The science is engaged in creating tools and correct understanding so that our civilized society can flourish and increase its knowledge.
Our traditional conventional logical paradigm (culture of thinking) appeared about 2500 years ago. This happened at a time when such significant figures of the cultural revolution as Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Heraclitus, Demosthenes, Euclid and others appeared. But actually the two opposing camps that waged philosophical wars, especially influenced this. On one side was Aristotle, on the other Heraclitus.
Aristotle seduced the world having said that if you do not know something, you just need to turn to someone who knows and ask. This sounds perfectly reasonable, and for 2,500 years the vast majority have been doing just that. However, this does not mean that the statement is true.
For a long time it was believed that the Earth is flat, and civilization has successfully survived these times. But Galileo, looking through a telescope, found that in reality the planets are spherical, and the paradigm of beliefs based on the theory of a flat Earth is not correct. It cost Galileo and several other scientists dearly, and it took about 200 years for the world to recognize that the Earth is round.
Aristotle's victory in the intellectual war with Heraclitus has more dramatic effects than the influence of theories regarding the structure of the universe. Today's reality is a direct consequence of this victory.
Often, in order to solve a particular problem, we turn to sources that, in fact, may know no more than ours, or profess an erroneous theory. Note, there are theorists and practitioners. Theorists teach practitioners how to do this and that, provide analytics and advice, but in the vast majority, they themselves never practically implement their own decisions (analysts make money on analysis), but they teach how to do it!
Aristotle believed in a reductionist approach, meaning that if you take something apart, you will understand how it works. Thus began the search for an elementary particle, which was supposed to be an atom.
Modern scientific world discovered many subatomic particles, which completely changed the idea of the Universe, and curiously, they were calculated long before they were discovered. The thought arises: do we believe what we see, or do we see what we believe ....
Thanks to the philosophy of Aristotle, there is a “precedent” in jurisprudence, and an “authoritarian approach” of a teacher to students in the education system. Following the reductionist approach, there have been developments of cause-and-effect concepts, "laws" of motion, "laws" of conservation of energy, etc. The latest results of advanced scientific research have shown the fallacy of these statements!
If Heraclitus had won, then we would have had a completely different civilization. He felt that the universe was in constant motion and change, that stability and homeostasis were not the norm. He said, "You can't step into the same river twice!" This means that at the time of re-contact with the river, both the river itself and your body will already undergo some changes.
In the 20th century, three fundamental discoveries took place, these are:
AT history of the development of science , nothing foreshadowed the creation of the Theory of Relativity. Until the 20th century, classical science was concerned with the study of four basic elements that were thought to be unrelated. These are mass, energy, space, and time. Einstein put forward the theory that space and time are inextricably linked. He also stated that matter and energy are reciprocal, and therefore do not differ from each other. He often said that there are only two components in the Universe: Non-Being, and Condensed Non-Being, which we call objects.
All this led to innovative discoveries that no one dreamed of (nuclear energy), and to a change in ideas about the World.
The only constant left by Einstein is speed of light. But Quantum mechanics destroyed this constant too! see article -
After quantum mechanics subatomic particles were discovered, our logical world fell apart. Subatomic particles do not behave as they should, or rather not as we think they should. The basic principles are destroyed.
In 1964, scientist John Stuart Bell introduced a concept called "non-locality of causes". She questioned the whole theory of causation! Bell argues that individual causes cannot be isolated from each other. thousands experiments have confirmed that the Bell Theory is a more accurate description of the existing order of things. Bell supported the idea that everything in the universe is interconnected . You are part of me and vice versa. This relationship is so real that the saying “do not dig a hole for another, you will fall into it yourself” could be rephrased as follows:
"If you're digging a hole for someone else, you're digging it underneath you, right now"
Aristotle, in his time, argued that everything has its own boundaries, and can be local.
Science acts as a social institution,
profession, sociocultural value,
multifaceted cultural phenomenon.
Representing a specific system of complex infrastructure, and not a simple sum of knowledge, it is at the same time a peculiar form of spiritual production and a specific social institution with its own organizational forms. Throughout the centuries-old history of culture, people went to new goal an inefficient trial and error method, and an acceptable solution was found only after a long and unsystematic enumeration of a large number of options. But at the later, subsequent stages of intensification of production, it was necessary to find new solutions in short time that stimulated the growth of innovative knowledge. And today, the scientific potential determines the prestige of any state, its future, the costs of science are increasing, the profession of a scientist has already become one of the most attractive.
Scientific progress is the most important part of the process of intellectualization of society, disenchantment of culture. Each scientific discipline has its own individual history of emergence and development, gradually turning into a relatively independent sphere of human activity, acting as a historical product of the development of civilization and spiritual culture, gradually developing into a special social organism, developing new types of communication and interaction. The most important function this activity is the systematization of theoretical and empirical knowledge, scientific discovery, development of laws, generalization and interconnection of facts; the integrity of the social system that unites scientists, technology and institutions with the aim of explaining and foreseeing events, constructing and transforming reality. The definitions of science include: ?systematic knowledge that forms the scientific picture of the world (SCM); ?innovativeness of scientific activity - on the reproduction of new scientific knowledge; ?belonging to a spiritual culture. Discussion on the subject of science includes questions related to various subjects sciences: profession, theory, academic discipline.
At the same time, science, as part of culture, participates in its reproduction, acts as an institution of scientific organizations and institutions, and as a value of culture, it appears as the result of this institutional activity: a set of methods and knowledge in a conceptual form, concepts, a system of principles and methodology. Among the functions of science are the process of obtaining and creating an integral system of knowledge, constructing the activity of social subjects, the spiritual production of truth; ethos and profession, resources, information, communications. Although knowledge is acquired by man in Everyday life, politics, economics, art, but only in science they are defined as its main goal. Scientific knowledge belongs to a certain branch, but is based on the general principles of scientific methodology, is confirmed empirically, explains the nature and logic of processes, and does not contradict fundamental scientific theories.
The hallmarks of scientific knowledge are: consistency, the ability to classify the subject and object of research, the desire for validity. These qualities are a social value, have an impact on organizational cultures, individual activities. As a result, the product of science is not only knowledge, but also a rational decision-making style, which is used in other types of human activity.
To obtain knowledge in a certain area of science, it is necessary to develop a program in terms of research methodology, generalization of fundamental and specialized knowledge, development of methods and means for their implementation: tools case studies, devices, installations, methods of measurement, storage, processing, processing and transmission of information.
Science has an integral character: the contradiction lies in the fact that it should, as it were, know everything, but at the same time the question arises of the essence of its differentiation into various sciences. The modern social problem that the researcher solves cannot be considered within the framework of one science, it has a multidisciplinary character. To have a comprehensive understanding of the problem and methods for solving it, the integration of a wide variety of knowledge is required. Instead of five or six points of view from the positions of medicine, sociology, psychology, anthropology, a general picture of the problem of the relationship between man and society should be obtained. Therefore, we are talking about the multidisciplinary nature of the problem. If five or six people work in a team, at the same time they get to know the problem comprehensively, and not only by the methods of one science. We are talking about the interdisciplinary qualification of a specialist: everyone knows something necessary from other, related specialties.
Social institutions develop and change with the participation of people, and they are included in the relationship of exchange. Science as a system has been created by a community of scientists for more than two millennia and represents not only the relation of a scientist to the object of knowledge, but also a system of relationships between generations, scientific cohorts, members of the scientific community. Today, science is a powerful branch of knowledge production with a developed material base, communication system, traditions, and ethical standards. It has its own style, regulated by a system of unwritten but traditionally transmitted rules, its own system of values. The researcher must possess scientific knowledge, be able to construct and apply knowledge in practice. In a general sense, science is a systematic study of physical or social phenomena, and in a narrower sense, a search for universal laws and explanations, a specific analysis with the help of observation, experiment.
