Cuvier's theory of catastrophes. Hypotheses and misconceptions that modern people should know about. Darwin's evolutionary theory

Coursework in the discipline

"Social Modeling and Programming"

THE THEORY OF CATASTROPHE Cuvier J.L.

Introduction

1. Georges Leopold Cuvier

2. Scientific works of Georges Cuvier and his theory of catastrophes

3. Followers of Georges Cuvier

4. Reflection of the ideology of catastrophism in modern life

Conclusion

Bibliography

cuvier zoologist disaster earth

INTRODUCTION

In the first quarter of the 19th century. Great strides have been made in such areas of biological science as comparative anatomy and paleontology. The main achievements in the development of these areas of biology belong to the French scientist Georges Leopold Cuvier, who became famous primarily for his research in comparative anatomy.

Studying the structure of the organs of vertebrate animals, he established that all organs of an animal are parts of a single integral system. As a result, the structure of each organ naturally correlates with the structure of all others. No part of the body can change without corresponding changes in other parts. This means that each part of the body reflects the principles of the structure of the entire organism.

In the process of his research, Cuvier became interested in the history of the Earth, terrestrial animals and plants. He spent many years studying it, making many valuable discoveries. As a result of the enormous work he did, he came to three unconditional conclusions:

The earth has changed its appearance throughout its history;

As the Earth changed, so did its population;

Changes in the earth's crust occurred even before the appearance of living beings.

The belief in the impossibility of the emergence of new forms of life was completely indisputable for Cuvier. However, numerous paleontological data irrefutably testified to the change in animal forms on Earth.

When different degrees of antiquity of extinct animals were established. Cuvier put forward the theory of catastrophes. According to this theory, the cause of extinction was periodically occurring major geological disasters that destroyed animals and vegetation over large areas. Then the territories were populated by species that penetrated from neighboring areas. Cuvier's followers and students, developing his teaching, went even further, arguing that catastrophes covered the entire globe. After each catastrophe, a new act of creation followed. They numbered 27 such catastrophes and, therefore, acts of creation.

The theory of catastrophes has become widespread. However, a number of scientists expressed their critical attitude towards it. The heated debate between adherents of the immutability of species and supporters of spontaneous evolutionism was put to an end by the deeply thought-out and fundamentally substantiated theory of the formation of species, created by Charles Darwin and A. Wallace.

1. GEORGE LEOPOLD CIVIER

Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) - French zoologist, one of the reformers of comparative anatomy, paleontology and animal taxonomy, foreign honorary member Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1802). Introduced the concept of type in zoology. He established the principle of “organ correlation”, on the basis of which he reconstructed the structure of many extinct animals. He did not recognize the variability of species, explaining the change in fossil faunas with the so-called catastrophe theory.

Georges Leopold Christian Dagobert Cuvier was born on August 23, 1769 in the small Alsatian town of Montbéliard. He amazed me with his early mental development. At the age of four he was already reading, his mother taught him to draw, and Cuvier thoroughly mastered this art. Subsequently, many of the drawings he made were published in his books and were reprinted many times in the books of other authors. At school, Georges studied brilliantly, but was considered far from the most well-behaved student. For joking with the director of the gymnasium, Cuvier was “punished”: he did not get into the theological school that trained priests.

At the age of fifteen, Georges Cuvier entered the Carolinian Academy in Stuttgart, where he chose the faculty of cameral sciences, where he studied law, finance, hygiene and agriculture. As before, he was most attracted to the study of animals and plants. In 1788, Georges Cuvier went to Normandy to the castle of Count Erisy. The estate of Count Erisi was located on the seashore, and Georges Cuvier for the first time saw real sea animals, familiar to him only from drawings. He dissected these animals and studied the internal structure of fish, soft-bodied crabs, starfish, and worms. He was amazed to find that in the so-called lower forms, in which the scientists of his time assumed a simple body structure, there was an intestine with glands, a heart with vessels, and nerve nodes with nerve trunks extending from them. Cuvier penetrated with his scalpel into a new world in which no one had yet made accurate and thorough observations. He described the research results in detail in the journal Zoological Bulletin.

