Introduction : understanding the origins and evolution of living organisms. The necessity of convergence between old and new paradigms
Résumé
Global warming, the Anthropocene concept (Hamilton C, Nat News 536(7616):251, 2016), the sixth mass extinction (Ceballos et al., PNAS 114(30):E6089–E6096, 2017), and the rapid progress in astrobiology looking for primitive life forms are raising the awareness of the actors of society toward evolution as the prime reality without which neither the biodiversity nor our species would exist, and our civilizations survive. This discernment leads us to a better understanding of the processes at the origin of the organization of dynamic structures and their reproductive properties, from the smallest cellular unit to the most complex interactions within the organism and then between organisms for the same unit of time and space. This awareness also encourages us to discern, over very long geological and cosmic time scales, principles of self-organization of complex systems and generic laws of adaptation and complexification.