Life

Life. Contents: Definition of the concept of "life" ........292 The problem of the origin of life on earth . . 296 Life from the point of view of dialectical materialism....................299 Life, the basic concept developed by primitive man probably already at the earliest stages of language creation. The Sanskrit root "div" (Greek-"bio", Latin-"viv", Germanic-"liv", Slavic-"zhiv") is common to all Indo-European languages. Initially, this concept probably had not an abstract, but a purely concrete meaning. Man called all "beings" of the external world that seemed to actively interfere with his own existence, helping or harming him, "living," and therefore attributed to them good or evil intentions. The selection of these beings among other objects of the external world was thus caused purely by practical needs. Of course, given the insufficiency of the experience accumulated by primitive man in tradition, the concept of "living" remained unclear, vague, and far from corresponding to what is commonly implied by this concept in the present time. Other people, large beasts and birds seemed alive to primitive man (he distinguished small ones poorly). But also a sacred stone or sacred tree, the sun, moon and stars, the sea, wind, volcano, etc. seemed alive. To all these "living beings" primitive man attributed his own human nature, most fully familiar to him through his own experience, and above all attributed good and evil intentions. The earliest drawings show that primitive man was inclined to endow beings that seemed alive to him with all the external characteristics of man. Primitive man called everything that seemed similar to him, and above all to himself, "living." As culture and science developed, the scope and content of the concept of life gradually changed. But even now, in the ideas about life of most of our contemporaries, there is much in common with the ideas of primitive man. Uncultured people, for example, are not inclined to recognize life in plants. And even the term "animal" is applied in everyday life predominantly to higher vertebrates, and an insect or worm is called an animal almost exclusively by those who have studied biology. -To define the concept of life as precisely as possible, it is first necessary to delimit the scope and content of this concept. Modern biology recognizes as living organisms all animals, all plants, and all simplest unicellular or acellular organisms in which the characteristics of animals and plants are not differentiated or mixed. Definition of the concept of "life". This concept is best clarified by comparing a living organism with a corpse. In a living organism, metabolism proceeds continuously: parallel to the process of creation, synthesis of new substance (assimilation), there is destruction, oxidation (dissimilation). During dissimilation, energy is released in the form of movement, heat, light, etc.; on the other hand, the living organism accumulates energy from the outside in the form of sunlight or the latent chemical energy of food. Metabolism and energy exchange are essential characteristics of life. However, the presence of metabolism and energy exchange is not sufficient to characterize life. And in a corpse, the processes of assimilation and dissimilation do not stop immediately, especially in cases where death occurred quickly (for example, in beheading). A beheaded insect does not have the appearance of a corpse: it can crawl, a grasshopper's head can bite, can grasp food. If a physiological solution is passed through the vessels of a severed dog's head, a series of movements can also be observed on it, unconditional and conditioned reflexes can be obtained. A human heart removed from a corpse can be "revived" by washing it with a physiological solution and beats for hours and days. Hair continues to grow on the corpse. For many hours after the "death" of the entire organism, mitotic cell division continues. In Kravkov's experiments, severed rabbit ears, when a physiological solution was passed through their vessels, showed blood vessel beating for a long time; on them, as on the ears of a living rabbit, an inflammatory process can be caused. On a severed human finger, nail growth and sweating can be observed. An isolated dog's salivary gland in experiments of Kol'tsov and Nikolaev secretes saliva if the calcium content in the physiological solution passed through its vessels is increased or adrenaline is added; saliva secretion stops when the calcium content is decreased or when pituitrin is added, etc. Consequently, the salivary gland lives and works outside