Evolution and Environment

by Pyotr Kropotkin, George Woodcock (Introduction)

Edited with an Introduction by George Woodcock

The final volume of The Collected Works of Peter Kropotkin gathers the many unpublished articles and essays written during his life-long and mostly ignored scientific career. His vision foresaw the more inter-relative and co-operative world that has become evident to us today in the 20th century.

Kropotkin the geographer had a social and political concern that transformed his interest in science into a larger ecological concern that outstripped the understanding of his contemporaries. He upheld the instinct of individuals to support one another, and acknowledged environmental influences on mutation and evolution. Whereas arguments at the time based all change on the drive for survival, Kropotkin's insight—now acknowledged by ecologists—insisted on the selective pressure of the environment and the importance of habitat.

Divided into two sections, “Modern Science and Anarchism” and “Thoughts on Evolution”, this volume illustrates the conjunction of science and anarchism in Kropotkin's life. The essays look to a wider of the world as environment together with human influence, rather than the strict Hegelian dialectical determinism of humanistically-influenced early Marxism.

George Woodcock (1912-1995) has published more than 140 titles on history, biography, philosophy, poetry and literary criticism. He has been called “a gentle anarchist in a state of grace”. Here, his introductions and prefaces help the reader appreciate Kropotkin's revolutionary insights and put the articles in their historical context, scientifically and politically.


Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Modern Science and Anarchism Preface by George Woodcock

1. The Origin of Anarchism

II. The Intellectual Movement of the Eighteenth Century

III. The Reaction at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century

IV. Comtes Positive Philosophy

V. The Awakening in the Years 1856-1862

VI. Herbert Spencer's Synthetic Philosophy

VII. The Function of Law in Society

VIII. Place of Anarchism in Modern Society

IX. The Anarchist Ideal and the Preceding Revolutions

X. Anarchism

XI. A Few Conclusions of Anarchism

XII. The Means of Action

XIII. Conclusion

1995: 262 pages

Genres: Politics, Philosophy, Science, Nonfiction, Evolution, Ecology

262 pages, Hardcover

First published June 6, 1995

About the author

Pyotr Alekseyevich Kropotkin, prince, Russian anarchist, and political philosopher, greatly influenced movements throughout the world and maintained that cooperation, not competition, the means, bettered the human condition.

Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (Пётр Алексеевич Кропоткин, other spelling: Pëtr Kropotkin, Pierre Kropotkine), who described him as "a man with a soul of that beautiful white Christ, which seems coming." He wrote many books, pamphlets and articles, the most prominent being The Conquest of Bread and Fields, Factories and Workshops , and his principal scientific offering, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution . He also contributed to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition .