Balkan Culture

 by
Konstantinos Maritsas
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Prologue

On the Origin of Species by Means of Civilization or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Cooperation for Life of KonstantinosMaritsas is a magisterial philosophical work that manages to clarify all of the most complex philosophical concepts - civilizational, religious and linguistic - of all the countries and of all eras. K. Maritsas has taken on the most complex challenge for several years. After numerous readings and personal reflections, especially with a critical and rebellious eye, that of the philosopher who took his time to philosophize, KonstantinosMaritsas put pen to paper to challenge the ways and ideologies transcribed until then in the depths of humanity and the history of Philosophy.

On the footsteps of Darwin, KonstantinosMaritsas continues to build on the work of the most famous naturalists, On the Origin of Species by Means of natural selection; or the preservations of favorite races in the struggle for life published in 1872, and resumed in 2016, a century and a half later, all dogmatic assertions and theories about the origin and the evolution of species that it exposes with great clarity supporting a multitude of theoreticians, physicists, zoologists, naturalists, psychologists and other scientists.

The additional contribution brought by K. Maritsas to the theory of natural selection by Darwin and the theoretical principles of evolution described by him, this is the connection between man and the civilization that undoubtedly has also a big role to play in the evolution of the human species. For Maritsas, if he resumes all theories of ape and the Homo sapiens, it is the human being he is mainly interested in and on whom he focuses his study.

If science has facts, the philosophy provides a logical and rational order in which it tries to adjust the facts, it highlights KonstantinosMaritsas, who retakes at first glance the theory of the naked ape from which it is supposed to come the human - since it is accepted that the human was separated from the body evolved from higher primates. But if this fact is boldly explored, this shows that men could be the ancestors of chimpanzees and not the opposite, Maritsas highlights and resumes this time the theory Kafetzopoulos.

According to K. Maritsas, Darwin was a scientist and not a philosopher. Being so, Darwin attempted to find examples, so he could arrange them in his scientific theory.

Then, Maritsas relies on the philosophy of the entire world, and especially to the Greek philosophers, the country where was born the philosophy – the word is in fact invented by Pythagoras that, according to him, used to say that he is not “σοφóς” (wise), but “φιλóσοφος” (friend of wisdom). Maritsas recalls that there are two theories on the philosophy: on one hand, the natural selection theory; and on the other, the theory of evolution. An idea that has been prepared long time before Darwin's work, by Empedocles (philosopher before Socrates) and his theory of evolution. (Empedocles has been influenced by the Pythagoreans and Parmenides). Then there is the biological theory of Aristotle: the theory of the immovability of species. According to Aristotle, species are eternal, unchangeable and are transmitted unaltered from one generation to another. There is no evolution in the organic structure of animals since every species arrived in the highest possible perfection. Furthermore, all species can be classified into a scale standing from the simplest one to the most complex.

On this, K. Maritsas is working to explain the essence of origin or origins. Because in effect, if anyone would focus on the how, nobody would never look at the why. And it is this “Why” so difficult to deduce after so many theories and dogmas coming from the greatest physicists of the world, and the greatest philosophers of ancient Greece, the French philosophers too, that K. Maritsas tries to bring light in this book composed of seven chapters, an introduction and an Epilogue and dotted with more than 170 figures and pictures of an important index of proper names. K. Maritsas returns to the origins and to Greek philosophy, Pythagoras Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Cleobulus, Solon, Thales, Bias. In Protagoras, Socrates says that the twin titans responsible for distributing the most newly created animals with traits because of lack of foresight, they had nothing more to distribute to the last remaining, the human being. While Maritsas refers to animals, all animals, with great fondness to the ape, what interests him at the end is the human being.

It is the human evolution that K. Maritsas observes from the conditions of natural selection to the conditions of the civilization. It is this gap between men and animals, between civilization and natural selection that K. Maritsas sets to himself as challenge to bridge in this original book.

In the book, Maritsas keeps bringing up science and philosophy that he tries to define and distinguish to see on which we can be based for an answer. Because in effect, the answers are several, even as much as theorists, scientists or philosophers, but Maritsas does not forget his purpose. Because, as he says himself, in every question there is an answer. Thus, for Maritsas, science has the facts that it tries to adjust in a logical sequence, whereas philosophy provides a logical order in which it tries to adjust the facts. Principles that are taken as hypotheses in order to explain and to classify a series of facts.

