The Ideas of Cosmism as a Philosophical Foundation for Evolutionary-Ecological Thinking (Reflections on the Book)

Abstract

Evolutionary-ecological thinking, in contemporary conditions, is a relevant di­rection in the synthesis of evolutionism and ecology. The ideas of wholeness, organicism, and historicity, which form the core of the reflections of the main representatives of the philosophy of Russian cosmism, largely set the world­view tone for this direction. These ideas are becoming increasingly relevant in modern conditions, where space exploration presents itself as a global prob­lem related to overcoming the negative consequences of the ecological crisis. The author’s focus is on the collective monograph Russian Cosmism: N.F. Fe­dorov, K.E. Tsiolkovsky, V.I. Vernadsky, A.L. Chizhevsky, published in the series Russian Philosophy of the First Half of the XXth Century, whose authors dis­cuss the worldview and methodological specifics of the concepts of Russian cosmists in the context of contemporary problems (including ecological and evolutionary ones). Among them, especially important in this context are the con­cepts of the common task (N.N. Fedorov), the cosmic philosophy (K.E. Tsiol­kovsky), the doctrine of the noosphere (V.I. Vernadsky), and heliobiology (A.L. Chizhevsky). It is shown that the ideas of cosmism and evolutionary-eco­logical thinking are connected with such directions as A. Bergson’s creative evolution, P. Teilhard de Chardin’s theistic evolutionism, planetary evolution, and macroevolutionary research. It is precisely at the scale of the biosphere and noosphere that evolutionary and ecological principles intersect the most. The construction of the noosphere, taking into account contemporary scientific and methodological realities, is a direction of evolutionary-ecological thinking in our time