Вестник Православного Свято-Тихоновского гуманитарного университета: Серия I. Богословие, философия (Dec 2022)
“The apparent contradictions”: the preface by Sergey Rachinsky to Charles Darwin’s book “On the origin of species”
Abstract
This publication introduces the preface by Sergey Rachinsky, a profeccor of the Moscow University, to the book of Charles Darwin «On the Origin of Species». Rachinsky is best known in Russia as an educator and the founder of the school in Tatevo, Tver Oblast, and also as a founder of the temperance society in Tatevo. But in his correspondence Rachinsky repeatedly touches on religious and philosophical matters. For example, he gets into an argument with people like Vasily Rozanov and Leo Tolstoy. In addition, Rachinsky left some religious and philosophical works that are still in manuscript. This unpublished work was written in the 1882. Rachinsky touched upon the issues related to Darwin's theory of natural selection. Some of them had been raised before by his famous Russuan contemporaries, such as Nikolay Strakhov, Dmitry Pisarev, Kliment Timiryazev, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Konstantin Pobedonostsev. By the time that the preface was written, disputes over Darwin had been going on more than two decades. Disputes were related not only to «On the Origin of Species», but also to Darwin's later works. At the beginning of the preface Rachinsky commends the theory of natural selection which had proposed a general law of classification of living beings. The main body of the preface is devoted to Darwin's attempt to incorporate human into a genealogical tree of animal species. Rachinsky points out that Charles Darwin tried to gather some animal's characteristics and to work out the image not merely of a human being but of a Christian. Rachinsky calls it “a futile exercise”. He indicates that the inner human world has no precedent in the animal kingdom and believes that it is a miracle. Citing the principle of energy conservation as an example, and aims to show that “a miracle” exists in this theory. At the end of the preface author points out that Darwin's theory is applicable in some areas of science and it has no any contradictions with Christianity. He also points out to critics of this thesis that Church poses no restrictions to the exploration of nature.
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