Krasilov, 1997. Metaecology-10. The Superman (conclusion). Dogmatism. The Ladder. The Chronicle

Testaments (Conclusion). Miracles. Chapter 4. STRUGGLE. The Superman.

V.A. Krasilov. Metaecology. M.: Paleontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 1997. 208 p. Part 10.

The Superman (Conclusion). Dogmatism. Ladder. Chronicle.

Stairs (conclusion). Parallelism. Systemicity.

The ethical significance of science was formerly seen in its capacity to comprehend the majestic harmony of nature — the ideal of human existence. Darwinism, by negating the primordial harmony and proclaiming struggle as the driving force of development, stripped natural science of its traditional ethical functions. Moreover, science came to be seen as an enemy of morality, and the scientist increasingly appeared in the role of a literary villain. Anti-intellectualism flourished on the soil of this opposition to science. Spirituality was once again set against reason. According to L.N. Tolstoy, "reason has discovered the struggle for existence and the law that demands the throttling of all who hinder the satisfaction of my desires. That is the conclusion of reason. But reason could not discover love of another, because that is unreasonable." Yet it has been repeatedly observed that anti-intellectualism does not elevate man above the ape but rather brings him closer to lower forms of life by unleashing destructive instincts (events in Russian history have confirmed this rule). Darwin's precursor Patrick Matthew (in "Naval Timber and Arboriculture", 1831) employed the principle of natural selection to justify the natural right of the British to govern other nations. Darwin himself was compelled, following the Stoics and Malthus, to discard compassion as a brake on social progress and to justify the extermination of the Tasmanians by imperial troops: what is to be done if those natives proved to be less fit? Among Darwin's closest associates and followers, Ernst Haeckel, the founder of ecology, was also the founder of German national romanticism, on the soil of which the ideology of the Third Reich grew. Darwinism, accordingly, may serve as a vivid demonstration that a theory formulated within the confines of a particular scientific discipline inevitably exceeds those confines and may exert unforeseen influence upon various spheres of material and spiritual life. What interests us in the present context is the influence of a specific evolutionary model on metaecology as a system within which conceptions of the goals of human existence are formed. For goals are inseparable from causes, and to foresee the end one must know the beginning. Ethics, as we have already noted, is grounded in cosmogony. This world was created by beneficent forces and is therefore exceedingly good. Or it was created in error, as the Gnostics believed, and is therefore exceedingly bad. If man was created by Zeus or Jehovah in their image, that is well; but if by Prometheus or Lucifer in their image, not so well. The Christian position holds that man is originally good but susceptible to corruption. Christian perfection is a return to the beginning, to the primordial source. Scientific evolutionism arose within the purview of the Christian ethical system and inevitably stood in relation to it. According to the Darwinian model, man was created by natural selection, by struggle that leaves no room for love and mercy. Man is left either to follow his nature and cast off these feelings imposed upon him, or to accept them at the cost of suppressing his natural impulses. In either case, violence is inevitable. Humanists sensed early on the danger emanating from Darwinism and sought to avert it. None of them questioned the conclusions of Darwin and his followers regarding biological evolution, apparently assuming that these scientists with their microscopes and test tubes knew their business. However, for the soul all this was inessential and, consequently, science was incapable of resolving the principal problems of human existence. The exclusion of science from the ethical sphere entailed a diminishment of intellect and, contrary to the intentions involved, the predominance of the animal principle in its most primitive forms. The boat was being rocked from both sides, which could not but lead to catastrophe. But is everything truly as bleak as it appears, or are humanists simply inclined to overestimate the completeness of natural-scientific knowledge and the inexorability of metaphysical consequences? One cannot but agree with A.P. Chekhov that a learned fool is dangerous. But, as the same author demonstrated, no less dangerous is the philistine who interprets the theories of his learned neighbour in his own fashion. Is the opposition of spiritual life to the natural sciences some kind of inevitability arising from their nature, or is it the result of misunderstanding on both sides? Dogmatism What may be forgiven humanists cannot be forgiven professional natural scientists, who not infrequently, to their discredit, display excessive haste in equipping scientific theories with hastily fashioned metaphysics. The idea of following the laws of nature can be considered sound only if those laws are thoroughly known to us; otherwise it is more likely harmful. Was not L. Boltzmann too hasty in proclaiming the evolutionary mechanisms characteristic of bacteria as the foundation of social ethics? Did not the eminent geneticist H.J. Muller rush to prophesy the degeneration of humanity under the burden of mutations (by 1950, according to his calculations made in the 1930s), and to endorse eugenics and class struggle? And is it not rash, having failed to find a moral law in a particular theory, to distance oneself from spiritual problems? (J.