As an element of culture, science feeds on its juices and itself has a powerful impact on it, it can use artistic images, but its main core is conceptual frameworks, grids of categories, scientific hypotheses and concepts that explain the picture of the world. Knowledge as an episteme acts as a universally significant and self-sufficient sphere of activity, in relation to which non-scientific realities can, at best, be considered as concomitant. But if science is associated with a certain branch of knowledge, then it is clear that only fragments, cones, segments of the world become the object of attention of individual sciences: for example, social science studies a person and his social life. It is unlikely that the universe, which is a vicious circle of identity with a center in a single absolute norm, today can be the measure of everything that exists. The transformation of a person into an object of knowledge of sociology, psychology, anthropology involves abstraction from freedom and compassion as the basis of morality.
However, the understanding of a foreign world is possible only through getting used to, feeling, empathy, overcoming the egoistic natural inclination. When there is a need for an individual clarification of guilt, responsibility, decision, then this is accompanied by the freedom to choose desire or indifference. The meaning of the text is unique to a particular person, and the truths that we construct are meaningful in specific social environments and limited historical conditions. Although traditional social science has repeatedly declared its ability to represent the experience of peoples and cultures, today it cannot be argued that one can confidently speak on behalf of others.
The condemnation and depreciation of common sense—whether simple beliefs, prejudices, or banal manifestations of ignorance—are defined as deviations from Weber's ideal type or Durkheim's norm. In everyday life, people explain what is happening on the basis of common sense, without thinking about the rationale for their conclusions. Mass consciousness mounts value aspects, stereotypes, cultural norms into the worldview picture of concepts, methodologies, into the context of objectified subject knowledge. At the same time, common sense tends to unjustifiably expand the scope and depends on what one would like to consider the truth. Science and common sense may not be compatible. Unlike ordinary consciousness, science relies on the levels, forms and methods of scientific knowledge, although it itself influences life styles and everyday life, organizational and national cultures, developing new types of communication and interaction between people, forms of division of labor, orientations, norms of consciousness, scientific ethos.
Discussions about the meaning of science focus on the need for a clear definition of this concept and its equal applicability to the physical and social sciences, since the latter tend to take into account the choice of man and social activities. Controversy about the nature of science has increased in recent times as a result of criticism of the philosophy of science. The scientistic view of science proceeds from the implicit assumption that knowledge does not depend on the personal qualities of people employed in this field. Neither socio-historical circumstances, nor biographical details, nor even the continuity of scientific schools explain the emergence of an innovative idea. A different approach is set by the sociology of knowledge, it ceases to be a monad and is derived from objective circumstances. The methodology of science includes, in addition to ideas, the life history of scientists and a description of society, a correlation between intra-scientific and extra-scientific dimensions is assumed. Careful scientific proof is not yet a guarantee of the absolute truth of a generally valid proposition.
Signs of the scientific character of a dissertation research follow from an understanding of the criteria for the theory of scientific knowledge. Any advanced scientific discipline easily detects levels: empirical-applied, theoretical, methodological. The scientific theory of the dissertation contains a thesaurus, a set of basic concepts, judgments and provisions in the area under study, combined into a single system of knowledge about the subject of research. A knowledge system is recognized as a theory if it satisfies the signs of objectivity; adequacy as an opportunity to describe any situation; verifiability, verifiability or falsifiability, refutation; truth and certainty. In the structure of scientific theory, the main levels are distinguished: an empirical basis, new demands of practice, an idealized object of study, a theoretical model, methodology, methods of proof, an array of theoretical knowledge that forms new provisions about the object under study. At the same time, the proportion of components depends on many factors and is not regulated. It is important to get closer to achieving the goal of the study.
Science includes about a thousand disciplines that interact with each other, studies everything that is of interest, reflects on its origin, development, other forms of culture, and the impact on society. The interaction of the theoretical, speculative and empirical levels of the development of science has an impact on everyday consciousness and subcultures. In principle, the sociologist solves similar problems, trying to explain why events occur in a certain sequence. However, scientific sociological explanation differs from common sense judgments in that it must be deduced from general patterns established on the basis of the rules of logical proof. Norms and ideals scientific research prescribe a systematic refutation of the established generalizations, the search for such facts that contradict the generally accepted opinion.
This is the norm that R. Merton called organized skepticism. A strong epistemological position recognizes the inevitable relativity of scientific knowledge. It is possible to go beyond contextual limitations only by reflecting on the localization and temporalization of one's own or someone else's text. The claim to the universal truth of scientific representation only masks the total will to power, the desire to form, subdue the scientific search for the tyranny of the dominant discourse. In addition, the centralized structure of planning and management of scientific research, monopoly, and unequal relations have a negative impact on the development of science.
Thus, science develops through the refutation of its own truths, but this process takes place within a certain system of epistemic norms and social institutions that regulate the scientific conclusion. Doesn't work here personal experience recognition and foresight, but an impersonal procedure for substantiating generally valid conclusions that can be reproduced under the given conditions, the convention of semantic and linguistic norms.
Thus, the problem of time is the content of the term temporalism in the broadest aspect, although it can be used in a narrower sense: physical temporalism, geological, social. Within the physical description of time in the literature, the concepts of positive and negative cosmological, inverse temporalism have been recognized. Opponents of new terms and admirers of the Russian language should keep in mind that each such term has a long semantic train that has developed in certain circumstances.
For example, in the scientific and especially in the educational literature on the problem of time, it is not always clearly distinguished concepts of relative, relational and relativistic. We note here the content of each of these concepts.
· Relative (relativus- Lat.) - a category of philosophy, meaning the relative nature of the absolute in knowledge, truth, existence, in the relationship of movement, time and space, subject and object.
· relational (related- German) - a general scientific concept that means taking into account the connection and the concept of time, movement. The relational concept of time, for example, is the opposite of the substantial concept.
· Relativistic (relativistic- German) - a private scientific physical concept denoting belonging to the theory of relativity.
Professional vocabulary is utilitarian, it saves time for specialists and experts in explaining theoretical concepts, the essence of which can fit in a few mean, conventionally accepted terms. Deciphering the symbol and concept of time, the life chronotope of a person turned out to be associated with the cultural and historical evolution of temporalism in the humanities and natural sciences.
Since the conceptual apparatus of sociology was also mainly developed in the West, many terms were borrowed from English translations of German and French literature or original works of English and American sociologists. It is important to provide applicants and experts with access to the conceptual resources that have been accumulated in the international sociological community. Although the development of new areas of reality led to the differentiation of science, fragmentation into specialized areas of knowledge, the history of science is permeated by a combination of differentiation and integration. Recently, complex scientific programs have been adopted, gaps in scientific knowledge have been filled, and disciplinary barriers have been overcome.
The scientific paradigm, the theoretical arsenal of social science are interdisciplinary in nature, they synthesize various scientific knowledge, their semantic load is transferred to each other, enriching each scientific specialty. The task of the fundamental sciences is to analyze the interaction of the basic structures of man, nature and society, and the immediate goal of the applied sciences is to apply the results of the fundamental sciences to solve not only cognitive, but also social practical problems. The criterion for success here is not only the achievement of truth, but also the effectiveness of implementation, the dissertation student must write about this in the section on the practical significance of his work.
