The lecture will focus on the understanding of biological evolution and the attempts of humans to change their own nature.
Homo sapiens appeared as a result of biological evolution, and the human mind is able to comprehend how it happened. There is just a step between this notion and the idea of controlling the evolution processes and trying to change human nature itself, along with animals and plants. This is why the experiment of creating a new man for the communist future wasn’t only an abstract conception but rather turned into a real project. In our time, dreams of a controlled evolution still exist, although the meaning of its tasks have changed significantly.
“Homo sapiens is not the completion of creation, he does not own a perfect mental apparatus. He serves as an intermediate element in a lengthy chain of creatures who have their past and, obviously, will have a future, who used to have a less perfect apparatus than that of his, and will have a more perfect one than he has now.”
(Vladimir Vernadsky. Philosophical Thoughts of a Naturalist. Scientific Thought as A Planetary Phenomenon. 1938)