In the spring of 1795, Georges Cuvier arrived in Paris. He advanced very quickly and in the same year he occupied the department of animal anatomy at the University of Paris - Sorbonne. In 1796, Cuvier was appointed a member of the national institute, and in 1800 he took the chair of natural history at the College de France. In 1802 he took the chair of comparative anatomy at the Sorbonne.

Deep knowledge of animal anatomy allowed Georges Cuvier to reconstruct the appearance of extinct creatures from their preserved bones. To explain the successive succession of fossil animals, Cuvier came up with a special theory of “revolutions” or “catastrophes” in the history of the Earth.

He explained these catastrophes this way: the sea approached the land and swallowed up all living things, then the sea retreated, the seabed became dry land, which was populated by new animals.

2. SCIENTIFIC WORKS OF GEORGES CuVIER AND HIS THEORY OF DISASTER

First scientific works Georges Cuvier were devoted to entomology. In Paris, studying the rich collections of the museum, Cuvier gradually became convinced that the Linnaean system accepted in science did not strictly correspond to reality. Carl Linnaeus shared animal world into 6 classes: mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, insects and worms. Cuvier proposed a different system. He believed that in the animal world there are four types of body structure, completely different from each other. Animals of the same type are dressed in a hard shell, and their body consists of many segments; such are crayfish, insects, centipedes, and some worms. Cuvier called such animals “articulated.”

In another type, the soft body of the animal is enclosed in a hard shell and they have no signs of articulation: snails, octopuses, oysters - these animals were called “soft-bodied” by Georges Cuvier. Animals of the third type have a dissected internal bony skeleton - “vertebrate” animals. Animals of the fourth type are built in the same way as a starfish, that is, parts of their body are located along radii diverging from one center. Cuvier called these animals “radiant.”

Within each type, J. Cuvier identified classes; some of them coincide with Linnaeus' classes. For example, the phylum of vertebrates was divided into the classes of mammals, birds, reptiles and fish. Cuvier's system expressed the actual relationships between groups of animals much better than Linnaeus' system. It soon came into general use among zoologists. Georges Cuvier based his system on a major three-volume work, The Animal Kingdom, where the anatomical structure of animals was described in detail.

Deep knowledge of animal anatomy allowed Georges Cuvier to reconstruct the appearance of extinct creatures from their preserved bones. Cuvier became convinced that all the organs of an animal are closely connected with each other, that each organ is necessary for the life of the entire organism. Each animal is adapted to the environment in which it lives, finds food, hides from enemies, and takes care of its offspring.

“An organism,” said J. Cuvier, “is a coherent whole. Individual parts of it cannot be changed without causing changes in others. Cuvier called this constant connection of organs with each other “the relationship between the parts of the organism.”

By studying fossils, Georges Cuvier reconstructed the appearance of many extinct animals that lived millions of years ago. He proved that once on the site of Europe there was a warm sea on which huge predators swam - ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, etc. Cuvier proved that in those days reptiles dominated the air, but there were no birds yet. Having studied other fossil remains, Georges Cuvier became convinced that in the past there was an era with a unique animal world in which not a single modern animal existed. All animals living then became extinct. This fossil fauna of land animals, mainly mammals, was discovered near Paris in gypsum quarries and in layers of limestone rock - marl.

Georges Cuvier discovered and described about forty extinct breeds of large mammals - pachyderms and ruminants. Some of them vaguely resembled modern rhinoceroses, tapirs, and wild boars, while others were completely unique. But among them there were no ruminants living in our time - no bulls, no camels, no deer, no giraffes.

Continuing his research, Cuvier discovered that fossil fauna are found in the layers of the earth's crust in a certain order. The more ancient layers contain the remains of marine fish and reptiles, the later Cretaceous deposits contain other reptiles and the first small and rare mammals with a very primitive skull structure. In even later ones - the fauna of ancient mammals and birds. Finally, in sediments preceding modern ones, Cuvier discovered the remains of a mammoth, a cave bear, and a woolly rhinoceros. Thus, from fossil remains it is possible to determine the relative sequence and antiquity of strata, and from strata - the relative antiquity of extinct faunas. This discovery formed the basis of historical geology and stratigraphy - the study of the sequence of strata that make up the earth's crust.

