Faustino Cordón Bonet

The Spanish biologist Faustino Cordón (1909-1999) is the author of an evolutionist theory laid down in an extensive work that adopts a critical approach to knowledge of experimental science and responds to a new order of biological problems: the emergence, nature and evolutionary sequence of the main types of living being. He characterized living beings by their capacity for action and experience in their specific environment.

He postulated the existence of living beings of three integrative levels (globular proteins, cells and animals), with each living being of a level resulting from the joint action of the living beings of the lower level that form its soma.

He synthesized his research in his main work, An Evolutionist Treatise of Biology, which is divided into three parts: Part One deals with the nature and evolution of the protein, Part Two with the origin, nature and evolution of the cell, and Part Three with the origin, nature and evolution of animals (including humans). On his death he left Part Three unwritten, but his interpretation of its subject is laid down in many texts.

Faustino Cordón conducted the bulk of his scientific work during the Franco dictatorship, always on the periphery of the academic institutions from which he was excluded, first because of his political commitment and later because of his critical attitude towards the official science of the time.