Vilmos Csányi, founding professor of the chair of Ethology at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, has been a leading intellectual figure in his home country for the last quarter of century. He was responsible (in a sometimes hostile environment) for the introduction of the ideas of behavior genetics and modern ethology, for the translation of classics such as Lorenz and Tinbergen, for the establishment of scholarly associations, and for organizing a series of conferences on ethology. In the Hungary of the Seventies and Eighties, the message went well beyond strictly scientific matters. Csányi, with his openly controversial style, was campaigning for what would be called in other contexts "epistemology naturalized," to borrow Quine's phrase. In doing this he created enemies and rivals both in traditional and less rigid Marxist circles and within the biology establishment itself.
What was controversial was his firm belief in a scientific attitude to behavior and cognition. Many philosophers regard this as their exclusive intellectual domain. Csányi has managed, however, not only to ally himself with the best Hungarian neuroscientists like the late János Szentágothai or Endre Grastyán but also to create a network of young associates and a broader network of supporters both in the natural and social sciences and in the media.
Besides becoming a well-known public figure due to his expounding of ethological principles, he has also exerted considerable influence with his general theory of evolution. His book, first published in Hungary in 1979, and again in 1988 in a substantially revised edition and under a different title, presented a general view of evolution that represents a challenge to scholars beyond the strictly biological realm.
The essence of the theory is that evolutionary systems appear everywhere, provided there is selection. The systems themselves have a tendency to total self-replication. But since there are obvious obstacles to this, a process of compartmentalization emerges that delineates entirely replicative units such as the cell, an object of mass production, etc. In the development of supra-individual organizations the same processes would apply. Therefore, cultures could also be regarded as self-replicative units, and even objects would have their own evolutionary history. Many of these ideas gained international recognition when this work, and several papers and books by Csányi and his associates were published in English.
[...]