the organism just as it does in connection with a living organism. A dog's kidney, when a physiological salt solution is passed through its vessels, separates urine; when the composition of this solution changes, the process of urination changes. True, it is practically impossible to maintain life of individual organs outside the body for a long time; sooner or later bacteria get on them, and the organs decay. But small pieces of tissue can be artificially protected from bacteria in sterile drops of nutrient solutions, and it turns out that the "life" of these tissues can continue outside the organism practically indefinitely. With regular changing of the nutrient solution, tissues of a chick have already lived for 16 years since the first experiment was set up and can apparently live indefinitely if bacteria are not accidentally introduced into these cultures. In all the cases listed, there are undoubtedly "life phenomena," but still here one does not find a "living organism" as an integral system. In tissue culture or in an isolated organ, metabolism and energy exchange are maintained artificially, just as artificial measures are required to protect against bacteria and other enemies. A living organism finds its own food, protects itself from enemies, heals its wounds and restores lost parts by itself. Therefore, our first definition of life as a continuous process of metabolism and energy exchange must be supplemented by the indication that a living organism is an isolated system that automatically maintains its existence in changing conditions of the external environment. The regulator of the relationship between changes in the external environment and the organism is "purposeful" irritability, which is found in all living beings - animals, plants, and unicellular organisms. "Purposefulness" here has the meaning that the response to ordinary changes in the external environment is, as a rule, a reaction directed toward preserving the living organism in the new conditions. In tissue culture or in an isolated organ, such "purposeful" irritability is very limited; therefore, one cannot speak of life here in the full sense of this concept. -Primitive man during the period of animism was inclined to attribute "consciousness" - good and evil intentions - to everything that he considered living. The modern biologist, no matter how he considers the nature of consciousness in man, of course cannot in any case consider consciousness a distinctive feature of living organisms, cannot attribute good and evil intentions to an oak or a bacterium. The most important factor in the adaptability of a living organism to changing conditions of the external environment is reproduction. No matter how perfect the purposeful irritability of a living organism may be, it still cannot maintain the continuity of the life process from the influence of especially sharp, unusual, and random changes in the external environment. In nature, such sharp changes are primarily the change of seasons, the change of heat and cold, humidity and dryness, etc. The vast majority of currently existing organisms cannot withstand these annual climatic changes and perish in their normal active form. On the other hand, the intense struggle for existence daily and every minute destroys the greater part of the living organisms existing on earth. But certain small particles of organisms - eggs, spores, buds - have the ability to preserve life in the most unfavorable conditions, and then when favorable conditions are restored, to pass again into active forms. The ability to reproduce is observed in all organisms, and it is included in the characterization of the concept of life. In those exceptional cases where the ability to reproduce is absent, for example in the sterile bladders of Echinococcus, the term life is used in a limited sense, just as in relation to isolated organs. An organism that has lost the ability to reproduce due to old age or disease is already on the path to death. Sometimes the fact that the natural end of each organism is death is also included in the characterization of a living organism. As far as direct destruction under the influence of external conditions is concerned, death is a common phenomenon among all organisms; but in this respect organisms do not differ from all objects of nature - seas and continents, mountains and rivers, stones and minerals. Only "natural" death, which is the gradual inevitable end of the individual life of each higher organism, independent of external conditions, is usually considered characteristic of living organisms.