-J. Rousseau observed that "if scholars sometimes have fewer prejudices than other people, all the more firmly do they cling to those they do have"; oppressed by confusion in his own professional domain, the scientist seeks support beyond its boundaries. In this connection it is worth recalling deeply religious scientists: Pavlov funded the construction of churches, Faraday belonged to a religious sect with a very strict charter, and Rutherford, upon a successful result, made his entire staff sing the hymn "Onward, Christian Soldiers".) Metaphysical content transforms a scientific theory into a "doctrine" devoid of the principal criterion of scientific character — the fundamental possibility of refutation and, consequently, of development. Fearing such a fate, Ch. Darwin (long before the authoritative epistemologist K. Popper, who methodologically grounded this approach) proposed at least two theses for the refutation of his own theory: on the incompleteness of the geological record and on the impossibility of altruism in nature. The first asserted that evolution is continuous. Apparent leaps are the consequence of gaps in the geological record, not of catastrophes as Cuvier supposed. According to the second, altruism cannot become fixed in nature, since the altruist leaves no offspring and transmits none of his qualities by inheritance. Decades passed before anyone availed himself of these hints to test and — such is the outcome — to refute the original theory. The development of evolutionary theory after Darwin was associated principally with the elucidation of the nature of primary variability — the material for natural selection. Darwin considered variability partly adaptive, adequate to external influences, and partly random, not amenable to explanation. The mutation theory that appeared at the beginning of the twentieth century interpreted changes in genes as truly random, unpredictable. At the level of the whole organism, mutations may produce barely perceptible deviations from the norm; nevertheless, if those deviations are favourable, they will be supported by selection. Furthermore, in the course of sexual reproduction a regrouping of genes occurs as a source of recombinational variability. Supplemented by these conceptions, evolutionary theory came to be called synthetic. At the metaphysical level it appeared as a path from mutational chaos through selection to the orderliness of the populational microcosm in the Hardy-Weinberg constancy of the ratios of genes and genotypes from generation to generation. The revised interpretation of the struggle for existence, transposed to the plane of statistical probabilities, corresponded more closely to the spirit of the age, to the worldview of the mass consumer who had replaced the tragic figures of the era of Marx and Nietzsche. The theory equipped itself with its own dogmatics, which include the impossibility of saltational development, the identity of the genomes of all cells of an organism, the possibility of transmitting information in only one direction, from nucleic acids to proteins, and so forth (more or less outdated, these dogmas have nevertheless been rescinded by nobody). At the same time there remained unanswered the questions for the sake of which the theory of evolution was essentially created: on the reality of species, their adaptation to the conditions of their habitat, and the succession of life forms from lower to higher (the "ladder of nature"). These questions had been posed in ancient times. Thus the problem of species follows from the more general problem of categories, which was the principal source of disagreement between Socrates and the Sophists, Plato and the Cynics (who acknowledged the existence of a concrete horse but not of "horseness", whereas for the Platonists "horseness" was more real than a concrete horse). Darwin inclined towards the Cynic point of view — the conditionality of species — and thus rather negated the idea of species than clarified it. Adaptation was explained by ancient philosophers by the inherent purposefulness of the structure of organisms (Empedocles — Lucretius; in more recent times L.S. Berg and A.A. Lyubishchev) or by purposeful change under the influence of the environment (Aristotle). The idea of direct adaptation — the hereditary transmission of characters acquired as a result of external influences — prevailed until the end of the nineteenth century (in the USSR and Japan — until the 1960s). Among many others, J.