The relevance of the proposed study is due to the need for a deeper reflection of the content of ideas put forward by outstanding scientists V. Docuchayev in the process of his activities, in particular as a carrier of scientific thought of global significance of soil formation. To date, there has been a lot of fundamental researches devoted to the scientific heritage of V. Dokuchaev Among them works of V. Vernadsky (1904), D. Vilensky (1946), I. Gerasimova (1971), D. Zlobenko (2006), S. Zonnaya (1979), F. Kiryanova (1946), A. Ferhman (1905) and many others. They consider the most important achievements of this scientist. But the theme determined by authors requires a more detailed and complete systemic generalization.

In this connection, the purpose of writing an article is an in-depth mapping of the content of a scientific object-soil in the formulation of V. Dokuchaev, distinguishing the main logical and chronological stages of his activity, the influence of his teaching on other sciences: geology, petrography, mineralogy, geochemistry, geobotany, climatology, agronomy, forestry. At the same time, the authors set goals, which consist in revealing the role of V. Dokuchaev in the scientific development of the vision of the soil, the establishment of the independence of natural phenomena, the development of the idea of zoning of soils, the establishment of soil science as a science, the creation of a national scientific school, the discovery of patterns in the structure of ground vegetation cover of geographical zones, the evolution of ground-geographical zones in time.

The authors used methods of analysis, synthesis, systematicity, comparisons and others. Their usage made it possible to objectively assess the scientific achievements of V. Dokuchaev and his contribution to the development of scientific thought about soil science and other sciences. It was established that V. Dokuchaev became the bearer of scientific thought of global significance, the creator of genetic soil science as a science; he created a soil science school, which, thanks to him, has several directions in his domestic soil science, engaged mainly in the study of a single characteristic of soil and soil formation: geological and geographical, agrobiological, and chemical. The prospect of further scientific research in the context of this topic is to isolate many problems of the transformation, development and evolution of the solid cover from the actual creative heritage of V. Dokuchaev, that do not belong to a great scientist.

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