Being one of the activities, scientific practice is woven into the fabric of culture, and therefore, as part of its whole, it requires the presence of action stereotypes, standardization. The level of culture and the degree of scientificity of the method as a way of organizing activity determine the level of scientific practice as an element of the entire socio-historical practice, and the latter, being conscious, turns into activity, which is the only possible condition for an individual to become familiar with culture and stay in it. It is impossible to get an adequate reflection of the process of movement of scientific knowledge, excluding from the analysis the influence of socio-historical practice, social time on the development of science and culture as a whole. The development of science is not reduced to the filiation of ideas, it only ultimately coincides with the logic of the development of knowledge, just as methodological analysis reveals from the real time of the practice of scientific discovery the structure of prediction and the structure of the discovery itself in a pure, atemporal, logical form.
Science acts as a means of forming a scientific picture of the world. Thus, a long history of predictions and times had to pass before the scientific concepts of time and theories of foresight were created. Both the predictive ability of a person and his understanding of time ultimately find their justification in activity, in the evolution of practice. The development of the ability to foresee immediately falls into the living fabric of culture, the essence of which largely characterizes the understanding of time. Primitive presentism and a naive-static approach to time, the atemporality of mythological consciousness are determined by stagnant forms of transformation of the experienced into the immovable; reality was not differentiated according to the modes of time and therefore did not need to be predicted. Although, nevertheless, a temporal orientation is outlined: retro-tales about an ideal mythical period without death, illness, taboo. The origins of science are rooted in the practice of early human societies, when the production and cognitive moments of people's activities were inseparable. Mythology is considered a distant prerequisite for science, in which an attempt was first made to build an integral system of ideas about the surrounding reality.
The initial knowledge was purely practical in nature, playing the role of guidelines in specific types of human activity. This knowledge, obtained on the basis of simple observation, did not reveal the essence of phenomena and the relationship between them, which would make it possible to explain why this phenomenon proceeds in one way or another and to predict its further development. Mythological consciousness and the image of time are addressed to the individual human psyche, this circumstance also determines the ancient ideas about fate and fate. The prerequisites of science are associated with the emergence of a desire to substantiate scientific knowledge as an independent field of activity in natural philosophy. Ancient Greece. Thales of Miletus raised the question of the need to prove geometric constructions and performed a number of such proofs, which was the reason to call this period the birth date of scientific research. In the structure of ancient consciousness, a harsh, fatal prediction of future events becomes possible, inevitable due to ideological prescriptions and stereotypes, due to the stability of relations between people in this era. Taken globally, world events are unpredictable, they merge in an eternal cycle.
But ancient time is not reduced to the cyclic time of the Pythagoreans and Heraclitus, for it receives systematic development from Aristotle: time breaks out of the circle and becomes a vector. In Greek philosophy, the idea of timeless existence and timeless predication is being developed, in connection with the widespread idea of the authenticity of knowledge about the eternal. True, overcoming the previous paradigms followed the path of destroying presentism, primarily by ignoring the value of existing in the present. In connection with such a distribution of accents, theological prognostication is divided into retrospection and prediction itself, reflection of individual predictions in the concept of fate and theological providence are realized. The temporalism of the Apocalypse becomes not only linear, but also finalistic, which leads to a new form of foresight. In religious consciousness, there is a differentiation of historical time and foresight and an attempt to comprehend them, although the possibility of an active participation of a person in the development of events is rejected. The prognostics of the Middle Ages was also developed by astrological predictions, contributing to the development of the subjective prognostic function of medieval consciousness. On the whole, the ideological horizon of time and foresight has expanded due to the fact that the prognostic reflection of the epoch has largely left presentable closed cycles and has become essentially evaluative in the knowledge of time and the course of history.
If in the mythological consciousness the personification of time in the image of Chronos was a reflection of concern about human lack of freedom, fatal predestination, then the Renaissance man comes to realize himself as the creator of himself and his destiny. The axiological reflection of time was a huge leap in worldview, integrating a new type of activity and a new life position. The higher the reflection of social practice, the stronger the socialization of foresight and the more successful the development of historical time.
A step forward along the path of the historical evolution of social foresight was a utopia that denies providentialism and eschatology. While theological prognostication followed the path of the mystified, and utopia along the path of illusory prediction, philosophy formed the conceptual foresight and evaluative reflection of time. It is Lotman's syntactic type of culture that is an expression of the practicality of the figures of the era, the rehabilitation of practical activity. An essential aspect of the organization of this type of culture was its involvement in temporal development. It is this type of culture that then dominates in the era of centralization.
Since the 16th century, science has become an independent factor in spiritual life. The successes of science during the years of Galileo, Copernicus and Newton are considered the first scientific revolution. Its result was a holistic mechanistic picture of the world. A higher degree of reflection of foresight and historical time determine the development of the social consciousness of the era, freeing human consciousness from fetishes, forming a new type of activity. With a new level of cultural self-awareness of the era, the culture of time is enriched both by the development of natural philosophy and the artistic development of time. The temporalism of the Renaissance is structural: historical time, artistic, natural, personal, activity. The historical time of the Middle Ages was external in relation to the existence of mankind, while for a man of the Renaissance, time characterizes the existence of culture, is recognized as the most important criterion the historical orientation of a person, from the point of view of the entry of subjective time into the mainstream of socio-historical, from the standpoint of fundamental ethical value.
Later, the classical scientific paradigm semantizes time as a dry, rational, dispassionate category, which, in comparison with antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, meant its complete dehumanization: the totality of matter in natural philosophy did not allow for human temporality. Philosophy, starting from the non-classical and developing into the post-non-classical, tries to overcome the flaw of an abstract person and introduce him into a specific cultural and historical context, a system of universal human moral values. The redefinition of the situation, according to L.G. Ionin, occurred in the 18th century: Rousseau divided all vertical classifications into two groups - natural and political, or cultural. In the process of transition to a non-classical form, science becomes one of the main types of activity, and objectivity itself is fused with the means of obtaining knowledge and operational schemes through which this knowledge is obtained.
Worldview mutations mean that the image of the world is forced out to the court of philosophical and scientific methodology, which either adapts to a new picture or sharply revises it. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the discovery of social inequality and the demand for equality was comprehended as part of a grandiose spiritual upheaval of that time, which marked the beginning of a new cultural era - the era of modernity.
The concept of a social problem, writes G.S. Batygin, was formed at the beginning of the 19th century in the context of reformist ideology, meaning poverty, crime, morbidity, prostitution, and illiteracy. The social survey movement was reinforced by socialist ideas, extremely popular in educated circles in Europe and America, and sociology and socialism went hand in hand at that time. At the same time, the level of predictive action of science turned out to be dependent on the cultural-historical type of activity. At the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, new discoveries in physics revealed the limitations of the classical theory, the mechanistic concept of the world, led to the creation of a new physics theory by Einstein, Planck, Rutherford, and covered the main branches of science. Science has become an integral and most important part of our civilization, has acquired social, economic, political functions.
With the new role of science in culture, the face of science as a social institution is changing. In the modernization of the functions of science in the evolution of culture and the nature of social systems, it is no longer the personal experience of recognition and foresight that works, but the impersonal procedure for substantiating generally valid conclusions that can be reproduced under given conditions. Traditionally, the type of scientific reflection is associated not only with historical era and national culture, but also personalities, specific individuals. And no matter how far from technical applications any dissertation work looks, it is a link in the chain of actions and decisions that determine the fate of the human race. The scientific picture of the world evolves along with culture. The concept of the scientific community is related to Kuhn's paradigm, but is more widely associated with sociocultural determination.
