Bookvica

[SOCIAL STRUCTURE IN ANIMALS] Formy obshchestvennogo stroya u zhivotnykh [i.e. Forms of Social Structure among Animals]

Menzbier, M.

Item #2013

St. Petersburg: Vremya, 1922. 64 pp. 17.3x12 cm. In original publisher’s illustrated wrappers by Sergey Chekhonin. Tears of the spine, edges slightly worn, otherwise in a very good condition.

Scarce. First separate edition. 1 of 5,000 copies. Front wrapper design and printer’s mark by Sergey Chekhonin (1878-1936), a prominent Soviet graphic artist and illustrator. A student of Ilya Repin, he studied at the Drawing School of the Imperial Society for the Encouragement of the Arts and the Tenishev school from 1896 to 1900. In the 1910s, Chekhonin was associated with the World of Art movement. He gained widespread acclaim as a graphic artist, innovator in propaganda porcelain, and a pioneer of multi-color fabric printing.
One of the first Soviet studies of the forms of social structure among animals by the Russian Darwinist and leading ornithologist Mikhail Menzbier (1855-1935). The essay was first published in the journal Yuridicheskiy Vestnik [i.e. Legal Bulletin] in 1881 and later featured in the author’s collection of articles Darvinizm v biologii i blizkikh k ney naukakh [i.e. Darwinism in Biology and Related Sciences] (1886). The book is grounded on Menzbier’s belief that: “Regardless of the perspective from which we choose to examine humanity, it is essential to bear in mind: all phenomena linked to humans share commonalities with the phenomena observed in lower animal life.”
The essay explores social structures of various animal species (wasps, ants, fish, birds, horses, etc.) and investigates the factors driving the creation of animal societies. The author presents numerous examples of social order in the animal universe, ultimately concluding: “within a specific animal group, the most developed family principles are typically observed in members with the highest level of mental abilities.” Menzbier particularly focuses on societies shaped by security conditions and food procurement, emphasizing the negligible roles of nationality and blood relationships.
Mikhail Menzbier was a Russian and Soviet ornithologist. He was a professor of comparative anatomy at the Moscow University and promoted an evolutionary view of faunistic in the Soviet Union. Mikhail has been described as “one of the most consistent defenders of the classical Darwinian approach to the struggle for existence and of the selection theory in general.” Apart from being a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, he was elected an honorary member of the British Ornithologists’ Union and the Deutsche Ornithologen-Gesellschaft, and a corresponding member of the Zoological Society of London, of the Société zoologique de France and the American Ornithologists’ Union.

No copies found in Worldcat.

Price: $750.00