1. Gumilev Articles, Apocryphal dialogue

Apocryphal: (Writings not forming part of the accepted canon of science. While some might be of doubtful authorship or authenticity.)

I’ll take a break from uploading the current book and look at writings that help to understand Gumilev, and his works, and his writing, and styles.

An innovative imagined dialog made to examine some points of professional contention.  (4,649 words)

Author: The literary technique of "dialogue" allows you to summarize a variety of questions once asked to the author, and long conversations with readers and their acquaintances. The advantage of the "dialogue" genre is conciseness. So, I propose a dialogue.

Anthropologist: Why are you dropping anthropology? This is illogical. If ethnogenesis is not considered a social phenomenon, then it should be biological, and if so, then the racial trait should be crucial. After all, you do not deny the existence of separate races, with inheritable traits inherent in them?

Author: Of course not. Races exist as subdivisions of the species Homo sapiens. According to the accepted division, there are three of them, according to V. P. Alekseev, there are six of them, since he distinguishes the Americanoids, Australoids and the "Khoisan race" in South Africa (Hottentots, Bushmen, etc.) into independent races, but there are hundreds of ethnic groups and maybe even more than a thousand, if one day it will be possible to make a complete count for 30 thousand years. This alone shows that the reference systems in anthropology and ethnology are different.

Then, racial characteristics can determine skin pigmentation, height, hair thickness, and sometimes even temperament, reaction speed, sexual potency, but not passionarity – the main ethnogenic factor.

In addition, all ethnic groups at the beginning of their origin were the fruit of the crossing of two or more racial types, ways of interacting with the surrounding landscapes and even the mental warehouses. Only as a result of a long process of entropy, these differences are equalized and a "pure" ethnic group with a single stereotype of behavior is obtained, but defenseless and unviable.

Anthropologist: But surely you will not deny that physiological racial characteristics do not leave their imprint on the culture into which their individuals enter?

Author: Of course not, but note that you have introduced a third frame of reference – culture. However, the concepts of "culture" and "ethnicity" are as incommensurable as the "race" added to them. These aspects not only do not cover each other, but also do not overlap. I do not like to theorize and I will give an example. A. S. Pushkin had a Negro admixture, i.e. he was a mulatto. There were Negro traits in his character, but it didn't matter to others or to himself. Not only that, he spoke and read French from early childhood, i.e. he was culturally a Western European. So what? Knowledge of a foreign language simply broadened his horizons, but Russian patriotism lay deeper and was not affected by the poems of the Guys. So, then, we must look for this middle element, which is not affected by either "blood" (racial traits) or education. This is the ethnic frame of reference, which, according to our hypothesis, lies in the rhythm (frequency of vibrations) of the biofield. The variety of rhythms is very great... and each rhythm corresponds to a special ethnic group, arises and disappears in historical time and, being a natural phenomenon, forms a stereotype of the behavior of an ethnic group or ethnopsychology. This phenomenon deserves independent study, not information about race or culture.

Anthropologist: But the races are very different; so, is it possible to ignore the possibilities of each of them?

Author: No, why? Any knowledge is better than ignorance. However, all ethnic groups are in various phases, and races are developing so slowly that they are often perceived as stable categories and inherent race carriers. This is not a problem, but, alas, the characteristic is constantly followed by an assessment: "higher – lower", "better – worse", "more progressive – regressive".

Is it legal to prefer anions to cations or acids to alkalis? It is also illegal to introduce a category of quality into the elements of a system called "humanity". These elements are diverse, but complement each other; therefore, when comparing them with each other, the concepts of "better – worse" are inappropriate.

And finally, the principle of racial diagnostics is the similarity of features, and ethnic is the difference of complementary elements of the system, and it is diversity (with a single dominant) that determines the persistence of an ethnic group in interethnic collisions, not always tragic, but always dangerous. So, one should not mix the two sciences into one in order to then argue about what is more important. The synthesis of sciences consists in exchanging information, helping each other, and not replacing one science with another. Isn't it?

Anthropologist: Yes, there is nothing to argue about.

Philosopher: No, wait... In history, there is social progress, the development of productive forces and the change of industrial relations. Some societies have advanced far ahead, others have lagged behind. So, comparing them on this principle is possible and, moreover, natural. Social development is spontaneous, and therefore does not depend on natural phenomena. To correlate natural impulses with spontaneous movement is geographical determinism, which is unacceptable. The only bad thing is that there are no explanations for backwardness and regression, which are observed very often; but even so, the concept of entropy, i.e. the equations of potentials seem to contradict the principle of progressive evolution. Does the author of the book deny progress?

