The significance of concept of the wholeness of organisms for the evolutionary theory
Ivan I. Schmalhausen's evolutionary theory is based on the concept of the wholeness of organisms. In philosophy, the concept of wholeness is an element of the descriptive language, in the context of which the object is described as consisting of parts that are functionally different and integrated to one degree or another. Schmalhausen's concept of wholeness is based on the concept of indivisibility and is interpreted naturalistically - as a property that appears because of the interaction of parts. Using the Darwinian scheme of evolutionary change, which consists in creating of a quasi-whole organization from indefinite variability with natural (moving) selection, as a form, Schmalhausen poured a different content into it. So, Darwin's uncertain variability in Schmalhausen's scheme corresponds to a spectrum of latent, unstable reproducible modifications, moving selection - to stabilizing selection, the final result - to stable reproduction of the modification. Schmalhausen's original idea, namely the concept of the correlation system as an expression of the wholeness of the organisms, stayed in the shadow of this pseudo-Darwinian explanatory scheme of evolution.