Where did the faunas that we now find in the form of fossils disappear to, and where did the new ones that replaced them arise? Modern science explains this by the evolutionary development of the animal world. The facts discovered by Georges Cuvier formed the basis for this explanation. But Cuvier himself did not see the enormous significance of his discoveries. He stood firmly on the old point of view about the constancy of species. Cuvier believed that among fossils there are no transitional forms of animal organisms. He pointed to the sudden disappearance of faunas and the lack of communication between them. To explain the successive succession of fossil animals, Cuvier came up with a special theory of “revolutions” or “catastrophes” in the history of the Earth.

In the first quarter XIX century, great strides have been made in such areas of biological science as comparative anatomy and paleontology. The main achievements in the development of these areas of biology belong to the French scientist Georges Leopold Cuvier, who became famous primarily for his research in comparative anatomy. He systematically compared the structure and functions of the same organ or an entire system of organs across all sections of the animal kingdom. Studying the structure of the organs of vertebrate animals, he established that all organs of an animal are parts of a single integral system. As a result, the structure of each organ naturally correlates with the structure of all others. No part of the body can change without corresponding changes in other parts. This means that each part of the body reflects the principles of the structure of the entire organism. So, if an animal has hooves, its entire organization reflects a herbivorous lifestyle: the teeth are adapted to grinding rough plant food, the jaws have a certain shape, the stomach is multi-chambered, the intestines are very long, etc. Cuvier called the correspondence of the structure of animal organs to each other the principle of correlations (correlativity). Guided by the principle of correlations, Cuvier successfully applied the acquired knowledge in paleontology. He was able to restore the complete appearance of a long-vanished organism from individual fragments that have survived to this day.

The earth has changed its appearance throughout its history;

As the Earth changed, so did its population;

Changes in the earth's crust occurred even before the appearance of living beings.

The belief in the impossibility of the emergence of new forms of life was completely indisputable for Cuvier. He proved that modern species of living organisms have not changed, at least since the time of the pharaohs. The resulting estimate of the age of the Earth seemed unimaginably enormous at that time. But Cuvier considered the most significant objection to the theory of evolution to be the apparent absence of transitional forms between modern animals and those whose remains he found during excavations.

However, numerous paleontological data irrefutably testified to the change in animal forms on Earth. Real facts contradicted the biblical legend. Initially, supporters of the immutability of living nature explained this contradiction very simply:

those animals that Noah did not take into his ark during the flood became extinct. But the unscientific nature of references to the biblical flood became apparent when the varying degrees of antiquity of extinct animals were established. Then Cuvier put forward the theory of catastrophes. According to this theory, the cause of extinction was periodically occurring major geological disasters that destroyed animals and vegetation over large areas. Then the territories were populated by species that penetrated from neighboring areas. Cuvier's followers and students, developing his teaching, went even further, arguing that catastrophes covered the entire globe. After each catastrophe there followed a new act of divine creation. They numbered 27 such catastrophes and, therefore, acts of creation.

The rapid development of natural science and breeding work, the expansion and deepening of research in various branches of biology, the intensive accumulation of new scientific facts in the 19th century. created favorable conditions for new generalizations in the theory of evolution of living nature. One of the attempts of this kind was the theory of catastrophes by the French zoologist J. Cuvier.

The methodological basis of the catastrophe theory was great successes in such areas of biological science as comparative anatomy and paleontology. J. Cuvier systematically compared the structure and functions of the same organ or an entire system of organs in the most different types animals. Studying the structure of vertebrates, he established that all organs of any living organism are parts of a single integral system. As a result, the structure of each organ naturally correlates with the structure of all others. No part of the body can change without a corresponding change in the others; Each part of the body reflects the principles of the structure of the entire organism.