The correlation of cultural traditions and representational images with the evolution of the social picture of the world, which is closely related to the type of scientific rationality and the authorities of philosophical systems, is valuable. The orthodox traditional course of Marxism should act as a certain historical stage in the development of world philosophy. V.S. Stepin conveys the ideological cliché figuratively: they put a stupid cap on philosophy, sent them to smash science. German classical philosophy cultivated intellectuality, clarity, isolation, self-sufficiency and self-awareness. She gave like general drawing history, but, according to Sartre, there is no concept of conscience and moral judgment. In contrast to the Western classical type, Eastern philosophy emphasized communicative sociality, meditation, the connection of consciousness with nature. The existential, later European type of philosophizing and the Russian tradition of human philosophy already contained an appeal to the soul, existence, here-being, as well as an ethos of reconciliation, openness to human existence, the idea of catholicity, the national idea. Together with Western conceptions of man, Russian high philosophy has had a certain influence on the sociology of postmodernism.
Classical sociology built a typology of social systems according to the principle of old - new, conservative - progressive. Sociologists focused on the typologies of social communities and the scale of systems, but at the social level they analyzed two major types of societies: pre-industrial and industrial. These are classical models of F. Tennis, E. Durkheim, G. Simmel, G. Spencer, T. Parsons. If we use the idea of vertical classification, then in modern society, which differs from the traditional one in a number of ways, the situation was redefined with the rise of the bourgeois class.
P. Berger believes that capitalism is not only an element of practice, but also a certain concept; historically, the capitalist phenomenon in its fully developed form coincided with the phenomenon of industrialism. New economic institutions and technologies have transformed the world, capitalism is closely related to technology and the transformation of the material conditions of human life, a new system of stratification based on classes, a political system in the person of the nation state and democratic institutions, a culture that is historically associated with the bourgeois class and emphasizes the importance of a separate personality. Thus, all elements are mutually intertwined and presented by both defenders and critics within the framework of the economic culture of capitalism.
G.S. Batygin analyzes the growing popularity of the mass periodical press, which has led to the emergence of another type of social surveys - audience surveys by public authorities. mass media. It was an attempt to systematically organize field interviews, including the selection of respondents by gender, age, profession and place of residence. Traditionally, the focus was on elections, gathering information about various aspects of American life. Particularly important was the contribution of sociologists to the study of the influence of the wording of questions, types of argumentation and attitudes on the procedure and content of expressing opinions. The Institute of Public Opinion J. Gallup has found a method for a multi-stage probabilistic sampling survey with the most accurate forecast.
The provisions of A. Einstein were a genuine fundamental revolution in the scientific understanding of time, and the revolution in physics at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, its principles and Einstein’s epistemological principles overcame the crisis of absolute substantial temporalism in physical theory, demonstrating the possibility of overcoming the standard framework of the classical paradigm in the revolutionary leap of theory . This was only the first, albeit significant, contribution to the construction of a new cultural-historical temporalism. The philosophy of the 20th century is trying to overcome the flaw of the abstract person and introduce him into a concrete cultural-historical and temporal context. The development of science in the 20th century is characterized by a radical revision of the conceptual foundations of the problem of time, as well as the apparatus of scientific forecasting, which is closely related to the paradigm of time. After the limitation of the Newtonian understanding of time, Einstein's progressive ideas, which have not only physical, but also general cultural significance, increasingly influence the general style of thinking in various areas of culture. And this influence will be carried out until the relativistic paradigm, having more than half a century of history, destroys without a trace the preservation of faith in a single and unique time for the whole world and all processes.
The deciphering of the symbols of time took place in the philosophies of the 20th century with the realization of the limiting boundary situations in the life of an individual. Isolation from the temporal roots of true being gives rise to marginality and the risk of existence, its prerequisite is in the facelessness of the rigid determinism of the social structure. The totality of experiences about Hamlet's attitude to time and the eternal philosophical question of being is transferred directly to the present, increasing the urgency of the issue. The life path of an individual merges with the temporality of age, turns out to be dependent on the life time of the nation, the time of culture. In the chronotope of culture, the fullness of time gradually increases depending on the type of activity.
It is known that the entropy justification of the direction of time, following Boltzmann, was developed by A. Eddington, G. Reichenbach, A. Grünbaum. Nietzsche would have had one less intellectual joy if he had an understanding of the law of thermodynamics. Based on the same entropy definition of the order of time, scientists came to the conclusion about the statistical nature, the statistical nature of the direction of time, states with negative energy were proposed to be considered as the movement of electrons backwards in time. In cultural and historical evolution, the idea of time is represented by an archetype that structures activity, culture, and the picture of the world. It evolves from primitive presentism and ancient cyclism to the linear time of Augustine and Newton, then to a whole fan of forms of artistic, psychological, natural and socio-cultural time of post-non-classical culture, as well as temporal inversions, superpositions and time loops of postmodernism.
Human thought goes through the realization of the plurality and equality of value and normative systems, from understanding and empathy for borderline situations to compassion, embodied in quite pragmatic and rational help and support. In the 20th century, the collapse of totalitarianism and the lack of consumer abundance, openness, and deep informatization in the context of the juvenile psyche of social subjects formed a well-known type homo sovieticus with such social characteristics as the idea of one's own exclusivity, paternalistic orientation, a combination indoor installation to egalitarianism with a hierarchical world order and imperial claims. And only the phenomenon of a later type is more often characterized by common sense, ambivalence, marginality, tolerance. Awareness of one's own mortality and imperfection, the injustice of society turned out to be perhaps the most adequate and deep knowledge about human nature.
On the path of dismembering the roots of social institutions, scientific progress, German theorizing, there are losses of pre-philosophical syncretism, which are found again as newfound therapeutic ideals: anthropologism, priority personal relationships, the desire for a rural idyll of the prisoners of urbanization. What the Western reflection of civilization has lost is now rapidly being rediscovered as an understanding of meaning, an experience of an era, human temporality, an extra-theoretical insight into a situation. At the same time, the modernist layers of culture preserve the Western type of civilization, create a new typology of personality and lifestyle, codify the right and authority of deduction, while reviving induction.
The world in which we live does not turn out to be a simple linear mechanism: rather, it is a world without stability, guarantees and simple linear dependencies. The post-non-classical situation of society completely overturned the academicism of the faceless, subjectless world, painting a picture of a creative, moral individual, vital reason and spontaneous life culture. The figurative gamut of experience in a holistic view of the world does not correspond to the classical technogenic stereotypes of pure oppositions; the rational deep programs of human life do not appear clearly everywhere, giving way to unclear intentions. Human subjectivity, withdrawn from the world in the past, was restored, the destruction of the Cartesian-Newtonian value of cognition led to the understanding of the subject not only as a cognizer, but also a living one.
Scientific rationality as anonymous, independent of man has been replaced by a new paradigm of the rationality of science, included in culture as a system of ideas about man and the human world.
The old paradigms turned out to be powerless in considering history as a system of human experience, and man as a spiritual being. Man, according to Ortega, is a drama, his life is a universal event, at every moment of which the possibilities of a life path open up. A linear thinker who is going to philosophize about the social life of an individual in a situation of postmodernism will have to come across unusual principles and characteristics of professionalization, the interdisciplinarity of the subject, the conceptualization of social action through the reflection of fate. Deep anxiety, tension of not everyday, but existential origin organically entered the psychological sphere of modern society, the subject of which more often capitulates, or leads to the capitulation of another.
