The most widespread view of the origins of the doctrine of evolution is considered to be the theory of Charles Darwin, which he developed with regard to living nature, but at the same time he did not clearly mention its applicability to man and human society. The fact is that even before the principles of universal evolutionism appeared in the doctrine of the species of Darwin, Herbert Spencer, in the article “The Development Hypothesis”, proposed his theory of universal evolution, where the principles of universal evolutionism were formulated just in relation to society .
Spencer supported Darwin's idea of natural selection as one of the factors of evolution, and as applied to man, he transformed this term into the concept of “survival of the fittest”). According to Spencer, everything in the world has a common origin, but then, in the process of development, things differentiate. The reason for such changes may be, in his opinion, heredity, varying degrees of adaptation to environmental reality, the degree of activity of external factors. After all such transformations in the world, an ordered entity is established, which we perceive as a picture of the world. Such a picture is unstable in nature, its existence is the path to a new cycle of "ordering" and thus the whole process becomes a cyclic infinity.
These conclusions laid the foundation for the development of the concept of evolutionism, which in our time has acquired quite a few varieties and interpretations (synergetics, chaos-order theory, the teachings of V.I. Vernadsky on the noosphere, the concept of nonequilibrium thermodynamics of I. Prigogine).
The principles of global evolutionism, the sources of which we find in the teachings of G. Spencer, are summarized in the simplest form as follows: all that exists in the Universe cannot exist outside the evolutionary process of variability, no matter what spheres of this being are considered.
G. Spencer's merit lies in the fact that he brought the application of the principles of evolutionism beyond the boundaries of elementary biology and proved their applicability in other areas of the universe, in particular, he substantiated how the principles of evolutionism manifest themselves in sociology (theory of organism).
Representatives of physical science were the first to accept the principles of universal evolutionism outside of biology and sociology (the hypothesis of the origin of the Universe as a result of the "big bang", the theory of an expanding Universe, etc.). The further penetration of principles into science led to the emergence of an independent scientific direction - synergetics, in which the principles of universal evolutionism acquired the status of scientific methodology.
General provisions (principles) for universal evolutionism are:
- the recognition that all constructive and destructive processes in the Universe are equivalent and equal;
- recognition of the universality of complexity and ordering algorithms in all systems, regardless of their particular characteristics and characteristics of occurrence and development.
With regard to society, this means that intelligence and society also develop according to these laws. And therefore, a different issue is being addressed, which is being solved within the framework of this concept: how is the transition from an uncontrollable (chaotic) state of society to a managed one carried out? The answer is again within the framework of the concept of global evolutionism - this is the development of strategies for sustainable development (social entropy). The principle and condition of such a transition is that humanity should manage the transition process not only on the basis of its “reflective” interests, but also on the interests of global equilibrium (preservation of the environment, peace, survival conditions, etc.). This condition, quite logically raises the question of the state of mind and intellect, as far as they are ready not only to accept this condition, but also to make this transition.
Thus, the concept of evolutionism solves the most urgent task of our time and tries to find a universal tool - the principle of global evolutionism, with the help of which the current, nonequilibrium social system is transformed to a higher, more ordered form of self-organization.