Introduction. Universality and Inexhaustibility of Evolution: Evolutionary Trends, Aspects, and Patterns.

From the very beginning, our Yearbook ‘Evolution’ has been devoted to searching
for the common ground at different levels of development, to gradual elaboration
of a mega-evolutionary paradigm (see Grinin et al. 2009), as well as
to considering features of various evolutionary phenomena. As a matter of fact,
in speaking of similarities, one should take into account the most important
characteristics of phenomena and systems – their uniqueness. At the same time
the common and unique sustain complex interaction. In particular, the uniqueness
is never overall, it is always realized only in several aspects important in
evolutionary terms. At the same time, the deeper we comprehend the balance
between general development and general evolutionary trends, on the one hand,
and breakthroughs to new levels of organization, on the other, the more clearly
we perceive that an evolutionary breakthrough which occurred as a result of
emerging unique conditions is never an element of randomness but always occurs
due to a huge and consistent evolutionary advance in a certain direction.
Thus, the new emerges far from inevitably. For the emergence of something new
a number of peculiarities and coincidences of complicated conditions is required;
at that, it is always difficult to conceive whether all these conditions
were necessary or some were contingencies of minor importance. Therefore, the
transition to a new evolutionary level is such a rare and important event. And
still the gap between the levels is not as obvious as it sometimes seems.