Author: Why deny or admit? It is better to explain the point of view, maybe unknown to you because it is new.

Philosopher: And what can be other than moving forward or backward?

Author: Three forms of movement. The translational, rotational, well-known to you, which gave rise to the theories of the cyclism of history in ancient times, which did not stand up to criticism when tested on factual material, and oscillatory. The touched string on the violin sounds and stops, but there is no "front" or "back" in its movement. It is this form of movement – a fading vibration that meets the parameters of ethnic history.

Philosopher: But where is the progress then?

Author: In the social form of the movement of matter! Only there is a progressive change of formations, based on the development of productive forces and industrial relations. And where there is no development of technology, there is no progress. Here is an explanation of the "stagnation".

Philosopher: But what does entropy have to do with it?

Author: The entropy principle is really not applicable to explain spontaneous social development. But for the discrete processes of ethnic history, it is necessary: after all, people are organisms living in collectives that arise and disappear in historical time. These are ethnic groups, and the process from their emergence to disintegration is ethnogenesis. The meaning of ethnogenesis is the loss of the impulse that created the system to the zero level – homeostasis. We don't see anything like this in social development, in biological evolution, or in the cyclical movement of planets around the Sun. Consequently, social development, biological evolution and ethnogenesis are incommensurable phenomena, such as length, weight, degree of heating and electric charge of the body, although together they make it possible to describe an object in its development, i.e. the phase of its formation process, even if it is only for a moment.

Philosopher: But which dimension do you consider the main one? Without an answer to this question, you will slip into the theory of many factors, discarded in the last century, since it did not allow you to capture the patterns of development.

Author: For each object, the "main" factor is its own, identified by empirical generalization. This way it is established that ethnic groups arise here and there. This means that the entropic process – ethnogenesis – is preceded by a non–entropic explosion, a kind of push, the impulse of which naturally fades in historical time from the resistance of the medium or during the dissipation of energy. It is unlikely that you will defend the opinions of laymen that destructive conquests were made at the whim of evil and stupid rulers, to whom for some reason their kind and intelligent subjects obeyed and for the sake of greedy bosses allowed themselves to be killed in wars they did not need. Although such maxims are found in popular literature, they do not deserve discussion for the mere fact that from such an angle it is impossible to explain why the offended did not resist the offenders. In short, why did the ancient, developed civilizations that had an economic base, culture and technology perfect for their time disappear, as well as the ethnic groups that created them, and new ones appeared in their place, although no one benefited from this replacement? And finally, is this the case everywhere, or is the death of Rome in the fifth century just a special case that might not have happened? In my opinion, here, as in social history, there is its own pattern, in which coincidences that cancel each other out, but are unable to disrupt the general course of ethnic and social history, fit in.

Philosopher: Well, since you recognize dialectical monism, which combines randomness and regularities, then I have no reason to argue.

Historian: The Roman Empire perished due to the crisis of the slave-owning formation, which hindered progress due to imperfect methods of exploitation.

Author: But why did only half of the Roman Empire perish – the Western one, and the Eastern one existed for another thousand years? And it cannot be said that the Franks, who captured Roman Gaul, the Visigoths, who subjugated Roman Spain, the Angles and Saxons, who invaded Roman Britain, and the Lombards, who seized Italy, brought order there with regard to the development of productive forces. Rather, on the contrary. These ethnic groups have shown their mediocrity both in peaceful life, which has disappeared due to constant troubles, and in the military, because they were smashed by all their neighbors: Arabs, Vikings, Greeks and Avars before the tenth century. They didn't even know how to establish feudalism for 500 years. Nevertheless, “the force” was on their side. Why? Please explain.

Historian: It doesn't matter. Since the tenth century, progress has been observed in feudal Europe, which led to the capitalism of the British, Germans, and French...

Author: That's it! It is the newly formed ethnic groups. And the Iberians, Picts, Friezes, Helvetians –where are they? They either died out, or dispersed peacefully, or became part of new ethnic groups, forgetting their former tradition. For their descendants it was the same decline as for the ancient Romans, Hellenes, Assyrians, Isaurians. The world has been updated, and has been updated everywhere and always, against the backdrop of an ever-changing geographical environment and the development of the social sphere. Ethnogenesis plays a role in this interaction: it is a link between the biosphere and the sociosphere. Don't you agree with that?

