Abstract

A compendium of the history and philosophy of wildlife from ancient mythology to scientific ideas of the XIX-XX centuries. Content: 1.1 Knowledge of wildlife: a long way from myths to science. 1.2 The evolution of pre-Darwinian ideas about the constancy and variability of species of living organisms. 1.3 The driving forces of wildlife development. Classical Darwinism: the struggle for existence, natural selection, inheritance of variability. 1.4 Genetic views on the hereditary transmission of species characteristics (preformism, epigenesis, pangenesis, neo-Darwinism). Literature.