With the development of civilization, this risk increases, but the response to deep shocks is found in the bosom of philosophical reflection and shock mitigation technologies for man and society. When T. Kuhn suggested using the concept of a paradigm, he had in mind a certain cognitive model that interacts with the social dimension of science, consistently passing through the states of normal science and the scientific revolution. The subsequent breakthrough into the non-classical field of science already meant landing in the nonlinear processes of nature and society, unpredictability and opacity, weighed down by human anxiety and concern for world processes, with which the image of Newton's absolute linear time, unified for all processes, could not coexist harmoniously.
Domestic sociology has a short and complicated history; several generations of scientists did not have the opportunity to get acquainted with the works of modern sociologists, sociological knowledge developed dramatically and isolated from the world evolution of sociological thought. Many areas that were developed in the West were absent in Soviet science, and those that were allowed were under the pressure of ideological restrictions. Since the 1960s, it has been recognized by theorists, despite differences in definitions, that differences in property, prestige, and power are functional aspects of inequality. The classic aspects of inequality are money, power, prestige, knowledge. Even if these indicators do not have sufficient empirical justification, they still represent the determining conditions for the implementation of generally recognized life goals in modern society. Additional indicators can be: type of income, type of housing, place of residence, education, income of the head of the family, cultural level.
Modern European civilization is considered the product of the implementation of the modernist project, that is, it owes all its distinctive features to the era of modernity and the modernist project. Science, art, morality, industry, freedom, democracy, progress are the product of modernity, as well as the achieved equality, rational social organization, high standard of living and other achievements of civilization. One of the main acquisitions of the spiritual culture of postmodernism is the position that a person is immanent, and not transcendent to the world, the subcultures of social groups are not an ideological construct, but act as a system of meanings, a means of expressing a way of life and a mechanism for adapting to the dominant culture of society.
These dotted outlines of the evolution of scientific ideas will help the applicant not only to think about the horizon of social problems that are explored in the dissertation, but also arouse scientific curiosity, draw attention to additional literature, introduce classics and modern authors on the research topic.
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Another history of science. From Aristotle to Newton Dmitry Kalyuzhny
The evolution of science
If during the reign of Aristotelian dynamics, or in the era of the phlogiston theory in chemistry, or the Ptolemaic system in astronomy, you began to explain to people that their occupation is complete obscurantism and anti-science, you would not be understood. THEN these respected and generally accepted conceptions of nature were neither less scientific nor more subjectivistic than our modern ones are now. They were just different, and at some point they changed.
And what happens? It turns out that the evolution of science is not a monotonous movement forward from success to success, but leaps or “breakthroughs”, as a result of which much of the previous stage is denied.
Meanwhile, historians evaluate the achievements of the past from today's positions! Such an approach inevitably distorts the image of the real process. After all, what was fashionable and generally accepted once, practically does not find a place in the future and falls out of the analysis for this very reason: previously fashionable views began to contradict new views. And vice versa, what in those days was on the sidelines of scientific development suddenly jumps to the fore for the simple reason that it was precisely these once “incorrect” opinions that were justified. An analysis carried out without taking this phenomenon into account straightens out, and therefore distorts, the true course of evolution.
For example, Basil the Great, in his commentary on the Six Days (the six days of creation described in the book Genesis), says that one should not pay attention to the reasoning of the Hellenic philosophers, since they themselves cannot reach an agreement. What is it about?
There is a fundamental difference between the Christian thinker Basil and non-Christian (Hellenic) philosophers, that Basil philosophized based on Holy Scripture, while the Hellenes did not have such support, they put forward and considered their own worldview concepts. (By the way, from one such concept, perhaps written in Hebrew, the Holy Scripture itself eventually developed, because there is nowhere else for it to come from.) But this is not important for us here, but the fact that among the Hellenes there was a huge diversity of opinions, and each of scientists could choose the one he liked best. Basil chose the Holy Scriptures. And subsequent historians also chose what they liked, creating in their contemporary society a false idea of past times. Encountering now in books statements like “Even the ancient Greeks knew that…”, think about it, did all the Greeks know this is and why did they need such knowledge?
So, it is believed that Aristarchus of Samos in the III century BC. e. “anticipated” Copernicus, and if Greek science had been more resourceful, then heliocentric astronomy could have begun its victorious march eighteen centuries earlier than it actually happened. Even without going into the chronological problem and without disputing the time of the life of Aristarchus, we can say that to assert such a thing means to ignore the entire historical context.
After all, when Aristarchus expressed his speculative idea, a much more understandable geocentric system satisfied all the needs of practice. There was no obvious reason to take the heliocentric system seriously. Even the more elaborate design of Copernicus was neither simpler nor more accurate than the long-known Ptolemaic system, and was by no means immediately in demand. The idea of Aristarchus, put forward long before Copernicus, all the more could not interest anyone, remained little known and did not influence the science of his era.
But if the "advanced" theories for their time cannot be overestimated, then, on the other hand, outdated theories cannot be considered unscientific just because they have been discarded.
In order to correctly chronologize the historical process, it must first be understand. And at the same time, one should deal not with the history of names, but with the history of ideas. As the American physicist and historian T. Kuhn rightly said in his remarkable book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, “We must not so much strive to find in the former science the enduring elements that have survived to the present, as we must try to reveal the historical integrity of this science in the period when it existed. An interesting question is not about the relationship between the views of ancient and modern scientific positions, but rather the relationship between their ideas and the ideas of that scientific community, that is, the ideas of their teachers, contemporaries and immediate successors in the history of science.».
If the evolution of science shows us that Hellenic views are related to medieval scholarship, that Byzantine and Arab scientists are contemporaries or immediate successors of the ancient Greeks, then what grounds do we have for separating teachers and successors for hundreds of years? ...
The early stages of development of most sciences are characterized by constant rivalry between many different ideas about nature. After all, initially the goals of research were formed in an extralogical way. Although it is believed that any scientific community knows what the world around us is like, but this is not so. It is enough to look, for example, at the encyclopedic works of Pliny (1st century) or even the later "integral" works on natural science by F. Bacon (17th century) to find that they describe a rather confused picture. Even Bacon's ideas about heat, color, wind, mining, and so on are filled with information, some of which, if modern reader, only because the description is generally obscure.
In addition, ancient natural history usually omits in its incredibly detailed texts precisely those details in which the key to the explanation will later be found. For example, hardly any of the early "history" of electricity mentions that small particles attracted by a rubbed glass rod then fall off: this effect seemed to be "ancient" mechanical, not electrical.
But be that as it may, some generally accepted principles containing law, theory, their practical application and necessary equipment, which collectively gives us the models from which specific traditions of scientific research emerge, still exist at any stage of the development of science between its breakthroughs. T. Kuhn suggested calling it the term paradigm.
Paradigms acquire their status because their use leads to success rather than competing methods of solving some of the problems that the research team recognizes as the most pressing.
For example, from ancient times to the end of the 17th century there was no such period when a single, generally accepted point of view on the nature of light would be adhered to. Instead, there were many opposing schools and schools, most of which expounded one or another version of the Epicurean, Aristotelian or Platonic theory. One group viewed light as particles emitted by material bodies; for another, the light was a modification of the medium; another group explained light in terms of the interaction of the medium with the radiation of the eyes themselves. In addition to these, there were other variants and combinations of these explanations.
Each of the schools drew strength from certain particular metaphysical propositions, and each emphasized precisely the set of properties of optical phenomena that its theory could best explain. And unresolved problems were set aside for further research.