Historian: Perhaps this is true, but I prefer to deal with progressive societies rather than dark eras of decline. I am not a doctor to treat the diseases of humanity, and even without hope of luck.

Author: Everyone is free to choose a topic to their liking.

Archaeologist: No, I definitely disagree with your principle. Cultures are changing, of course, archaeological, not people, because they come from their ancestors. The French are descended from Gauls, and, of course, Franks, the English – from the Angles and Saxons, Russians and Ukrainians – from the Eastern Slavs, and those – from the Scythian tribe of the Skolots, etc. Do you really think that this continuity can be broken in the future or has been broken in the past?

Author: Please formulate your thesis correctly. That all people have ancestors is clear; that not all have had and will have descendants is also clear. But to what extent can you search for ancestors? Before the Upper Paleolithic? To the bottom? But then there were Neanderthals! So, in your opinion, they are also the ancestors of the Russian, French, English ethnic groups? And the ancestors of Neanderthals are anthropoid primates? Whose ancestors are they: Germans or Poles? No, don't be offended! A scientist must be consistent. If you see in the Prussian rocks, then what prevents you from looking for them in the interglacial period, say, in Riess-Wurm? But then it is necessary to divide the then pithecanthropus into Prascolots, Prarumyns, Pranemians, great-Frenchmen. Isn't it?

Archaeologist: And what do you offer in return?

Author: According to the theory of evolution, we all, including you and me, descended from Mesozoic marsupials, like those from Triassic reptiles, from Carboniferous amphibians and from single–celled Archaeozoic. But it's obvious that humans are not amoebas, dinosaurs, or even Australopithecines. It means that the substitution of historical tradition by biological evolution is illegal, and scientifically unpromising, because an ethnos is a system, and not a herd of "bipeds without feathers", as Plato called a person.

With the systematic approach now adopted everywhere, everything is complicated in the world, but it's simple – in the head of a fool. A molecule is a system of atoms, a cell is a system of molecules, an organism is a system of cells, an ethnos is a system of human organisms: yes, exactly, a system, not a sum! Consequently, the difference between ethnic groups is not in the constant interchangeability of people as cells in the body, but in the change of systemic connections and the formation of a new stereotype of behavior. And whether he changed flint tools to bronze ones does not matter; you can kill neighbors with any axes, and even with a high-explosive bomb. In other words, the count by cultures (archaeological) and by ethnoses does not coincide at all. Archaeology – the science of monuments – cannot replace history – the science of events in their connection and sequence, and history only records the "ends" – breaks in traditions, and "beginnings" – flashes of passionarity, initiating a new ethnogenesis – the formation of a not yet former ethnos.

Archaeologist: But didn't the new ethnos have a previous one?

Author: And at least two, and often more, as a child has a father and mother, and he himself is not a direct continuation of one nor the other, but something third. So, the chipped mixed on the banks of the Dnieper with the Rosomons and Ants, which formed the Old Russian ethnos – Rusichi, split into parts in the XIV century. The northeastern Rusichs merged with the Merei, Murom, Veps and Turks from the Great Steppe – Russians were formed, and the southwestern Ones merged with the Lithuanians and Polovtsians - Belarusians and Ukrainians. But for fusion, a high intensity of the biochemical energy of living matter, i.e. micromutation, is necessary. You won't find her in any excavation. It is detectable only by variations in the course of historical events.

Archaeologist: Yes, I have to admit that my science is unsuitable for solving your problems. Your science is not humanitarian. Rather, it is the geography of the anthroposphere for the historical period.

Author: Well, now we understand each other. I now completely agree with your formulation.

Philologist: I don't understand what this is about. History is information recorded in texts. There is no other one! So, the historian's job is to collect sources of information, supplement them with a bibliography, make translations from exotic languages and add a comment, taking data from the works of his predecessors. This is the humanities – history.

Author: Yes, you are right. Humanities provides an opportunity to learn a lot, but does not allow you to understand much. The humanities are limited by the scientific level of the authors studied in antiquity, and it was lower than in the XX century. Ethnology poses other tasks. It is based not on texts, but on facts and their systemic connections; with strict observance of a given level, empirical generalization is possible and fruitful, because by comparing system integralities taking into account the phases of ethnogenesis (ages), we have obtained a holistic view of the millennial period of the ethnic history of the Eurasian continent. In this story, as we have seen, four large superethnoses participated, constantly interacting with each other and having "beginnings" and "ends", which explained the collisions that occasionally occur during collisions at the superethnic level.

Philologist: The most important thing is to translate the authentic text correctly, and understanding it will come by itself.