-B. Lamarck and Ch. Darwin paid tribute to it, although the latter attributed primary importance to indirect adaptation — the selection of random changes. Although the first conceptions of evolution were inspired by the "ladder of nature" and the theory was itself originally created to explain progress, this theme remains to this day one of the least developed, partly due to prejudice against it as a breeding ground for metaphysics — moralising inappropriate in the natural sciences, anthropocentrism, and crude sociological analogies. Progress is movement toward the better, the higher; but what should be considered better, higher? The Ladder On the "ladders of nature" constructed by Aristotle (sponges, starfish, snails, insects, crustaceans, octopuses, birds, four-footed oviparous and viviparous creatures, the whale, man) and by the ancient Chinese thinker Zhuangzi (algae, lichens, violet, shrubs, insects, birds, leopard, horse, man), the human species occupies the highest rung — which, however, does not yet prove its superiority over other living beings, but merely testifies to the universal prevalence of anthropocentrism as an ethical dogma (just as K. Lorenz's criterion — revulsion at vivisection, increasing with the transition from lettuce to fish, frog, mouse, dog, ape — corresponds to the resemblance of the suffering being to man). An unprejudiced comparison with more ancient forms of life, at first glance, does not favour man. Bacteria are capable of living in conditions that are lethal to us. Our energy needs by comparison with bacteria are enormous, and our reproductive potential is negligible. Bacteria have existed for billions of years, and there is no reason why they should not continue in the same vein. Our species numbers no more than two hundred thousand years and has already placed its own existence under threat. It is difficult to explain, P. Ehrlich and R. Holm acknowledge in "The Process of Evolution", why DNA created aardvarks and human beings for its reproduction, when bacteria and other simple organisms would seemingly serve this purpose no less well. Perhaps the ladder of nature should be begun from the other end? In ancient myths it is precisely human beings who give rise to various species of plants and animals — to the narcissus, for example, to the laurel, or to the spider. Echoes of this sense of the world did not fade until the eighteenth century, when J. Buffon supposed that the ape had originated from man as a result of the latter's degeneration. J.-B. Lamarck, who worked as a tutor in Buffon's household, may have absorbed his views. Indeed, Lamarck held that lower forms were secondarily derived from higher ones against a background of the general progress of life. The origins of his progressionism are to be sought, evidently, not in the discovery of any new biological facts, but in a new sense of the world connected with the breakdown of habitual ways of life (as long as the way of life remains unchanged, descendants always appear to be epigones, the father dominates by his superiority, and the figure of the grandfather grows to legendary proportions; a change in the way of life, however, leads to the young person looking down condescendingly upon his archaic forebears). The fundamental ideas of unity and development embodied in the ladder of nature have roots reaching into the distant past. The ancients saw in the surrounding world a reflection of man, while at the same time likening life to the revolution of the celestial bodies. Later metaphysics embodied the conception of the unity of the universe in a single god. World history was represented as a fall from the height of the zenith, of paradise, of the golden age into the abyss of the Apocalypse with a subsequent rebirth. The Christian precept — be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect — ultimately returns to the starting point, but along a circumference of very great length, so that a vector appears in history: infinite perfection. If in the Middle Ages the premonition of the end of the world dominated, the Renaissance affirmed the striving for a better life as the basis of subsequent progressivism (Turgot, Condorcet, Comte). The idea of the kinship of all that exists was reborn in a new form, in particular of man and nature, which sounded with particular force later among the precursors of biological evolutionism — W. Goethe, E. Darwin, E. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. The philosopher J.