THE DIALECTICS OF LIFE Oparin and Darwin

Abstract

According to Oparin, Darwin has „certainly demonstrated“ that all forms of living beings nowadays, including human, have arisen from less organized, simpler built living beings, these from even simpler, and likewise to the simplest, but the question of the very beginning of life, „how and wherefrom did those simplest living beings originate“ Darwin has left without an answer. Hence, Oparin gave himself a task to, according to the latest explorations in astronomy, geology, chemistry and biology, bring a theory of historical development of matter which led to the phenomenon of life.

Oparin’s general philosophical orientation is dialectical materialism – opposed to idealistic and mechanicistic conceptions of origin of life. From that point of view, life is a distinctive form of existence of matter, its new quality that developed historically, so living beings are actually the result of the long transformation process of matter.