Author: And if there is a conscious lie in the text? Or unconscious, but corresponding to the level of knowledge of its compiler? Or is it just a mistake, because ancient people made mistakes as often as we do? What should I do then? Really believe the source?

Philologist: We, the humanities, study texts, and your thoughts are conjectures. The proof is the words of an ancient author. If you disagree with him, then you are wrong. It's obvious to me, and you can't prove the opposite!

Criminologist: Despite the fact that by the nature of my activity I do not belong to academic science and am only a consumer of it, i.e. a reader, I believe that my opinion will not be superfluous. We are talking about the "zigzags of history". Crimes can be called "zigzags of biography" of the criminal and the victim. Therefore, from the perspective of my specialty, I can consider the zigzags of history as crimes at the ethnic level, subject to disclosure in full, with motives, connections and mitigating circumstances.

The material is the same: numerous testimonies and denunciations. If all of them were taken on faith, then all people would be behind bars, and the real criminal would have the shortest sentence. Therefore, the philologist's methodology is not constructive. The texts of denunciations should be checked, taking into account possible alibis, using an investigative experiment, comparison of testimony, etc. But even this will make it possible to establish only the fact itself, and not its causes and consequences.

The historian's approach is suitable only for orthogenic processes, and not for their violations. The general direction of a person's activity, as well as an ethnic group, can be determined, but "zigzags" at any level are the results of a case, violations of the law (in science) and the law (in personal life), and therefore fall out of the general rule, require an individual approach and an original solution. For all cases, only one position is true: there are zigzags in history and in personal life, and sometimes they entail a fatal outcome – murder or depopulation of an ethnic group. This alone is enough to justify an interest in the dark periods of history, in order to look for a means to prevent possible troubles.

The anthropologist's considerations are more valuable. The characterization of the subject, although it is not the cause of the "zigzag", can clarify something about what happened, assess the extent of what was done and its consequences. But we must remember that his data is auxiliary material, and the essence of the matter is in the logic of events that the author of the book is looking for, using history and geography. In fact, he uses my method of investigation. So, should I argue with him? Author: Thank you.

Geographer: Geography is a synthetic science. It always borders on neighboring, more precisely, related sciences, using the data of mathematics, zoology, botany, economics, sociology, while remaining itself. All the phenomena of the geographical environment are dynamic, but literary critics, source historians, art historians study static subjects: texts, paintings, etc. Therefore, we believed that we did not need history.

Fortunately, we were wrong. It turned out that there is an ethnic history that studies the processes taking place in the Earth's biosphere and changing its appearance. For such a formulation of a scientific problem, history is an auxiliary discipline that collects and accumulates primary data, and ethnology is a way of processing them for the needs of natural science. In short, Clio should not quarrel with Urania; there is plenty of room on Parnassus for all the sisters.

The great scientist, Academician Behr, dreamed of building "bridges between sciences." Ethnology is one of these "bridges". It describes and explains the changes of the Earth's surface produced by man, equal in importance to geological cataclysms of a small scale; these cataclysms include migrations of plants and animals, changes in the chemical composition of soils, artificial transformation of relief by architecture, because cities and their ruins create a metamorphosed anthropogenic relief that differs from natural. Humanity is an active part of the biosphere and as such falls within the competence of geography.

So, if historians neglect ethnology, which is really built not on the retelling of texts, but on observations, verified and meaningful, then geographers are close to this science and need it. Only one claim can be made against the author. It should show how and why there is no merging of ethnic groups, even with the same level of technology and material culture.

It would seem that in an artificially created technogenic environment, for example in urban megacities, the mosaic ethnosphere can merge into a monolithic anthroposphere, while carrying out a single universal progress. While the pictures of this future heyday are described by science fiction writers, but the dream is also the driving force of progress.

Author: And why do we not observe anything similar in the natural environment? Mountains flatten in some places and grow in others; cyclones change the paths of passage, creating climate fluctuations not on the whole planet, but in certain regions, which, in turn, affects flora and fauna. The nature of the Earth is dynamic, and in order to create and maintain megacities, it is necessary to take the gifts of this changing nature, which means that it is necessary to change with it. And besides, people themselves, because they have bodies, are part of an ever-changing nature, because they are just as susceptible to mutations as all other organisms. And these mutations are just as uncontrollable in humans as in influenza viruses.

No, if the dream of science fiction came true, then a diverse creative and restless humanity would turn into an endemic population, like the New Zealand hatteria. Is it desirable? After all, this is the end of the entropy process!