-B. Robinet held that even minerals are alive, though containing less life than a plant or polyp. He (like Voltaire) sarcastically mocked those narrow-minded people who saw in fossils — "figured stones", as they were then called — the remains of animals and plants (in Robinet's treatise "On Nature" it is stated that "fossil animals spend their lives in the womb of the earth: they are born here, they feed, they grow, they ripen, they spread their seed; they age here, they die, unless they are torn from the earth. The resistance they offer us when we wish to extract them from the earth testifies sufficiently eloquently to the violence we commit against them, and perhaps the harm they subsequently inflict upon us is their revenge for this"). Figured stones, according to Robinet, are studies, preliminary attempts by the creative force of nature to create plants and animals. They fill the gap between minerals and plants, proving the rightness of Leibniz, the author of the law of continuity. What progresses is not the forms of life but nature as a creative system, passing from plants to polyps, to higher animals, and finally to man. Traces of such metaphysical progressivism are discernible in many evolutionary theories, from Lamarck to Teilhard de Chardin. The Chronicle In the time of Ch. Darwin, the theory of evolution denoted the conception (with which far from everyone agreed) that the organic world undergoes directed change. The word "theory" carried a pejorative connotation, indicating that the reference was to the transient conclusions of science, not to the absolute truths of revelation. A work on the theory of evolution represented a catalogue of facts from various branches of biology confirming evolution. This stage in the development of the theory was largely completed by the beginning of the twentieth century, when mechanisms of change in organisms from generation to generation came to occupy the centre of attention. Such mechanisms examined included mutations, genetic drift, selection, their combinations, and so-called Lamarckian factors. The latter were ultimately rejected by the majority of researchers. The choice was made in favour of random mutations, recombinations, and selection, permitting talk of constructing a new theory of evolution, although in reality only its particular aspects were involved. This was attested to by the theory of the biosphere as a unified system simultaneously being constructed by V.I. Vernadsky — one that includes biocenoses, communities, and species as components and, consequently, determines their evolution. The systemic approach had been found, although V.I. Vernadsky himself (1967) considered the principal parameters of the biosphere — biomass and diversity — to be constant. His theory was in essence not evolutionary and had no direct bearing on those mechanisms of hereditary change in organisms that preoccupied the minds of his contemporaries. Scientists and the public could content themselves with surrogates of evolutionary theory as long as the problem of the survival of the human species had not, so to speak, been placed on the agenda in connection with global changes in the natural environment. It then emerged that the surrogates bore no relation to global problems, provided neither explanations nor predictions, and that a theory of a general character containing both was needed. One was compelled to recall that the key to the future lies in the past, in the geological record, the evidence of which, hitherto scarcely in demand, had been significantly discredited by the concept of the incompleteness of the geological record, advanced by Ch. Lyell and supported by Ch. Darwin, as defective and therefore unsuitable for serious conclusions. We cannot deny the substantial incompleteness of the geological record (but we have no other) and will therefore confine ourselves to a consideration of its most general and unambiguous indications. The earliest remains of fossil organisms from rock formations approximately 3.5 billion years old belong to microbial photosynthesisers — cyanophytes (inaccurately termed blue-green algae) — organisms that are far from the most primitive. The origin of life is therefore pushed back to an even earlier date, practically to the formation of the Earth, approximately 4 to 4.5 billion years ago. Geochemists now believe that life could have arisen during a relatively brief period of the existence of a methane-ammonia atmosphere with an admixture of carbon dioxide and nitrogen. Large quantities of methane and ammonia entered the atmosphere from the interior of the Earth only prior to the formation of the Earth's core; subsequently, volcanic gases consisted principally of carbon dioxide and water with an admixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, and the atmosphere was rapidly oxidised through photolysis. The primordial methane-ammonia atmosphere produced a powerful greenhouse effect, raising the temperature at the Earth's surface to 300°C. Millions of tonnes of various organic compounds entered the ocean from the atmosphere annually. Laboratory experiments have shown that under such conditions it is possible to obtain not only all twenty amino acids forming proteins but also nucleotides — the letters of the genetic code. Life arose under conditions that are unsuitable for contemporary life (this should be borne in mind when discussing the question of life on other planets). Some bacteria possess crystals of magnetite forming within the cell a kind of compass needle. They can move along the lines of force of the magnetic field. Since the field has a vertical component, the "compass needle" helps them to descend below the oxygen-saturated zone. They are attracted to concentrations of iron, the oxidation of which consumes excess oxygen. In the most ancient sedimentary sequences there are found gigantic deposits of layered iron ores, in the