Zoologist Sergiy Paramonov and his ‘Chemogenesis—A New Theory of Evolution’ (to the 130th anniversary of his birth)

The paper present little-known aspects of the scientific activity of the famous expatriate scientist, world-renowned Ukrainian and Australian zoologist, theoretical biologist, and dipteriologist Sergiy Paramonov (1894–1967). The main purpose of this work is to give a detailed presentation to the scientific community on the important but little-known work of the scientist titled ‘Chemogenesis—A New Theory of Evolution’ (theory of chemogenesis). The role of the Kara Dag scientific station (Crimea, Ukraine) in the formation of the so-called points of scientific growth is shown. The scientist had visited the station several times to carry out dipteriologial research; in 1925, he met the famous Russian scientist S. L. Ivanov whose reconsidered research was used in creating the theory of chemogenesis. Paramonov’s theoretical works written in Ukraine in 1934–1943 and devoted to issues of systematics and its novel chemical methods and of species and speciation are briefly considered. Selected postulates of the theory of chemogenesis are described and analysed in short. The scientist drew special attention to the criticism of Darwin’s theory of natural selection and considered it a brilliant achievement of human thought of the 19th century. Noteworthy is that the theory of chemogenesis does not rely on the recognised scientific significance of related areas of knowledge such as geochemistry and biochemistry, but pulls away from them to prove its own correctness. Paramonov had been seeking the truth but did not claim it; he merely tried to show another way to understand the driving forces of evolution, to show that biologists are ‘barking up the wrong tree.’ A logical mistake keeps existing in biology, when the result (morphogenesis) is considered as the cause, and the cause (chemogenesis) as the results. Eliminating natural selection the scientist understood that he had opened a way to recognise various ‘mysterious’ forces. Although Paramonov did not present a respective philosophical basis for his theory, it is still worth mentioning that the solution for the existing antinomy between the mechanistic theory of natural selection and the theory of chemogenesis with certain elements of teleology lies in the combination of mechanistic and teleological explanation of nature. It is important to take the first steps into the unknown, to understand the incomprehensible, or even to admit ignorance than to engage in the simplification of the problem.