Throughout the 18th century, the idea of light was based on Newton's Optics (1643-1727), who argued that light is a stream of material particles, corpuscles. And it was supported by the majority. But at the beginning of the 19th century, the Paris Academy of Sciences announced a competition to explain the phenomena of diffraction and interference, and Auguste Jean Fresnel (1788–1827) solved this problem based on the wave concept of light. Moreover, from his theory it followed that if a screen was placed in the path of light, then under certain conditions there would be a bright spot in the center of the shadow from the screen. To prove the falsity of Fresnel's theory, they decided to set up the experiment described in his work, and ... everything was confirmed. There was a bright spot in the center of the shadow.
Thus, thanks to the work of Fresnel and Thomas Young (1773-1829), who explained, based on the wave theory, the color of thin films (which everyone who blew soap bubbles saw), the concept of light as a transverse wave appeared. And the majority rejected the corpuscular theory: everyone became adherents of the wave theory.
But then came the year 1900. Max Planck (1858–1947) showed that light is a flux of quanta, that is, it can have corpuscular properties under some conditions, and wave properties under others. Once again, the scientific community was pleased with the result.
When dealing with the history of sciences, one should also take into account that the development of knowledge is connected not only with the advancement of new ideas. Very often, new reliable methods and instruments for refining previously known categories of facts are of great value.
Between scientific breakthroughs - that is, during those periods that can be safely called the time of the "normal" development of science - there is often a suppression of fundamental innovations, because they inevitably destroy the basic principles of the established, "calmed down" science. At this stage, they try to squeeze Nature into the paradigm, as if into a pre-made and rather cramped box. The goal of science in such periods is to strengthen what has been achieved, and not to consider new types of phenomena that do not fit into this "box".
Of course, there must be a certain barrier in the way of various innovations so that a deliberately crazy idea does not slip through. According to the memoirs of S.P. Korolev's colleagues, he even had his own method, called: "Destroy the house and find the owner." Its essence was as follows. To any new proposal, Korolev immediately said that this was utter nonsense. What did he achieve? If the idea was expressed not by the author, but simply by a person who has access to the general designer, then he will not fight for someone else's and spoil relations with his superiors. If it was expressed by a real author, but who did not work out the idea too much, then he will not fight for it either: what if it really is nonsense. But if the idea is really important for the author, he, in spite of everything, will defend it.
This approach is very helpful. It allows you not to waste energy on not too well thought out projects. Of course, the process of rejection occurs spontaneously. It’s just that during the periods of development of “normal” science, a huge army of opportunists demands the canonization of what has been achieved in it, and cruelly expels everyone who is going to change something - not because they are stupid, stupid or opponents of progress. Not at all. They act very cleverly and expediently, securing their own place in science. Conditions must be ripe for the changes they would accept.
T. Kuhn in his essay "The Role of History" writes the following:
“History, if it is not considered simply as a repository of anecdotes and facts located in chronological order, could become the basis for a decisive restructuring of the ideas about science that we have developed to date. These ideas arose (even among the scientists themselves) mainly on the basis of the study of ready-made scientific achievements contained in classical works or later in textbooks, according to which each new generation of scientific workers is trained in the practice of their business. But the purpose of such books, by their very purpose, is a convincing and accessible presentation of the material. The concept of science derived from them probably corresponds to the actual practice of scientific research no more than information gleaned from brochures for tourists or from language textbooks corresponds to the real image of the national culture.
The transition to a new view of the world is a very painful process. During such periods, ideas change about which problem statement should be considered legitimate or which solution should be considered legitimate.
The assimilation of a new theory requires the restructuring of the old one, or even its complete replacement, as well as reassessment of previous facts; requires such a revolutionary breakthrough, which is rarely under the power of one scientist and never accomplished in one day. It is not surprising that historians of science find it very difficult to determine the exact dates along this long journey.
Almost always, the people who successfully carry out the fundamental development of a new paradigm were either very young or new to the field of knowledge whose paradigm they had transformed. Being little connected with previous practice, with the traditional rules of "normal" science, they saw faster than the "old men" that the rules were no longer suitable, and began to select another system of rules that could replace the previous one.
Such crises in science are a process that is difficult to trace by later researchers, and the entire period up to the 15th century is of particular difficulty. With absence printed publications and difficulties in communication between different scientists, the dissemination of scientific knowledge was greatly hampered.
All of this applies to history as well. Today it is at the same level of development as Aristotelian physics, and its own scientific revolution is yet to come.
By the way, we must keep in mind that people change their views after a paradigm shift is not at all due to market considerations. Remember the light story? Before the scientific revolution, scientists saw corpuscular properties in light phenomena, after it - a manifestation of only wave properties. Moreover, the reader can quite easily find confirmation in the history of political revolutions, when Russia from tsarist and Orthodox became completely socialist and atheistic and quickly learned to see only ugliness in tsarism and Orthodoxy, and after 70 years suddenly saw only ugliness already in socialism and atheism.
There is such a psychological test. A person is shown a picture of hooks and dots and asked what he sees. He says that, for example, a young woman. Then he is shown that the profile of an old woman is depicted here. And the subject sees it clearly. At the same time, the previous image disappears from him. In other experiments, it turned out that the perception of the size, color, and similar properties of objects also change under the influence of previous experience and training of the subject. All this suggests that the premise of the perception is some stereotype, or pattern resembling a paradigm.
Nature is complex enough to be studied all at once. Therefore, for its knowledge, a system of sciences is needed, each of which deals with only one side of a single whole. But a single Nature is being studied. And this means that along with the trends in the differentiation of sciences (analysis of knowledge), there must be a process of their integration (synthesis).
One can speak of three stages in the development of the study of Nature. The first is syncretic, undivided. The second, which began in the Renaissance and lasted until the end of the 18th century, is the stage of differentiation of sciences. And, finally, the third one, which is still ongoing, is their integration. The first stage is the so-called ancient Greek. The second stage immediately following it is characterized by the appearance of scientists-encyclopedists. But we should not talk about the encyclopedic knowledge of certain creators - their knowledge was actually very scarce - but about the need for each person personally to process the entire known array of scientific information in order to provide new information.
The history of various sciences has a different value in compiling the chronology of the development of knowledge. The most informative are the history of technology and the history of chemistry, because almost every innovation in them requires a certain background. Only by considering the evolution of different sciences and comparing the results, it will be possible to talk about the creation of a multidimensional history that more or less accurately reflects the real scientific and technological development of mankind.
And finally, the main thing. The first stage in the development of science, that is, a long period before the emergence of modern science, is largely the history of the development of knowledge in the Roman (Byzantine) Empire, which, as a rule, passes the attention of historians. We will return to this issue more than once, but here we only note that the events and achievements of the scientists of this empire simply pulled them apart and created from them what we now call Eurocentrism.
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In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, T. Kuhn argues that the development of science includes two periods: revolutions and evolution. At the same time, he singles out the period of normal science, when the scientific community works within the framework of the existing paradigm, the corresponding evolutionary branch of development, and the period of entry into the crisis period of the revolution, when an anomaly appears and is subsequently explained (a task that cannot be solved within the framework of this paradigm). Everything ends with the emergence of a new paradigm (a new theory and its methodological component and its philosophical assessment).
Today, hardly anyone will undertake to challenge the thesis about the presence of revolutions in the history of science. However, the term "scientific revolution" can have different meanings.
Its most radical interpretation lies in the recognition of a single revolution, which consists in the victory over ignorance, superstition and prejudice, as a result of which, in fact, science is born.