formation of which bacterium-like organisms participated — organisms that still required protection from oxygen. The next step was the appearance of anaerobic, oxygen-insensitive cyanophytes forming multilayer mats found in the most ancient sedimentary rocks. The perfection of the photosynthetic apparatus allowed them to utilise the visible part of the spectrum after ultraviolet radiation had been limited by the ozone screen. For nearly 2 billion years, bacterial mats remained the most stable form of biotic communities. Their impact on the habitat was very considerable but, in the main, unfavourable for the bacterial communities themselves, compelling the latter to perfect their structure. In any system, even the most conservative, self-regulation sooner or later emerges, diminishing the effect of external influences. In connection with this function, diverse symbiotic systems arose within the bacterial mats, from which various types of eukaryotic microorganisms were formed, including heterotrophic ones. They gave rise to an explosion of diversity at the level of 900 to 700 million years ago. At the same time, and as a manifestation of the same tendency in community development, multicellular organisms appeared — ribbon-like thalli composed of identical cells — followed by medusoid forms possessing neither a rigid carapace nor an internal skeleton. At the boundary of the Proterozoic and Palaeozoic eras, partly perhaps in connection with increased environmental mobility (extensive glaciation promoted the development of oceanic water circulation), and partly as a result of intensified predator pressure, skeletal structures developed in parallel in a number of groups of primary multicellular organisms. Skeletalisation facilitated the colonisation of various life zones and accelerated the adaptive radiation of multicellular organisms, among which all currently known phyla soon arose, including the vertebrates. The emergence onto land became possible with the formation of a permanent ozone screen (for which 1% of the modern atmospheric oxygen content suffices; however, at such a low oxygen concentration the ozone screen is unstable: the leaflessness of the first land plants is possibly evidence of still sufficiently intense ultraviolet radiation damaging broad photosynthetic surfaces). Subsequently, evolutionary innovations were associated principally with the colonisation of this more difficult medium for life. After the appearance of organisms whose entire life cycle is completed on land — terrestrial insects, reptiles, seed plants — and the immediately ensuing invasion by them of the aerial ocean and, secondarily, of the sea, the expansion of the biosphere was largely completed. The principal adaptive zones were defined, and evolution became more predictable in the sense that the adaptive radiation of each new dominant group repeated the previous one, following the same stable pattern of ecological space division (when some jester resolved to frighten Cuvier by disguising himself as a devil, the latter aptly remarked that horns and hooves are characteristic not of carnivores but of harmless herbivores; the stability of the ecological structure of the biosphere permits the palaeontologist to reconstruct the mode of life of extinct animals from their morphology). Successive therapsid reptiles, dinosaurs, and mammals (pteridosperms — conifers and cycadophytes — angiosperms in the plant world) produced similar spectra of life forms. But these successions were not a running in place: transverse tendencies are traceable, if only in the example of the currently dominant groups — mammals and angiosperms. In the Triassic period of the Mesozoic era, mammalian characters accumulated in parallel in several lineages of therapsid reptiles. Some forms derived from them are referred to as mammals, although they hardly possessed the full complement of properties characteristic of that class. They may more properly be considered proto-mammals. At the same time proto-angiosperms arose, combining the characters of gymnosperms and angiosperms. "Angiospermisation" encompassed a number of evolutionary lineages. For approximately 100 million years they occupied a secondary position, colonising marginal habitats, and only in the Cretaceous period did they simultaneously advance to the principal coenotic roles. In addition to the fact that the synchronous development of dominant groups reflects the general directedness of the evolution of ecosystems, there probably also existed between them a direct connection in the form of frugivory (feeding on fruits) and zoochory (dispersal of fruits and seeds by animals). Perhaps in connection with frugivory, adaptations to an arboreal mode of life developed in early mammals. In the late Cretaceous period the first primates appeared among them. The flourishing of this order — approximately 35 million years ago — was accompanied by an increase in the diversity of fruits, and the most important evolutionary achievements belonged to those primates that preferred this high-quality food. Among the earliest anthropoids there was also a relatively long-lived frugivorous lineage.