However, natural death is not universal for all living organisms, and in the simplest organisms (and perhaps even in such complex forms as certain tree species) it is absent. At present, it is known that reproduction is the only way new living beings arise—into the characteristic of L. is introduced the absence of spontaneous generation. The phenomenon of reproduction stands in close connection with the phenomenon of development, which is also characteristic of all living things. The meaning of reproduction as a process preserving L. under sharply changed external conditions usually lies not only in that the number of living systems—individuals—is increased, but also in that in reproduction by eggs, spores, seeds, these latter living systems are constructed much more simply than fully developed organisms, and can live under conditions under which L. of fully developed organisms is impossible. The process of transformation of simplified living systems (spores, eggs, seeds, etc.) into corresponding more complex systems is called individual development and characterizes all that is unconditionally considered living. Some biologists are inclined to include in the characteristic of L. also sexual dimorphism. But since nothing definite is known about sex in bacteria, trypanosomes, spirochetes, and some other simplest organisms, one cannot introduce sexual processes into the characteristic of life. An indispensable attribute of life is the presence of a more or less complex form ('morph'). All living organisms, like crystals, represent systems possessing vectorial properties, i.e., the properties of these systems differ in different directions. Therefore, it is a crude and harmful misunderstanding to use the term 'living substance' employed by some, even major, biologists. The concept of substance necessarily includes the attribute of divisibility, and here the properties of an arbitrarily taken part correspond to the properties of the whole. A living organism is a single, whole system, the parts of which possess different properties than the whole. The use of the term 'living substance' is permissible only in the geochemical sense, when it denotes the participation of living organisms in the cycle of substances in the earth's biosphere. The importance of 'morph' for defining the concept of life is especially evident in those cases when L. can be preserved in the absence of life processes in the so-called anabiosis. Plant seeds may show no metabolism for hundreds, and perhaps thousands of years; bacterial spores, according to Arrhenius and others, can for millions of years float in airless interplanetary spaces at absolute zero temperature; tardigrades, rotifers, some worms, cysts of protozoa withstand drying and freezing with complete cessation of life phenomena, and yet we call them living, because they retain their basic 'morph,' thanks to which under changed conditions they again show the normal life process.—Into the concept of L. must also be introduced the process of evolution. Despite the continuity of L. in reproduction from generation to generation, living systems—organisms do not remain unchanged: changes arise in them, part of which proves unstable and disappears, while others become fixed and remain as new, permanent attributes of organic systems, increasing their stability, their adaptability to the struggle for existence among changing conditions of the external environment. Variability, heredity, purposeful adaptation, struggle for existence, natural selection, and evolution enter into our modern definition of the concept of L. For all living organisms known to us, two particular characteristics are typical. In the first place, all organisms either consist of separate cells or are made up of separate cells united into a single whole. In the second place, the main structural material for all our living organisms is protein, the molecules of which among all other substances known to us possess the greatest complexity. From the foregoing it is evident that with a narrowed concept of L., including only the concrete living organisms known to us, it is impossible to give a brief and simple definition. One has to be content with describing the common features of all living organisms and in many cases to make essential reservations. The problem of the origin of life on earth. At present, transitional forms between terrestrial carbon organisms and the surrounding dead nature are unknown. This absence of transitional forms must be explained in one way or another. The modern evolutionary theory gives rational and very convincing explanations for how from the simplest, reproducing by division and lacking the ability of spontaneous generation organisms, for example bacteria, the complex plant and animal organisms known to us could have arisen. But organisms simpler than bacteria we do not know, at least on our earth. Hence arose the hypothesis that bacteria, which gave rise to all earthly life, were brought to us from another planet. This hypothesis is connected with the names of Richter, Helmholtz, and especially Arrhenius, who based it on the extraordinary vitality of bacteria: their spores can withstand temperatures close to absolute zero, as in interplanetary spaces, and light pressure is sufficient to carry them from one planet to another. True, we have no data to assert that the anabiotic state of bacterial spores can really last for such enormous periods of time as are required for interplanetary journeys. On the other hand, in recent years this hypothesis has been dealt a strong blow by the discovery of Milliken, showing that in interplanetary spaces high-frequency light waves must spread, which kill even bacterial spores. However, even if this objection were not confirmed, Arrhenius' hypothesis would give us only a little satisfying explanation. It would merely transfer the origin of carbon organisms to another planet and would increase the period of possible first origin of earthly life many times over. But although time certainly plays an enormous role in the process of creating rare combinations, we have no assurance that the period of existence of the earth was sufficiently long for this. However, on our or on another planet, but living carbon organisms undoubtedly arose from other 'organisms' which