Geographer: Of course not! But, based on your ideas, such a fate does not threaten our descendants, since passionate tremors constantly mix the anthroposphere, which supports a measure of diversity. However, interethnic conflicts sometimes lead to the exchange of information, then to clashes, often very destructive. It is impossible to lose sight of this problem. Apparently, you will have to write another book.

Researcher: You are strange people. And what do you want? Of course, it is necessary to write a dissertation, but in such a way that opponents recognize their own thoughts in it, the academic council was bored, and the dissertation could only bow and thank. And then, to fulfill the plan, you can write positive reviews, popular articles and give lectures in the Knowledge society. And if this does not satisfy the vain author, let him buy himself a color TV or go hiking. And the plan will be executed, and the authorities are satisfied.

Author: Similar advice was given to me repeatedly. Then they were respectable professors, then directors of publishing houses, then my peers who had already bought a cottage and a car. But I didn't heed them, and that's why: there is another category that they forget – the reader; and another emotion – disappointment. If my work is not read, it hurts me, but I blame only myself: I couldn't write it. And when people argue with me, even students after a lecture, I'm happy. I am glad that my interlocutors think.

No, I'm not imposing my vitality on you. And I do not condemn your ideals at all. I just have different ideas about science and its tasks, and I have no reason to argue with you. I will try to explain my point of view in detail.

Let's apply the classification according to an arbitrarily chosen principle. Its advantage is that it is exhaustive and clear. Let 's distinguish four approaches to scientific activity and its results:

1. The approach is painstaking – compiling the necessary manuals: bibliographic reference books, preparing manuscripts for printing, conducting a series of experiments, translations and comments on texts. These works are necessary and honorable. They are the foundation of science. They are read by specialists who appreciate and respect them as semi-finished products. They use these works, but it does not occur to them to love these books. However, they do not pretend to love, limiting themselves to the consciousness of their necessity.

2. The moth approach is an easy, elegant popularization of little–known or controversial subjects; disputes in defense of paradoxical theories, without claims to accurate argumentation; reviews, more or less witty, advertising and reclamation of other people's works. Breadth of education is desirable, but depth in this genre is contraindicated, because it is difficult to access for the general reader. This approach is very useful for science, as it prepares the reader, especially the young, and connects abstract thought with everyday life. Only the transition of benign entertainment into militant dilettantism is dangerous. Of course, it's a shame that these often-talented works live like moths: after reading them, they are forgotten.

3. It is difficult to name the third approach, although it is the main one and the previous two exist for its sake. The treasury of science is a generalization of accumulated knowledge in a system of aspects that allow you to review the entire subject of research, and then bring it to the reader. In other words, this is a monograph, treatises of "universal history", global geographical descriptions, etc. To write such a work, you need to master the subject and feel the topic, and to make it accessible to the reader, you need to open your vein and feed each line with your blood, figuratively, of course. Otherwise, the author risks being the only reader of his book. And the more "blood" is poured into printed lines, the more the reader loves the book, and sometimes even grateful to its author.

This act of "blood transfusion" usually gives the author nothing but moral satisfaction. However, this satisfaction is such that it is worth living for it, even sacrificing comforts, official troubles, intrigues of envious people and ill-will of colleagues. Spiritual loneliness is a kind of hell; a breakthrough to the reader, i.e. to his attention and understanding, is the way through purgatory. Satisfaction with what has been done is a reward for work, greater than salary and fees. But this is not the top yet.

4. "Fiery" science is a creative flash in which associations, seemingly random, merge into something whole, unified, new, i.e. unknown to the author until now. Scientific thought, necessary work, self-examination and verification of primary data do not precede a fiery flash of insight, but follow it, condemning the author to serve a scientific idea that arose against his will, and sometimes contrary to his intentions.

What kind of "flash" it is, where it comes from, why it cannot be forgotten or discarded – I do not know. I only know that it happens and that the people with whom it happened neglect the benefits and craving for the joys of earthly love, peace and fear. So exclaimed Martin Luther: "I'm standing here, and I can't help it!", Galileo muttered: "And yet it turns," Mansur al-Khalaj shouted: "I am the truth!", and, finally, V. I. Vernadsky wrote in his notebook the words: "... chemical energy of the living matter of the biosphere."

These moments, which happen extremely rarely, can be understood as impulses of attraction (attraction) that grow suddenly and subjugate the mind and will of a person for the rest of his earthly existence. They are the ones who distinguish a "scientist" from a "researcher", to whom I will not be able to explain anything else.

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