This article presents a review about the development of the concept ―struggle for existence‖ in nature. Today this process is connected with Darwin, but there have been adequate studies and thoughts since at least the 18th century. Even before Darwin it was known that the number of the offspring is by far more numerous than the actually reproducing individuals and that there is a ―war‖ in and between the species. This is evident by statements of several natural scientists (Linné, Buffon) and philosophers (Voltaire, Herder). It was their concept of the living nature as a static system. Outreaching to this concept and leading to the concept of descent with modification and natural selection, Darwin‘s and A. R. Wallace‘s essential question centered about which individuals in fact survive and procreate. To ask this question it was necessary to overcome typological- essentialistic thinking. This question was irrelevant in the concept of creatures as representations of platonic ideas and godly thoughts of Creation. For his concept of ―struggle for existence‖ Darwin was inspired by the false appreciation of the false population study of T. R. Malthus. He assigned the possibility of a geometric progression of populationgrowth, which was meant only to man, to all creatures and on a detour he came back to the further conception of creature´s progeny. Darwin applied ―Struggle for existence‖ for to the behaving of Creatures within and between species in relation to the abiotic ambience, he integrated the concept of competition and cooperation. This includes ―mutual aid‖, that was accentuated against the socialdarwinistic and vulgardarwinistic attitude of ―struggle for existence‖ by the Russian K. Kessler and P. Kropotkin. Darwins metaphors of ―war‖ and ―wedge‖ served as a visualisiation of certain aspects of ―struggle for existence‖. The ―creative‖ or “Mitschurin Darwinism” by T. D. Lyssenko was just a speculative falsification of Darwin´s theory denying intraspecific competition. In the synthetic theory of evolution, the modern Darwinism, the struggle of existence as an essential factor of evolution was investigated by the Russian co-founder I. I. Schmalhausen. For him the idea of evolution was forward-looking for theoretical work and self-regulation and he enunciate the idea of evolution into the speech of informatics theory and cybernetics, at which the struggle of existence has the function of a complex control system at the self-regulating evolutionary elemental circle. As the concept of r- and K-selection of the theoretical population ecology (Demökologie) shows, the reproduction of organisms is not only a prerequisite but also the result of evolution. The rates of reproduction of several species are the expression of their adaption to their life conditions. A transfer of expressions like ―struggle for existence‖ and ―natural selection‖ into concepts and processes of human economy and society is an abuse of Darwin theory of evolution and a character of political ideology.
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