Introduction

Abstract

The majority of contemporary biologists regard evolution as a process of progressive mastery of the arena of life by animals and plants, as progressive adaptation to diverse conditions of existence. In this respect, even the adherents of concepts of spontaneous generation (in any of their variants) represent no exception, since the result of spontaneous generation is, in the final analysis, evaluated and corrected in the process of the organism’s interaction with its environment. Hence, it is clear that any evolutionary conception broaches, to some degree or other, the subject of the interaction of an organism with its environment. It is natural, also, that any evolutionary theory is obliged to rest on ecological laws, for, irrespective of the well-known transformation of biologists’ views on the purpose and method of ecology, its basic task has remained unchanged now for the course of a hundred years. This task is to investigate the lives of animals and plants in their natural habitats, in nature.