Another understanding of the scientific revolution reduces it to accelerated evolution. At the same time, any scientific theory can only be modified, but not refuted.
The most extravagant point of view on the nature and character of scientific revolutions was developed by K. Popper. They call her the concept of permanent revolution. As we remember, in accordance with Popper's principle of falsification, only that theory can be considered scientific, which is refutable in principle. In this case, refutability, so to speak, potential, sooner or later turns into actual, i.e., the theory actually fails. This, according to K. Popper, is the most interesting thing in science - after all, as a result of the collapse of a theory, new problems arise. And the movement from one problem to another is, in fact, the progress of science.
Without entering into discussions with the above positions, let's try to define the generally significant meaning of the concept of "scientific revolution". The word "revolution" means, as you know, a coup.
As applied to science, this should mean a radical change in all its elements: facts, patterns, theories, methods, and the scientific picture of the world. But what does it mean to change the facts? Firmly established facts, of course, cannot be changed - that's what they are facts for.
But in science, it is not the facts themselves that matter, but their interpretation, explanation. By itself, a fact that is not included in one or another explanatory scheme is indifferent to science. Only together with this or that interpretation does it acquire meaning, to become the “bread of science”. But the interpretation, the explanation of facts are sometimes subject to the most radical upheavals. The observed fact of the movement of the Sun across the sky lends itself to several interpretations: both geocentric and heliocentric. And the transition from one method of explanation to another is a coup (revolution).
Explanatory schemes for facts supply theories. Many theories, collectively describing the natural world known to man, are synthesized into a single scientific picture of the world. This is an integral system of ideas about the general principles and laws of the structure of the universe.
Thus, one can speak of a radical upheaval (revolution) in the field of science only when there is a change not only in individual principles, methods or theories, but certainly in the entire scientific picture of the world, in which all the basic elements of scientific knowledge are presented in a generalized form.
Since the scientific picture of the world is a generalized, systemic formation, its radical change cannot be attributed to a separate, even the largest, scientific discovery. The latter, however, can give rise to a kind of chain reaction capable of producing a whole series, a complex of scientific discoveries, which will ultimately lead to a change in the scientific picture of the world. In this process, the most important, of course, are the discoveries in the fundamental sciences on which it relies. As a rule, it is physics and cosmology. In addition, remembering that science is primarily a method, it is not difficult to assume that a change in the scientific picture of the world should also mean a radical restructuring of the methods for obtaining new knowledge, including changes in the very norms and ideals of scientificity.
There are three such clearly and unambiguously fixed radical changes in scientific pictures of the world, i.e. scientific revolutions, in the history of the development of science in general and natural science in particular.
If they are personified by the names of scientists who played the most prominent role in these events, then three global scientific revolutions should be called: Aristotelian, Newtonian and Einsteinian.
Let us briefly describe the essence of the changes that have earned the right to be called scientific revolutions.
First revolution.
In the VI - IV centuries. BC e. the first scientific revolution in the knowledge of the world was carried out, as a result of which science itself was born. The historical meaning of this revolution lies in the difference between science and other forms of knowledge and exploration of the world, in the creation of certain norms and models for the construction of scientific knowledge. Science realized itself most clearly in the works of the great ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. He created formal logic, i.e. in fact, the doctrine of proof is the main tool for deriving and systematizing knowledge; developed a categorical-conceptual apparatus; approved a kind of canon for the organization of scientific research (history of the issue, statement of the problem, arguments, pros and cons, rationale for the decision); objectively differentiated scientific knowledge itself by separating the sciences of nature from metaphysics (philosophy), mathematics, etc. formal logic, for example) is still valid today. The most important fragment of the ancient scientific picture of the world was the consistent geocentric doctrine of world spheres. The geocentrism of that era was not at all a "natural" description of directly observable facts. It was a difficult and bold step into the unknown: after all, for the unity and consistency of the structure of the cosmos, it was necessary to supplement the visible celestial hemisphere with a similar invisible one, to admit the possibility of the existence of antipodes, i.e. inhabitants of the opposite side the globe and so on. And the very idea of the sphericity of the Earth was also far from obvious. The resulting geocentric system of ideal, uniformly rotating celestial spheres with fundamentally different physics of terrestrial and celestial bodies was an essential component of the first scientific revolution. (Of course, we now know that it was wrong. But wrong does not mean unscientific!)
Second revolution
The second global scientific revolution falls on the XVI-XVIII centuries. Its starting point is considered to be just the transition from the geocentric model of the world to the heliocentric one. This is, of course, the most noticeable sign of a change in the scientific picture of the world, but it does not reflect the essence of the changes in science that occurred in this era. Their general meaning is usually defined by the formula: the formation of classical natural science. Such classics as pioneers are recognized: N. Copernicus, G. Galileo, I. Kepler, R. Descartes, I. Newton.
What are the fundamental differences between the science they created and the ancient one?
There are many of them:
1 Classical natural science spoke the language of mathematics. Ancient science also valued mathematics, but limited the scope of its application to the "ideal" celestial spheres, believing that the description of terrestrial phenomena is only possible qualitative, i.e., non-mathematical. The new natural science was able to isolate strictly objective quantitative characteristics of earthly bodies (shape, size, mass, movement) and express them in strict mathematical laws.
2 Modern European science has also found powerful support in the methods of experimental investigation of phenomena under strictly controlled conditions. This implied an active, offensive attitude towards the nature being studied, its contemplation and speculative reproduction.
3. Classical natural science ruthlessly destroyed the ancient ideas about the cosmos as a completely complete and harmonious world, which has perfection, expediency, etc. They were replaced by the boring concept of an infinite, without purpose and meaning of the existing Universe, united only by the identity of laws.
4. Mechanics has become the dominant feature of classical natural science, and indeed of the whole science of modern times. There is a strong tendency to reduce (reduce) all knowledge about nature to the fundamental principles and concepts of mechanics. At the same time, all considerations based on the concepts of value, perfection, goal-setting were rudely expelled from the realm of scientific thought. A purely mechanical picture of nature was established.
5. A clear ideal of scientific knowledge has also been formed: an absolutely true picture of nature that has been established once and for all, which can be corrected in detail, but can no longer be radically transmitted. At the same time, in cognitive activity, a rigid opposition of the subject and object of cognition, their strict separation was implied. The object of cognition in itself, and the subject of cognition (the one who cognizes), as if from the outside, observes and explores the thing (object) external to him, being at the same time unrelated and unconditioned in his conclusions, which ideally reproduce the characteristics the object as it is "in fact".
These are the features of the second global scientific revolution, conventionally called Newtonian. Its result: a mechanistic scientific picture of the world on the basis of experimental and mathematical natural science. In the general course of this revolution, science developed almost until the end of the 19th century. During this time, many outstanding discoveries were made, but they only supplemented and complicated the existing general picture of the world, without encroaching on its foundations.
Third revolution
"Shaking the foundations" - the third scientific revolution - happened at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries. At this time, a whole series of brilliant discoveries in physics followed (the discovery of the complex structure of the atom, the phenomenon of radioactivity, the discrete nature of electromagnetic radiation, etc.). Their general ideological result was a crushing blow to the basic premise of the mechanistic picture of the world - the conviction that with the help of simple forces acting between immutable objects, all natural phenomena can be described and that the universal key to understanding what is happening is ultimately given by the mechanics of I. Newton.