Thus, herbivores that eat low-calorie plant foods must have a large stomach capable of digesting this food in large quantities. The size of the stomach determines the size of other internal organs: the spine, chest. The massive body must be supported on powerful legs equipped with hard hooves, and the length of the legs determines the length of the neck, which makes it possible to freely pluck the grass. Carnivores have more nutritious food, so they have smaller stomachs. In addition, they need soft paws with movable clawed fingers in order to quietly sneak up on prey and grab it, so the neck of predators should be short, teeth sharp, etc.

J. Cuvier called this correspondence of animal organs to each other the principle of correlations. According to this principle, each form of an animal organism is a closed system. Based on familiarity with one part of the organism, one can judge the whole organism.

Guided by the principle of correlations, J. Cuvier successfully applied the acquired knowledge. He was able to reconstruct the appearance of an animal from a single tooth - after all, in any fragment of the body, like in a mirror, the entire animal is reflected. The undoubted merit of J. Cuvier was the application of the principle of correlations in paleontology, which made it possible to restore the appearance of animals that had long disappeared from the Earth. Thanks to the scientist’s work, today we can imagine what dinosaurs, mammoths and mastodons looked like - the whole world of fossil animals. Thus, J. Cuvier, who himself proceeded from the idea of the constancy of species, without seeing transitional forms between animals that were contemporary with him and those that lived earlier, made a great contribution to the formation of the evolutionary theory that appeared half a century later.

In the process of his research, J. Cuvier became interested in the history of the Earth, terrestrial animals and plants. He spent many years studying them, making many valuable discoveries. As a result, J. Cuvier came to the conclusion that gigantic cataclysms periodically occurred on Earth, destroying entire continents, and with them their inhabitants. In particular, the scientist discovered that the remains of some species are confined to the same geological strata; in neighboring strata there are completely different organisms. On this basis, he concluded that the animals that inhabited our planet died almost instantly from enormous catastrophes, and then completely different species appeared in their place. This is how the famous catastrophe theory, which was very popular in the 19th century, was formulated.

The followers and students of J. Cuvier, developing his teaching, went further, arguing that catastrophes covered the entire globe. After each catastrophe there followed a new act of divine creation. They numbered 27 such catastrophes and, therefore, acts of creation.

Georges Cuvier's first scientific works were devoted to entomology. In Paris, studying the rich collections of the museum, Cuvier gradually became convinced that the Linnaean system accepted in science did not strictly correspond to reality. Carl Linnaeus divided the animal world into 6 classes: mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, insects and worms. Cuvier proposed a different system. He believed that in the animal world there are four types of body structure, completely different from each other. Animals of the same type are dressed in a hard shell, and their body consists of many segments; such are crayfish, insects, centipedes, and some worms. Cuvier called such animals “articulated.”

The theory of catastrophes is the doctrine of the periodic death of the organic world as a result of catastrophic events on a planetary scale, during which the geology of the Earth is restructured, as a result of which new unchangeable species and genera of living organisms appear, not related to the dead forms; was proposed by J. Cuvier in the 18th century. and lost its importance by the end of the 19th century. Russian encyclopedic dictionary: In 2 books. -- / Ch. ed.: A.M. Prokhorov - M.: Great Russian Encyclopedia, 2001

By catastrophism, Georges Cuvier understood a chain of grandiose catastrophes in the past that caused the death of the entire animal and plant world. Later, the theory of disasters was borrowed by sociology and other socio-political sciences, along with some other natural science theories, which in modified form were used to explain various processes occurring in society. It should be said that philosophical thought has accumulated enough prerequisites for the emergence of the ideology of catastrophism. As an example, we can cite, for example, Plato’s Atlantis or the ideas of some economists of the 19th century. about the growth of the Earth's population and development Agriculture in geometric and arithmetic progressions, respectively.

Cuvier explained these catastrophes this way: the sea approached the land and absorbed all living things, then the sea retreated, the seabed became dry land, which was populated by new animals. Where did they come from? Cuvier did not give a clear answer to this. He said that new animals could move from distant places where they lived before.