lacked certain attributes for complete identification with living organisms. Of such pro-organisms in the broad sense of the word, the most suitable for true pro-organisms—bacteria—are the micelles of hydrophilic colloids. Various colloidal solutions of hydrocarbons and their derivatives we find in natural petroleum. True, most modern chemists tend to attribute to petroleum itself an organic origin, like coal; but opposite views, according to which mixtures of hydrocarbons can also be a product of dead nature, by no means can be considered refuted. It is very probable that different varieties of natural hydrocarbon mixtures have different—organic or inorganic—origin. Colloidal films of petroleum or petroleum-like products on the surface of water should exhibit physico-chemical and chemical activity; here proceed the most diverse oxidative and synthetic processes, regulated by changing external conditions. Some of the molecules and micelles formed in this process are labile and transient, others show greater stability without losing their ability to react, to exchange substances. Among molecules and micelles there occurs as it were a struggle for existence: some quickly disappear, giving place to others, others show the ability to enter into reactions under changed external conditions and to restore themselves again. Of course, the most probable combinations of atoms and atomic groups already present in the complex chemical mixture predominate. But with a sufficiently long period of existence of such a colloidal film, from time to time less probable combinations can also arise. If such rare combinations—micelles prove unstable and are completely destroyed at the first sharp violation of conditions, for example are oxidized and decomposed, then they practically disappear forever. But among these rare and rarest atomic combinations there may also be more stable systems, combining correct 'metabolism' in their external, simply constructed parts with considerable stability of their nuclei, differing in low probability of re-formation. But once such molecular nuclei are already present in the colloidal solution, around them from the environment elementary groups are deposited in the same complex crystal lattice. Since we are dealing with particles of hydrophilic colloids, they, growing by crystallization to certain sizes, divide, reproduce. Such micelles can become the starting point for further evolution, periodically entering into new, rare and rarest combinations. The possibility is not excluded that such pro-organisms—complex colloidal particles—played an essential role in the very process of petroleum formation.

The widely current hypothesis of the organic origin of natural petroleum is based on the fact that all varieties of petroleum that have been studied contain optically active compounds. It is generally believed that such optically active isomers can only arise under the influence of the life activity of organisms with their asymmetrically constructed protein molecules. But such a function could also be performed by not true organisms in the form of bacteria, which are as yet unknown to us in petroleum, but by proorganisms—colloidal particles, crystals of asymmetric, perhaps even non-protein molecules, possessing the ability of physicochemical reproduction. These proorganisms should be sought in natural petroleum and it should be seen whether natural petroleum has the ability to transform neutral molecules of artificially prepared hydrocarbons into optically active isomers. It is highly probable that the evolution of micelles occurs under suitable conditions and at the present time. But between these elementary forms of nascent life and those bacteria which biologists recognize as the simplest among undoubtedly living carbon organisms in the narrow sense of this word, there exists a great difference. All those bacteria that exist at the present time have behind them hundreds of millions of years of evolutionary process since the first origin of L. on earth. During this period, many rarest accidental combinations of molecular and micellar structure have managed to accumulate in them, fixed by means of reproduction. Bacteria have emerged from the original environment and spread throughout the biosphere, differentiated and adapted to the most diverse conditions of existence, where no new formation of life occurs any longer. Bacteria are the actual victors in the struggle for existence. Everywhere there is any possibility of synthesis of complex carbon compounds, corresponding bacteria are found that use these conditions. Being best adapted to these conditions, they do not tolerate less perfect competitors. As in all other parts of the evolution of living organisms, here also the intermediate links must have disappeared. A gap must have arisen between true living organisms in the narrow sense of this word and those primitive proorganisms in the broad sense of the term, from which the process of the evolution of life began. This entire process could have taken place on our planet, and the only motive for transferring the beginning of L. to another planet could be the recognition that the time of existence of the earth is insufficient to ensure the accumulation of the rarest, accidental, highly improbable combinations. But we have no grounds for such an assertion. It is possible, however, that some proorganisms are already known to us. For example, bacteriophages could claim this role, to which d'Hérelle attributes the ability to reproduce despite their ultramicroscopic dimensions. Enzymes, according to Erenberg, and immune bodies also apparently possess the ability to reproduce, and therefore their micelles can also be classified as "pro-organisms." Recently (1929) Menouring of the University of California came forward with the assertion that after injecting a rabbit with a certain amount of horse serum, the physiological properties of horse serum (agglutinins) not only remain in the rabbit's blood for a number of days, but also increase during this period by 200-400%. From this the author concludes that the corresponding invisible elements of the blood (micelles), similar to bacteriophages, possess the ability to grow and reproduce in a foreign organism. In that case, they could also be classified as proorganisms.

N. Koltsov. Life from the point of view of dialectical materialism. Many biologists and physicians assert that the study of L. has nothing to do with philosophy. However, any study of life phenomena that goes beyond the accumulation of disconnected facts, seeking to systematize them and establish general regularities, i.e., to build a science about L., requires a general methodology and its connection to the general principles of human cognition. Methodology and the theory of knowledge constitute the foundation of philosophy. Because of this, every doctrine about L. turns out to be connected with one or another philosophical trend. Until the 19th century, mechanistic materialism and idealism dominated the philosophy of natural science (see. Vitalism, Dialectical materialism and medicine). Only from the middle of the 19th century did a new synthesis of philosophical thought begin to develop—dialectical materialism. These three trends are connected with the main directions in the doctrine about L. and at the present time. From the point of view of mechanistic materialism, all phenomena of life, as well as of human society, are reducible to the movement of elementary particles of matter, consequently they do not possess qualitative differences and specific regularities. This also includes the so-called mechanismism. Qualitative differences between chemical compounds and the elements from which they arose, between living and non-living, between animal and social man, in the opinion of mechanists, are only the result of the limitations of our knowledge. Mechanists assert that these qualitative differences are apparent differences, representing only a certain quantitative grouping of elements possessing unchanging properties. Some mechanists go so far as to assert the universality of life, to which is added the concept of universal consciousness (panpsychism, hylozoism). Vitalism, connected with idealism in philosophy, occupies a position that is formally diametrically opposed to mechanistic materialism. It holds that living organisms are governed by a purposeful 'life force' (vis vitalis of old authors), entelechy, dominants, life impulse, etc., of modern vitalists. All these factors are supernatural and immaterial. Thanks to them, an impassable gulf is created between living and non-living. Vitalists usually come to the conclusion that the entire world is governed by a rational purposeful principle. For mechanists and vitalists, the world is qualitatively unchanging; development in it is impossible. In opposition to them, dialectical materialism considers nature in its eternal development, denies the existence of an impassable gulf between living and non-living, and sees in life only one of the forms of transformation of matter, possessing its own special qualities and regularities. Moreover, qualitatively different are also the stages of development of inanimate matter itself, as well as the stages of development of living matter and the human society that arose on its basis. Each stage of development of matter has its own specific regularities. Basic signs of life. L. is connected with a special structure of matter—protoplasm. The latter represents an extremely complex system of inorganic (water, salts) and organic (proteins, carbohydrates, fats, lipoids, enzymes, etc.) substances. These substances are in protoplasm in mobile equilibrium. Just as the quality of water does not represent the sum of the qualities of H and O, the quality of proteins is not the sum of the qualities of their constituent elements, and the quality of protoplasm (L.) is not the sum of the qualities of the chemical compounds that make up its composition. In living things, the basic regularities of physics and chemistry continue to manifest themselves (the laws of conservation of matter and energy and others), but they are in agreement with new biological regularities. 'The forms that existed independently on the lower stages of development of nature are on the higher stages only as subordinate moments' (Hegel). This general proposition of Hegel with respect to L. was most consistently developed in the 19th century by Engels. Engels asserted that the basic signs distinguishing living from non-living are inextricably connected self-creation and self-destruction—assimilation (see) and dissimilation (see), i.e., metabolism. 