Ladder. On the "ladder of nature," built by Aristotle (sponges, starfish, snails, insects, crustaceans, octopuses, birds, four-legged oviparous and viviparous, whale, man) and the ancient Chinese thinker Zhuang Zhou (algae, lichens, violet, bushes, insects, birds, leopard, horse, man), the human species occupies the highest rung, which, however, does not prove its superiority over other living beings, but only indicates the universal spread of anthropocentrism as an ethical dogma (as well as K. Lorenz's criterion – disgust towards vivisection, increasing when moving from salad to fish, frog, mouse, dog, ape – corresponds to the similarity of the suffering creature to humans). An unbiased comparison with older life forms, at first glance, is not in favor of humans. Bacteria can live in conditions that are fatal to us. Our energy needs compared to bacteria are enormous, and our reproductive potential is insignificant. Bacteria have existed for billions of years, and there is no reason why they should not continue to do so. Our species is no more than two hundred thousand years old and has already endangered its existence. It is difficult to explain, as P. Ehrlich and R. Holm note in "The Process of Evolution," why DNA created tube-nosed fish and humans for its reproduction, while bacteria and other simple organisms would seem to serve this purpose just as well? Perhaps the ladder of nature should be started from the other end? In ancient myths, it is humans who give rise to various species of plants and animals – the narcissus, for example, the laurel, or the spider. Echoes of such a worldview did not fade until the 18th century, when G. Buffon suggested that apes originated from humans as a result of the latter's degeneration. J.-B. Lamarck, who worked as a tutor in Buffon's house, could have adopted his views. Indeed, Lamarck believed that lower forms secondarily originated from higher forms against the backdrop of general life progress. The sources of his progressionism should clearly be sought not in the discovery of new biological facts, but in a new worldview associated with the disruption of the usual way of life (as long as the way of life remains unchanged, descendants always look like epigones, the father suppresses them with his superiority, and the grandfather's figure grows to epic proportions; a change in the way of life leads to the fact that a young man condescendingly looks at his archaic ancestors). The fundamental ideas of unity and development embodied in the ladder of nature are rooted in the distant past. The ancients saw in the surrounding world a reflection of man, while simultaneously likening life to the cycle of celestial bodies. Later metaphysics embodied the idea of the unity of the universe in a single God. World history was imagined as a fall from the peak of the zenith, paradise, the golden age into the abyss of the Apocalypse, followed by rebirth. The Christian motto: "Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is," ultimately returns to the starting point, but along a very long circle, so that a vector appears in history – infinite improvement. If in the Middle Ages the premonition of the end of the world dominated, then the Renaissance affirmed the aspiration for a better life as the basis for further progressivism (Turgot, Condorcet, Comte). In a new form, the idea of the kinship of all things, including humans and nature, was revived, sounding with particular force later in the predecessors of biological evolutionism – J. W. Goethe, E. Darwin, E. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. The philosopher J.-B. Robinet believed that even minerals are alive, although life in them is less than in a plant or polyp. He (like Voltaire) vividly ridiculed those short-sighted people who saw in petrified objects – "figured stones," as they were then called, the remains of animals and plants (in Robinet's treatise "On Nature" it is stated that "fossil animals live their lives in the womb of the earth: they are born here, feed, grow, mature, spread their seed; they grow old here, die, if they are not torn from the earth. The resistance they offer us when we try to pull them out is eloquent testimony to the violence we inflict upon them, and the harm they may cause us may be revenge for this"). Figured stones, according to Robinet, are sketches, preliminary attempts by nature's creative force to create plants and animals. They fill the gap between minerals and plants, proving the correctness of Leibniz, the author of the law of continuity. It is not the forms of life that progress, but nature as a creative system, moving from plants to polyps, higher animals, and finally, to humans. Traces of such metaphysical progressionism are noticeable in many evolutionary theories, from Lamarck to Teilhard de Chardin.