Cuvier supported his reasoning with examples. If the sea flooded modern Australia, he said, then all the diversity of marsupials and monotremes would be buried under sediment and all species of these animals would be completely extinct. If a new catastrophe connected the land masses of Australia and Asia, then animals from Asia could move to Australia. Finally, if a new catastrophe were to destroy Asia, the homeland of the animals that migrated to Australia, then it would be difficult to determine, by studying the animals of Australia, where they got there from. Thus, Cuvier, relying only on the facts that European geology and paleontology gave him, was forced to admit the presence of catastrophes in the history of the Earth, although, according to his ideas, they did not destroy the entire organic world at the same time Naydysh V.M.. Concepts modern natural science. M., 1999.

The foundations of the theory of catastrophes were laid by Cuvier in his famous work “Discourse on revolutions on the surface of the globe and the changes they produced in the animal kingdom.”

Based on the paleontological and geological material available to him, Cuvier based the theory of catastrophes on the following theses:

· Species in nature are constant and unchanging.

· Extinct species, the fossils and remains of which we find in the fossil record, became extinct as a result of global natural disasters that periodically shake the Earth.

· The causes of global natural disasters are unknown.

· Global natural disasters, which led to the extinction of many species of animals and plants, are not analogues of the natural processes that we observe in the historical period. They had a fundamentally different character.

· Sea and land changed places more than once, and this process did not happen gradually, but suddenly Smorodin I. Strategy. M. 2009.

Cuvier believed that the last catastrophe occurred 5-6 thousand years ago, the bottom of the ocean rose and became a continent, and the land sank and went under water. The scientist identified four periods in the development of living organisms:

1) the age of lizards;

2) the age of terrestrial tetrapods (extinct mammals);

3) the age of mammoths, mastodons (ancestors of modern elephants), megatheri (large beast-toothed animals);

Coursework in the discipline

"Social Modeling and Programming"

THE THEORY OF CATASTROPHE Cuvier J.L.

PLAN

Introduction

Georges Leopold Cuvier

Scientific works of Georges Cuvier and his theory of catastrophes

Followers of Georges Cuvier

Reflection of the ideology of catastrophism in modern life

Conclusion

Bibliography

cuvier zoologist disaster earth

INTRODUCTION

— The Earth has changed its appearance throughout its history;

— simultaneously with the changes in the Earth, its population also changed;

- Changes in the earth's crust occurred even before the appearance of living beings.

GEORGE LEOPOLD CIVIER

Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) - French zoologist, one of the reformers of comparative anatomy, paleontology and animal taxonomy, foreign honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1802). Introduced the concept of type in zoology. He established the principle of “organ correlation”, on the basis of which he reconstructed the structure of many extinct animals. He did not recognize the variability of species, explaining the change in fossil faunas with the so-called catastrophe theory.

He explained these catastrophes this way: the sea approached the land and swallowed up all living things, then the sea retreated, the seabed became dry land, which was populated by new animals.

SCIENTIFIC WORKS OF GEORGES CuVIER AND HIS THEORY OF DISASTER

Catastrophe theory- the doctrine of the periodic death of the organic world as a result of catastrophic events on a planetary scale, during which a restructuring of the Earth’s geology occurs, as a result of which new unchangeable species and genera of living organisms appear, not related to the dead forms; was proposed by J. Cuvier in the 18th century. and lost its importance by the end of the 19th century.

By catastrophism, Georges Cuvier understood a chain of grandiose catastrophes in the past that caused the death of the entire animal and plant world. Later, the theory of disasters was borrowed by sociology and other socio-political sciences, along with some other natural science theories, which in modified form were used to explain various processes occurring in society. It should be said that philosophical thought has accumulated enough prerequisites for the emergence of the ideology of catastrophism. As an example, we can cite, for example, Plato’s Atlantis or the ideas of some economists of the 19th century. about the growth of the Earth's population and the development of agriculture, respectively, in geometric and arithmetic progressions.

The foundations of the theory of catastrophes were laid by Cuvier in his famous work “Discourse on revolutions on the surface of the globe and the changes they produced in the animal kingdom.”