In philosophy, if we want to explain the position of the human being on the earth, we must appeal the evolution of man. This is reflected in the trends adopted by the non-scientists, stresses Maritsas who also refers to Creationism and the theory of the Creator who created everything that has always been a highlighted response. The author does not forget the remainder of Confucius, the great Chinese philosopher, who said, “If names are not correct, language is not consistent to the truth of things.”

A simple reasoning can set the record straight and express things through the correct use of words. Even the linguistics has to play a big role in the evolution of species since we have to put a word to a phenomenon, a “chic” word according to the psychologist Edgar Zurif. Indeed, every “science” (language, physics, chemistry, etc ...) is a part of the truth about the origin of species through the elaboration of every theory.

However, Maritsas reports that the intention of his book is "an explanation of the facts" and not their "re-statement" as Darwin said. So, following the footsteps of Darwin, Darwinian himself, KonstantinosMaritsas raises some questions on the methodology of the initiator of Origins of species that he resumes, he questions and he evolves in the twenty-first century, placing a double perspective: that of the Scientific (Maritsas is engineer and physicist) and that of the philosopher (Maritsas has a dual training as a philosopher).

If science has answers about the evolution and the phenomena through observations, equations or statistics, the question of “Why” can find its answer only in the philosophy.

So, after searching all the books and scientific theories, of the greatest Americans, British and Europeans scientists, still leaning on Darwin's theory, KonstantinosMaritsas focuses on the philosophy in trying to explain the why of things, the why of the life and of its definition (organisms, species, animals), the why of the civilization and of its definition (women, children, religion), the why of the language and of the art, the why of truth and of the lies, the wisdom and the artificial intelligence, and finally the why of the evolution, of the creation and of the extinction of species, and the why of the resemblance between male children to their mothers and female ones to their fathers.

After a multitude of reflections and assumptions, in correlation with civilization and conservation of species in their struggle for survival, Maritsas manages to philosophize and explain the origin of species. In his book, he argues that the human being is determined by different laws of the biological evolution's ones. The human being can not be governed by the laws of nature and from its selection (he could not survive because he has not been developed as animals did).  He said that this was impossible. Several philosophers and scientists do not believe in the biological evolution, neither does Maritsas. In that case, what may determine the evolution of the human species? Maybe civilization pushes Maritsas, that is to say the inverse of the natural selection. It is the assumption and the base of this work. This is its first objective too.

In all these theories KonstantinosMaritsas is seeking the truth: Why humans have created civilization? To answer this, K. Maritsas recalls the physician DimitriNanopoulos who is working on the problems that emerge during the attempt to create a theory of Everything, who spoke about “The Universe [who] emerged from a fluctuating quantum of the vacuum.” Alongside the Nanopoulos theory, there is the theory of advanced objectification by the psychologists Barbara Fredrickson and Tomi-Ann Roberts who talk about women's appearance and of the vestimentary. KonstantinosMaritsas resumes the Master Darwin's theory to build his own, a new and more rational one at the beginning of the XXI century. Maritsas adds the civilization and its effects that he has developed in more than two hundred pages. According to KonstantinosMaritsas, the natural selection is the survival of the powerful and the civilization is the survival of the weak.

After searching for a long time all the theories and all the theorists, all the merged disciplines, Maritsas returns to the observations of the great master Darwin that he follows as an example: “The great break in the organic chain between the human being and his closest allies, who cannot be filled by all of the extinct or living species, has often been observed as a serious objection to the belief that man is descended from a lower form; but its objection does not appear to greatly influence those who, for general reasons, believe in the general principle of the evolution.” (1838)

And the conclusions of Maritsas: “The big gap between men and animals, between the civilization and the natural selection, I hope it has been bridged in this book.”

Here is the power and the value of this significant book that will be a great contribution to the future generations, intended for a wide and varied audience, initiated or not. A work of an encyclopedic value for anything it brings and synthesizes, and an inspiring book for its analytical clarity and its new reflection that brings. A book of a philosophical and indisputable value that will influence human thought and the art of philosophy of the XXI^st century.

Enriched with an extensive bibliography of over 250 works, On the Origin of Species by Means of Civilization or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Cooperation for Life of KostantinosMaritsas is already imposed as a reference book for the future generations.

Efstratia OKTAPODA

University of Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV)

2.2016