No chemist will tell that hydrogen is a simplified helium that originated during the adaptation to the parasitism on the oxygen; therefore, it cannot be put to the beginning of the system of elements, or that similarity of iron and cobalt originated as a convergence, while these elements are not relatives and cannot be put in the one group, while the closest relative to iron is potassium. In biology, such speculations are normal; therefore, there is no biological system reminiscent of the periodic system of chemistry. In a situation like this, the discussion on the growth of complexity inspired by the recent presentation of the concept by A.P. Kozlov should be encouraged. This issue indicates the way to put an order in the classification of biological objects, and therefore the biological knowledge as a whole. It seems possible to compose a modern version of the popular in the past Scala naturae, i.e., the arrangement of phyla in the form of a series reflecting the degree of differences from the simplest organism. Similarity among non-neighbors phyla could be revealed in it. This means that the series can be transformed into a periodic table. The article at hand presents a version of such a table. It provides a basis for the analysis of any evolutionary concept, stressing the necessity of filling them by abundant data on diversity of the biological objects.
I.Yu. Popov (Wed,) studied this question.