclinations), social (social environment and upbringing) and mental (inner self of a person, his will, etc.).
When considering the problem of the social and biological, two extreme points of view should be avoided: the absolutization of the social factor pansociologism and the absolutization of the biological factor panbiologism. In the first case, a person appears as an absolute product of the social environment, as a tabula rasa (blank slate), on which this environment writes the entire development of the individual from beginning to end. The second concept includes various kinds of biological studies. Racists and representatives of social Darwinism stood on biologizing positions, trying to explain social life based on Darwin's theory of natural selection.
Biological and social in man are closely interconnected. An infant who has fallen into animal conditions of existence, even if he survives physically under favorable circumstances, however, does not become a man. For this, the individual needs to go through a certain period of socialization. Outside of social conditions, biology alone does not yet make a person a human person.
Another aspect of the influence of the social on the biological in man is that the biological in man is realized and satisfied in a social form. The natural and biological side of human existence is mediated and “humanized” by sociocultural factors. This also applies to the satisfaction of such purely biological needs as procreation, food, drink, etc.
There are different approaches to the knowledge of our past. In the most general form, they can be divided into creationism (religious approach), global evolutionism (philosophical approach) and the theory of evolution (scientific approach).
Creationism can be divided into orthodox (or anti-evolutionary) and evolutionary. Theologians-anti-evolutionists consider the only true point of view set forth in the Holy Scriptures (Bible). According to it, man, like other living organisms, was created by God as a result of a one-time creative act and did not change in the future. Supporters of this version either ignore the evidence for long biological evolution, or consider it the result of other, earlier and possibly unsuccessful creations. Some theologians recognize the existence in the past of people different from those living now, but deny any continuity with the modern population.
Evolutionary theologians recognize the possibility of biological evolution. According to them, animal species can turn into one another, but the Divine will is the guiding force: a person could have arisen from lower organized beings, but his spirit has remained unchanged since the initial creation, and the changes themselves occurred under the control and at the will of the Creator.
The idea of a single process of human evolution along with the entire universe originated in antiquity. In the later and developed versions of global evolutionism, the moment of the emergence and evolution of man is described based on scientific positions. The originality of these options is given by predictions of the future of mankind, attributing to mankind a global role in the evolution of the Universe.
In 1834 K.M. Baer formulated the "universal law of nature", which states that matter develops from lower forms to higher ones. As applied to man, this meant that he originated from some lower animals and, in the course of a long evolutionary process, reached the modern level.
The idea of the continuous complication of the Universe has received significant development in the works of P. Teilhard de Chardin and V.I. Vernadsky. Their points of view on the driving forces of this process are different: for P. Teilhard de Chardin it is an otherworldly thinking center, for V.I. Vernadsky - the forces of nature. According to the authors, the crown of the evolution of matter - cosmogenesis - is anthropogenesis. At a certain stage of anthropogenesis, the noosphere arises - the thinking shell of the planet with the separation of the thinking spirit from its material basis (P. Chardin Teilhard, 1965; Vernadsky V.I., 1977; Alekseev V.P., 1984).
The concept of changing some creatures into others - biological evolution - acquired more and more distinct outlines in the works of naturalists. For the first time, Zh.B. Lamarck in 1802 and 1809 However, the mechanisms of evolutionary changes proposed by J.B. Lamarck, look too simple and rather unconvincing. Even among the contemporaries of the scientist, this theory in its finished form did not receive wide recognition.
A much sharper public and scientific resonance was caused by Ch. Dravin's theory of evolution. The theory continued to develop, and after the discovery of genetic inheritance and its laws, it became known as the synthetic theory of evolution. Briefly, its essence is as follows. The genetic material of living organisms tends to change under the influence of various factors. These changes can be harmful or beneficial. If an organism turns out to be more adapted than its relatives, then it has a chance to leave more offspring, passing on its genetically fixed qualities to it. With a change in the environment, signs that were previously neutral or even harmful turn out to be more useful. Organisms with such traits survive, and the traits remain in their offspring. Human ancestors, being part of the nature around them, gradually changed due to changes in external conditions, which led to the emergence of modern man.
In 1876, F. Engels formulated the idea that human evolution occurred mainly for social reasons. F. Engels considered labor activity to be the main driving force behind the transformation of apes into humans, which at the same time distinguishes them from each other. "Labor created man", as well as his modern anatomy. The transition to upright posture led to the release of hands from the function of movement. Hands began to be used for the manufacture and use of tools. The complication of labor operations led to an increase in the brain, which again caused a complication of activity. Work also contributed to the rallying of the team, the emergence of speech and, finally, society. F. Engels considered the concrete mechanism of the influence of the socio-cultural environment on biological evolution to be the fixation in heredity of morphological features acquired in the process of labor. Such an explanation does not agree with modern ideas about genetic heredity, however, a certain connection between sociocultural and biological evolution is undeniable and is revealed quite definitely.