Based on the paleontological and geological material available to him, Cuvier based the theory of catastrophes on the following theses:

1) the age of lizards;

2) the age of terrestrial tetrapods (extinct mammals);

3) the age of mammoths, mastodons (ancestors of modern elephants), megatheri (large beast-toothed animals);

4) the age of people.

FOLLOWERS OF GEORGES CuVIER

Cuvier's followers were: the largest American paleontologistL. Agassitzand French geologist A.D'Orbigny.Theyoverdeveloped precisely the “catastrophic” part of the ideas of their great predecessor and actually created the theory of catastrophes, with its inevitable multiple acts of creation. These ideas dominated paleontology in the first half of the 19th century. Therefore, paleontologists of the old school for the most part did not accept Darwin's theory. In fact, given the state of paleontological science in which it was immediately before the start of V.O. Kovalevsky, it would be difficult to expect a different attitude towards evolutionary ideas. Paleontology developed primarily as a descriptive discipline, serving the needs of rapidly developing geology. The vast majority of paleontologists did not engage in deep study of fossil material, limiting themselves to describing new forms. And far from complete sections of geological strata in Europe rather gave an idea of the intermittent development of fossil forms and the sharp limitation of the formations that host them.

The timid attempts of a few paleontologists to take the path of transformism did not change the general picture of the situation in paleontology. The publication of Charles Darwin's famous book “The Origin of Species” caused a number of objections and criticisms to the theory of evolution from many prominent paleontologists. Thus, one of the most ardent adherents of the theory of catastrophes, L. Agassitz, published simultaneously with the publication of “The Origin of Species” his book “A Study on Classification.” In it, he argued that all systematic units of animals and plants, from species to types, have a real basis in nature, since they were created by the divine mind. In 1869, ten years after the publication of Darwin's theory, L. Agassitz published his book in France, supplementing it with a special chapter in which he criticized Darwinism. He characterized the teaching of evolution as “contrary to the true methods of natural history and dangerous, even fatal, to the development of this science.”

Famous paleontologist and comparative anatomistRichard Owenalso criticized Darwin's theory. Although Owen himself, even before the publication of “The Origin of Species,” expressed an opinion about the possibility of continuity in the development of living nature, his judgments were very vague and inconsistent. In the last book of his major work, “Anatomy of Vertebrates,” R. Owen tried to substantiate the special law of “secondary cause,” which produced various species in strict sequence and complexity. As an example, the famous paleontologist looked at the range of horse ancestors, starting with the Eocene Palaeotherium, through Hipparion to modern horses. Based on fragmentary geological data, Owen denied the possibility of explaining the sequential appearance of forms from ancestor to descendant from the perspective of Darwin's theory. In his opinion, geological data showed that the changes were sudden and significant, independent of external conditions and not subject to the factors of natural selection. Owen preached the existence of a certain internal tendency in organisms to deviate from the parental type, which he called the “law of secondary cause.” In this regard, R. Owen came closer to the views of Lamarck, who put forward the internal principle of improvement to explain evolution.

REFLECTION OF THE IDEOLOGY OF CATASTROPHISM IN MODERN LIFE

Ideology in general is understood as a complex and multidimensional phenomenon, including such structural elements as connection with the ideological system of the era; program guidelines formulated on the basis of certain provisions of this system; strategy for implementing program settings.

All of the listed features inherent in the ideology of catastrophism are reflected in various concepts and theories based on different ideas of their authors about the nature and consequences of future cataclysms, which may pose a danger both for human civilization as a whole and for a specific society functioning in each a separate state. Among the main factors that can lead civilization to disaster are the environmental crisis, the danger of various epidemics, primarily AIDS, although it has faded into the background, but is still a probable scenario of thermonuclear war (the planet has currently accumulated a nuclear potential capable of destroying 4,000 times our planet, and this even despite the signing of a number of important treaties in the field of reduction and limitation of nuclear weapons.

