Meze darwinismu – Vácha Jiří (2024)

The first edition of the book received a great response, sparked a number of discussions and programs, and soon required a reprint. This confirmed the author's effort to draw attention to the increasing proposals to supplement or even revise neodarwinism in contemporary evolutionary biology. Jiří Vácha now presents the second edition. He has completely revised the chapters on the Function of Consciousness and the Trap of Skepticism. The text of the other chapters has also undergone changes and newer additions. It has been shortened and condensed. The author has newly added Chapter 14, which contains five appendices, previously accessible only online. As a result, the book can now serve as a versatile introduction to the fundamental problems of evolutionary biology. It provides a comprehensive assessment of today's Darwinism ('synthetic theory of evolution') from a structuralist and philosophically phenomenological perspective. It emphasizes the ability of organisms to experience, their consciousness in a broad sense. Consciousness cannot be classified among processes accessible to biological methods, and therefore it is not possible to prove that consciousness is an adaptation to environmental conditions: a Darwinistically shaped world could exist even without pleasure and pain, the basic coordinates of life. Darwinism is not untrue in its field, but its horizon has limits: natural selection is not a sovereign explanation of the mystery of life.