Some bacteria have magnetite crystals that form a compass needle-like structure within the cell. They can move along the magnetic field lines. Since the field has a vertical component, the "compass needle" helps them to descend below the oxygen-rich zone. They are attracted to iron deposits, the oxidation of which consumes excess oxygen. The oldest sedimentary layers contain giant deposits of banded iron formations, in the formation of which bacterial-like organisms, still requiring protection from oxygen, participated.

The next step was the appearance of anaerobic, oxygen-insensitive cyanophytes, which formed multilayered mats found in the oldest sedimentary rocks. The improvement of the photosynthetic apparatus allowed them to use the visible part of the spectrum after ultraviolet radiation was limited by the ozone screen.

For almost 2 billion years, bacterial mats remained the most stable form of biotic communities. Their impact on the environment was quite significant, but mainly unfavorable for the bacterial communities themselves, forcing them to improve their structure. In any, even the most conservative system, self-regulation sooner or later arises, which weakens the effect of external influences.

At the boundary of the Proterozoic and Paleozoic eras, partly possibly due to increased environmental dynamism (massive glaciation promoted the development of oceanic water circulation), and partly due to increased predator pressure, skeletal structures developed in parallel in a number of groups of early multicellular organisms. Skeletozation facilitated the colonization of various life zones and accelerated the adaptive radiation of multicellular organisms, among which all currently known phyla, including vertebrates, soon appeared.

The colonization of land became possible due to the formation of a permanent ozone screen (for which 1% of the current oxygen content in the atmosphere is sufficient; however, at such a low oxygen concentration, the ozone screen is unstable: the leaflessness of the first terrestrial plants is a possible witness to still quite strong ultraviolet radiation that damaged wide photosynthetic surfaces). Further evolutionary innovations were mainly associated with the colonization of this more challenging environment. After the appearance of organisms whose entire life cycle occurs on land—terrestrial insects, reptiles, seed plants—and their immediate subsequent invasion of the aerial ocean and, again, the sea, the expansion of the biosphere was largely completed.

The main adaptive zones were defined, and evolution became more predictable in the sense that the adaptive radiation of each new dominant group repeated the previous one, following the same stable pattern of ecological space partitioning (when some joker decided to scare Cuvier by dressing up as the devil, he wisely noted that horns and hooves are characteristic not of predators, but of innocent herbivores; the stability of the biosphere's ecological structure allows a paleontologist to reconstruct the lifestyle of extinct animals from their morphology). Successive groups of toothed reptiles, dinosaurs, and mammals (pteridosperms—conifers and cycadophytes—flowering plants) produced similar spectra of life forms. But these changes were not standing still: overarching trends are traceable, at least in the example of modern dominant groups—mammals and flowering plants.

In addition to the fact that the synchronous development of dominant groups reflects the general direction of ecosystem evolution, there was likely a direct connection between them in the form of frugivory (feeding on fruits) and zoochory (dispersal of fruits and seeds by animals). Possibly, in connection with frugivory, ancient mammals developed adaptations for an arboreal lifestyle. At the end of the Cretaceous period, the first primates appeared among them. The flourishing of this order—about 35 million years ago—was accompanied by an increase in fruit diversity, and the most important evolutionary achievements belong to those primates that preferred this high-quality food. Among the first anthropoids, there was also a relatively long-lived frugivorous lineage.

Testaments (Conclusion). Miracles.