About the book: 1976 / These are fragments of an unpublished manuscript of one of the most interesting domestic scientists of nature - biologist, professor Alexander Alexandrovich Lyubishchev (1890-1972). Lyubishchev's colleagues knew his printed works, which later turned out to be like the surface of a huge iceberg. In his colossal archive, now transferred to the Academy of Sciences, more than three hundred unpublished articles on general biology and applied entomology, on mathematical statistics and the theory of evolution, on philosophy, on history and literature with a volume of over 10 thousand pages, and on top of this 56 volumes were discovered notes and critical notes and, finally, about 4.5 thousand letters. One of the articles in memory of Lyubishchev rightly says that his correspondence “will someday prove invaluable for the history of science of the 20th century.” Famous biologists L.S. corresponded with Lyubishchev. Berg, N.I. Vavilov, I.I. Shmalhausen, B.L. Astaurov, V.A. Engelhardt, physicists I.E. Tamm and Ya.I. Frenkel, mathematicians A.A. Lyapunov, A.D. Alexandrov, Yu.V. Linnik.What attracted so many people, so dissimilar in their scientific and life interests, to the “provincial professor,” as he jokingly called himself? (For the last 20 years of his life, Alexander Alexandrovich lived in retirement in Ulyanovsk.) What made the novelist Daniil Granin suddenly write a documentary story about Lyubishchev, “This Strange Life,” unexpected for his style? Of course, not those specific studies of Lyubnshchev, after reading which one can say that they the author established such and such facts and patterns in the morphology and taxonomy of insects. I was attracted by his personality. Originality of thought. The principles of his approach to the evaluation of a specific work, and an entire direction of science, and to the philosophy of natural science itself. Lyubishchev, laughing, often spoke about the “debate gene” that sat in him. Both his work and his plans were controversial. Almost from his student days, even in the pre-revolutionary years, he dreamed of finding for the entire variety of living changing forms a system similar to Mendeleev’s periodic system, thanks to which, based on a few parameters, it would be possible to deduce the properties of all the “elements” of the living world and “verify with algebra” the harmony of nature . Let us note that he was not satisfied with the Darwinian idea that evolution is determined by the blind forces of natural selection, this great “game of chance,” and he wanted to find the internal harmony of evolution. In another head, such an idea would easily have become insane without quotation marks. In Lyubishchev, it acquired that excellent creative meaning that true scientists feel in the winged saying about such ideas, because he did not see any other support for himself than the knowledge and creativity of the researcher. And in his search for arguments for the dispute, Lyubishchev went through enriching himself with new and new knowledge of physics, mathematics, and philosophy. He did not create the intended “periodic table”, but he turned out to be a truly brilliant scientific critic - in the high original sense of the word “criticism”, which does not imply blasphemy, but thoughtful penetration into the origins of positive views, into the origins of the inevitable omissions and even misconceptions that are inevitable in evolutionary theory, as in any other continuously developing field of knowledge. And therefore, many of his works, being critical, suggest new lines of search to researchers of the evolutionary process. But there was another very important side to his work, which attracted the attention of those who knew Alexander Alexandrovich. This is the system of work itself, its planning and its organization, which allowed the scientist to achieve colossal productivity that amazed everyone - a system tested over 56 years of intense creative life. This system of A.A. Lyubishchev dedicated the work “Guide to the organization and processing of observations in zoology,” from which the proposed fragments are taken (it was written in the late 40s). What he wrote about in it is apparently important not only for biologists, but also for any researchers, for young