'Life is the mode of existence of protein bodies, and this mode of existence consists essentially in the constant self-renewal of the chemical constituent parts of these bodies... Everywhere where there is life, we find that it is connected with a protein body, and everywhere where there is a protein body not in the process of decomposition, phenomena of life are invariably encountered... The lowest living beings known to us are simple protein lumps, yet they already exhibit all the essential phenomena of life. But in what do these life phenomena, uniformly encountered in all living beings, consist? First of all, in that the protein body extracts from its surrounding environment other suitable substances, assimilates them, while at the same time other, older parts of the body decompose and are excreted. And other, non-living bodies also change, decompose or combine in the course of a natural process; but in doing so they cease to be life what they were before. A rock in the process of weathering ceases to be a rock; a metal, under the influence of the oxidation process, becomes rust. But what in dead bodies is the cause of their destruction, that in protein bodies is the basic condition of existence. As soon as in a protein body this continuous transformation of constituent parts and the constant change of nutrition and excretion ceases, the existence of the protein body itself also ceases, it decomposes, i.e., it d i e s. Life, the mode of being of a protein body consists, therefore, first of all in that the latter at every moment is both itself and at the same time something else—and this happens not as a result of the process to which it is subjected from without, as is the case with dead bodies. On the contrary, life, metabolism, occurring through nutrition and excretion, is a process proceeding by itself, inherent, inborn in its bearer, protein, without which life cannot be' (F. Engels). Assimilation sharply differs from the processes of accumulation of substance occurring in inanimate nature in that in the latter (for example in a crystal or in the delta of a river) accumulation of previously existing substances takes place, while in a living organism the construction of new substances takes place. Dissimilation is also not a simple destruction of living substance, but a creative destruction, since the energy released in this process is a necessary condition for assimilation. On the basis of these basic properties other qualities of life develop: growth, development cycles, reproduction, irritability and movement, the ability of self-regulation and regeneration, as well as qualities that go beyond the limits of the individual individual—sexuality, heredity. Finally, as a result of the interaction of organisms with the living and non-living environment, processes subject to special regularities arise—struggle for existence, natural selection, and—as a consequence of them—evolution. The mutual penetration of opposites (the basic law of dialectics) is inherent in living things, as in all of nature. The main mutually penetrating opposites in living things are assimilation and dissimilation. One cannot metaphysically assert that the basic sign of life is one of these opposites. Living things are both created and destroyed simultaneously. The process of life is a constant struggle of these basic opposites, which in turn leads to new contradictions. The predominance of assimilation over dissimilation in a cell leads to growth. But at the same time, due to the basic laws of geometry, the surface grows proportionally to the square of the diameter, while the volume grows proportionally to the cube of it; a discrepancy arises between surface and mass, as well as between the size of the nucleus and cytoplasm, which is resolved by the process of cell division. This process of division also represents a mutual penetration of opposites: the cell has already ceased to be one cell, but has not yet become two cells. We will limit ourselves to a few more examples from this field. Enzymes that decompose organic substances at the same time create them. Inflammation, fever simultaneously destroy and heal the organism. The growth of tissues is inextricably linked with their dying off. The progress of some organs is conditioned by the regression of others. For example, the progressive development of the sexual organs of tapeworms is connected with the regressive development of the digestive system. The progressive development of the cranial box of primates is connected with the regressive development of the facial skeleton. Evolution itself, which is based on natural selection, which is a consequence of the struggle of contradictions between potentially boundless reproduction and the limitation of necessary conditions of existence (lack of food, light, territory, etc.), is a process of simultaneous destruction and creation of species. The struggle of opposites leads to mutually dependent quantitative and qualitative changes. Life itself in its origin represents a case of the transition of quantity into quality and vice versa.

Only on the basis of many-atom molecules of organic substances, their combination into a multi-molecular complex colloidal system with a huge surface, could a new quality—Life—arise. Similar phenomena are also observed in the Life of each individual organism; thus, the amount of lactic acid in a muscle determines its quality—work capacity. But the latter is expressed in the amount of work produced, and consequently in the quality—ability to adapt, self-protect, and obtain a larger amount of food. As a result of quantitative-qualitative changes in dead matter, a new quality—Life—arises. It did not exist before—then it came into being. The emergence of a new quality—Life—occurs through a leap-like change. Cell division, being a lengthy process, during which it appears to be both one and not one, at the same time is a discontinuous process, the beginning and end of which represent a leap. We have the moment of transition of a resting cell to a new quality¹—division and the transition of this quality into a new quantity—two cells. The process of cell division itself consists of a series of leaps: the emergence of chromosomes from a tangle, the transformation of each chromosome into a double one, the transformation of the double star into daughter tangles, etc. Evolution also has a leap-like character. The history of the emergence of each species represents a lengthy period when it is impossible to say at all whether there is a variety of the old species or already a new species—it is both one and the other. However, this lengthy process of gradual transformation at the same time is not a straight line of slow increase of already existing properties, but a chain where continuous development is at the same time discontinuous. The continuity of development and its opposite—Life—leaps are inseparably connected aspects of the same process. The process of emergence of a new quality is associated with the destruction of the old. At the moment of the appearance of the qualities of H₂O, the qualities of H and O disappear. But when in the further development of matter water becomes part of protoplasm, it loses the qualities it had when it was chemically pure or entered into a system—a water solution of inorganic salts. It becomes an integral part of a new system—the cell, possessing new, specific qualities to it, among which the specific qualities of its constituent parts (water, salts, carbohydrates, proteins) are in a sublated, subordinate-to-the-whole form. The transformation of hydrogen and oxygen into water is the negation of the first position (thesis), i.e., it is the antithesis. The transformation of water into a constituent part of the cell is the negation of the qualities of water, i.e., the second position, or the negation of the negation. However, the negation of the negation is not simply a return to the original position. It represents a rise to a higher stage of development compared to both previous stages, i.e., the synthesis. But the higher stage of this stage of development in turn is negated at the next stage. The properties of an independently living cell turn out to be suppressed, i.e., negated by the properties of a multicellular organism. Thus, unicellular organisms are potentially immortal (see Immortality), while the somatic part of a multicellular organism is doomed to natural death. As experiments on isolated tissues have shown, the natural death of a multicellular organism does not result from the sum of the properties of its constituent cells. When placed in artificial favorable conditions of culture and freed from the influence of the organism as a whole, its cells again acquire potential immortality (Carrel). We see that the triad (thesis-antithesis-synthesis) for living things, as well as for all matter, is not a closed three-stage process, but part of infinite development, since the thesis itself is the antithesis of the previous stage, and the synthesis is the thesis for the subsequent stage. From what has been said, it follows that the three basic laws of dialectics—'the law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa, the law of the mutual penetration of opposites, the law of the negation of the negation' (Engels)—do not express three groups of processes isolated from each other, but represent inseparably connected regularities of the same eternal development of matter, including that stage which is called Life. The processes occurring in living organisms and their collectives, while subject to their specific regularities, at the same time are closely intertwined with the processes occurring in the environment. On the basis of this intertwining, new, higher regularities arise, going beyond the limits of biology. An example of such higher regularities can be the laws of soil development, which is the result of the activity of both meteorological and geological agents, as well as a complex complex of living organisms (green plants, bacteria, earthworms, etc.). Also a higher stage compared with Life is the complex human social collective, human society. The social regularities (development of productive forces, class struggle, etc.), underlying its development, by no means can be reduced to the laws of development of the rest of the organic world. Darwinism is therefore applicable only to the development of animals and plants and is completely inapplicable to the development of human society. Development of the dialectical view of Life. Dialectical materialism is an expression of the objectively existing processes of development of matter. Therefore, wherever biologists state objectively inherent regularities of Life, we encounter elements of often 'unconscious' dialectics. It is increasingly revealed in the post-Linnean period, when the science of Life moved from artificial grouping of disparate and frozen properties to elucidating the processes of their emergence. Although C. Darwin was not acquainted with the works of his contemporaries Marx and Engels, he, without being aware of it, formulated the basic laws of dialectical development of living nature. Similarly, now both in the USSR and beyond its borders, there is a significant number of biologists who do not accept dialectical materialism as a whole and call themselves mechanists, but who nevertheless in their narrow fields often give strikingly dialectical constructions. In the USSR, dialectical biologists are concentrated mainly in the largest scientific centers: Moscow, Kharkov, Leningrad. In an ideological sense, they are united by the Section of Natural and Exact Sciences of the Communist Academy of the USSR. The printed organ of Marxist thought in biology (as in natural science in general) is the journal 'Natural Science and Marxism' (M., 1929). Recently formed societies of materialist biologists have as their task the dialectical development of biological problems. E. Finke.ypestein.