The point of view of J. Habernas, based on the fact that technically complex tools of labor, starting from a certain fairly high stage of development, can get out of human control and become autonomous creators of their own history, is also not unfounded. As for the theory of social disasters, in relation to the development of each specific society, the methodology of the theory of disasters makes it possible to divide socio-economic variables that significantly transform the processes occurring in society into two classes: external variables - guiding parameters that can be directly measured and internal variables are variables whose state characterizes “some not entirely known process.”

The first include: working-age population density, consumption level, productivity social labor and friend.

And the second should first of all include personal independence and economic freedom, which, although cannot be measured by anything, we all know very well what its absence is.

The experience of forecasting and retrospective analysis of evolutionary processes in society makes it possible to clarify the parameters of models, as well as to identify the functional mechanism and causal relationships responsible for the observed transformations in the system.

The variables conditionally allocated to the first class are influenced by a number of factors determined by such an important property of society as its self-regulation, i.e. the ability to self-regulate, to maintain one’s own homeostasis or stable functioning through material and energy exchange with environment. Openness social systems received enough attention both in works on mathematical modeling and in historical research. Thus, N. Machiavelli rightly believed that the factor of excess population is one of the main driving forces of history and the countdown of time in his chronicle begins with the migration processes that set the German tribes in motion. Among the factors under consideration, changes in technology should also be highlighted, because such an open, self-regulating system as a society has the ability to strive to technologically complicate and expand the territory it occupies.

CONCLUSION

Even before Georges Cuvier, people paid attention to rare finds of fossil animals. Most scientists considered them curiosities, a “game of nature”, the bones of fairy-tale giants or ancient saints. Cuvier not only collected a large number of such finds, but also brought them into a system and described them. Cuvier developed a scientific method that made it possible to study fossil animals with the same precision with which living animals are studied. He is rightfully considered the founder of paleontology - the science of the fossil remains of organisms that lived on Earth in past eras and have long since become extinct.

Georges Cuvier paved new paths of research in biology and created new fields of knowledge - paleontology and comparative anatomy of animals. Thus, the triumph of evolutionary teaching was prepared. It appeared in science after Cuvier’s death and contrary to his worldview.

Georges Cuvier's catastrophe theory was essentially a reactionary theory that attempted to reconcile scientific discoveries with the religious doctrine of the immutability and constancy of species. The theory of “catastrophes” dominated science for a long time, and only the evolutionary teachings of Charles Robert Darwin refuted it.

The theory of catastrophes in a slightly different interpretation can be projected onto the modern life of mankind. There are several factors that can lead civilization to disaster:

ecological crisis,

danger of various epidemics (AIDS),

although relegated to the background, but still a probable scenario of thermonuclear war,

and all these factors are, without a doubt, the fruits of human activity.

The same applies to the theory of social catastrophes: today there are many examples of social ill-being of citizens in the world.

Cuvier, like every person, had mistakes. But it would hardly be fair to forget about his greatest merits because of his mistakes. If the works of Georges Cuvier are assessed impartially, then their enormous scientific significance should be recognized: he advanced several large areas of life science.

The scientist’s merits were noted at home: he was elected a member of the French Academy, and under Louis Philippe he became a peer of France.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST

Naydysh V.M. Concepts of modern natural science. M., 1999

Samin D.K. 100 great scientists. - M.: Veche, 2000

Smorodin I. Strategy. M., 2009

Russian encyclopedic dictionary: In 2 books. - / Ch. ed.: A. M. Prokhorov - M.: Great Russian Encyclopedia, 2001

http:// ru. wikipedia. org, reference encyclopedia Wikipedia

http://www.examen.ru, reference and information site

http:// www. nkj. ru/ archive/ articles/6068/, website of the journal “Science and Life”.

Samin D.K. 100 great scientists. - M.: Veche, 2000

Russian encyclopedic dictionary: In 2 books. - / Ch. ed.: A.M. Prokhorov - M.: Great Russian Encyclopedia, 2001

Naydysh V.M.. Concepts of modern natural science. M., 1999

Smorodin I. Strategy. M. 2009