ABSTRACT
The last decade has been characterized by an unmistakable decline of the level of theoretical activity in biology, both in the USSR and abroad. This is sometimes explained by the supposed impasse in classical genetics which has been the essential source of nurture of evolutionary biology. However, to agree with this explanation would be to simplify the matter drastically. The fact is that in the past twenty or thirty years biology has made large strides forward and has transcended the organism with which its theoretical constructs had been bound up. Probably it was primarily for this reason that evolutionary theory, which had served for a long time as the basis of biological synthesis, has ceased to function in this complex role. Classical evolutionary theory could not incorporate many of the new data and concepts which arose in biology itself and in adjoining disciplines, such as cybernetics and information theory. Consequently, the development of the classical theory was slowed down. At the same time, however, shoots of an essentially new kind of integrative thinking appeared; and, what is especially important, this new method was able to master the modern material which had been escaping the classical theory.