The most significant theories that formed the basis of the new paradigm of scientific knowledge were the theory of relativity (special and general) and quantum mechanics. The first can be qualified as a new general theory of space, time and gravity. The second discovered the probabilistic nature of the laws of the microcosm, as well as the irremovable corpuscular-wave dualism in the very foundation of matter.
Its most contrasting changes have undergone a general natural-scientific picture of the world and the way it is constructed in connection with the emergence of these theories. These changes were as follows.
1. The Newtonian natural-science revolution was originally associated with the transition from geocentrism to heliocentrism. Einstein's coup in this regard meant a fundamental rejection of any centrism in general. There are no privileged, dedicated reference systems in the world, they are all equal. Moreover, any statement makes sense only when “tied”, correlated with any particular frame of reference. And this means that any of our ideas, including the entire scientific picture of the world as a whole, are relative, that is, relative.
2 Classical natural science also relied on other initial idealizations, intuitively obvious and in perfect agreement with common sense. We are talking about the concepts of the trajectory of particles, the simultaneity of events, the absolute nature of space and time, the universality of causal relationships, etc. All of them turned out to be inadequate in describing micro- and mega-worlds and therefore were modified. So we can say that the new picture of the world has rethought the original concepts of space, time, causality, continuity, and to a large extent "divorced" them from common sense and intuitive expectations.
3. The non-classical natural-scientific picture of the world rejected the classical opposition of the subject and the object of knowledge. The object of knowledge is no longer perceived as existing "by itself". Its scientific description turned out to be dependent on certain conditions of knowledge. (Taking into account the state of motion of reference systems when recognizing the constancy of the speed of light; the method of observation (class of devices) when determining the momentum or coordinates of a microparticle, etc.)
4. The “representation” of the natural-scientific picture of the world about itself has also changed: it has become clear that the “only true”, absolutely accurate picture can never be drawn. Any of these pictures can have only relative truth. And this is true not only for its details, but for the entire structure as a whole.
So, the third global revolution in natural science began with the emergence of fundamentally new (compared to already known) fundamental theories– theories of relativity and quantum mechanics. Their approval led to a change in theoretical and methodological principles throughout the natural sciences. Later, already within the framework of the newborn non-classical picture of the world, mini-revolutions took place in cosmology (the concept of a non-stationary Universe), biology (the formation of genetics), etc. In this regard, the current (end of the 20th century) natural science has very significantly changed its appearance compared to the beginning of the century . However, the initial message, the impulse of its development remained the same - Einstein's (relativistic).
Thus, three global scientific revolutions predetermined three long stages in the development of science, each of which has its own general scientific picture of the world. This, of course, does not mean that only revolutions are important in the history of science. At the evolutionary stage, scientific discoveries are also made, new theories and methods are created. However, it is indisputable that it is precisely the revolutionary shifts affecting the foundations of the fundamental sciences that determine the general contours of the scientific picture of the world for a long period.
It is also important to understand the role and significance of scientific revolutions because the development of science has a clear tendency to accelerate. Between the Aristotelian and Newtonian revolutions lies a historical gulf of almost 2,000 years; A little more than 200 years separate Einstein from Newton. But less than 100 years have passed since the formation of the current scientific paradigm, as many representatives of the world of science have a feeling that a new global scientific revolution is near. And some even claim that it is already in full swing. And they are not far from the truth, since even a simple extrapolation of the tendency to accelerate the development of science for the near future allows us to expect new revolutionary events in science in the very near future.
At the same time, scientific revolutions (unlike social and political revolutions) do not frighten the scientific world. It has already established the belief that scientific revolutions, firstly, are a necessary moment of “change of course” in science, and secondly, they not only do not exclude, but, on the contrary, presuppose continuity in the development of scientific knowledge. According to the correspondence principle formulated by N. Bohr, any new scientific theory does not completely reject the previous one, but includes it as a special case, that is, it establishes a limited area of applicability for the previous theory. And at the same time, both theories (both old and new) can peacefully coexist.
Thus, the dialectical unity of discontinuity and continuity, revolutionism and stability can be considered one of the laws of the development of science.
Scientific revolutions
The crisis period in the development of science, according to Kuhn, begins with the discovery of anomalies. Solving more and more new tasks (puzzles), the scientific community is finally faced with a task that, in principle, cannot be solved within the framework of this paradigm. Kuhn calls this problem an anomaly. As the history of science shows, most often the discovery of the first anomaly does not lead to a crisis in the current paradigm. Representatives of the scientific community, faced with an unsolvable problem, believe that it will be solved later within the accepted paradigm (by improving the technical part of the paradigm), or simply "do not notice" this problem. But the development of science, in particular, the application of the dominant paradigm to solve new problems, leads to the discovery of new anomalies. The growth in the number of anomalies naturally undermines the authority of the corresponding paradigm. Science is entering a crisis period of its development. So, for example, anomalies, from the point of view of the paradigm of classical physics, were the problem of the “ultraviolet catastrophe”, then the problem of the photoelectric effect, then the problem of the stability of electron orbits in the model of the atom proposed by N. Bohr, etc. Scientists face problems that cannot be solved using the available theoretical and methodological tools. The unity of the scientific community is being destroyed. To solve these problems (anomalies), the advancement and development of hypotheses competing with each other, essentially going beyond the limits of the previous paradigm, begins. Scientists find themselves in a situation of choice: using experimental data, general theoretical and philosophical considerations, guided by intuition and value preferences, they try to choose the most acceptable one from the theories (concepts) being developed and competing with each other. The crisis period in the development of science ends when one of the proposed theories (concepts) begins to dominate, when a new paradigm is formed on its basis, cementing the scientific community. After that, this science again enters the period of “normal science”, the scientific community again begins to solve “puzzles”, etc.
Thus, according to T. Kuhn, the scientific revolution is a paradigm shift. The scientific revolution, according to this point of view, is a leap in the development of science, it is a break in gradualness. Kuhn tends to talk about "incommensurability", about the incomparability of successive paradigms. This is, first of all, his anticumulativeism. Kuhn argues that the subsequent paradigm is not some improvement (clarification, generalization, etc.) of the previous paradigm. A change of paradigms for him is a “transition from one world to another”. The new paradigm gives a new vision of the world: here are new objects, new facts, new problems, new methods, new concepts... Therefore, according to Kuhn, the scientific revolution (change of paradigms) does not lead science to progress.
The developments of K. Popper, T. Kuhn, as well as other modern philosophers of science (I. Lakatos and P. Feyerabend in particular) have shown that the concept of straightforward (“naive”) cumulativeness represents the real course of the development of science in an overly simplified and optimistic form. Indeed, in the development of science there is a place not only for quantitative changes, but also for qualitative transformations, not only for evolution, but also for revolutionary leaps, not only for clarification, detailing and generalization, but also for the rejection of familiar ideas, facts and concepts, not only for the improvement of theories (concepts ), but I will also reject them. At the same time, the anti-cumulative position of T. Kuhn and P. Feyerabend is also very vulnerable to criticism. This critique can only be developed by going into the details of the various variants of the anti-cumulative approach. Of course, we cannot do this here. Let us note only in a general form that the consistent development of anti-cumulativeism leads to the absolutization of the role of subjective factors in the development of science, to the denial of the importance of ideals and norms of scientific character, to what is called “epistemological anarchism” in modern philosophy of science.
Looking back at the history of science in general or a separate direction, we can say that development is uneven. The stages of the calm development of science or scientific direction end sooner or later. Theories that were considered true for some time are falsified by the accumulated facts that do not fit into these theories. There are new theories that at that time explain almost all the facts. An example here is the history of the theory of the structure of the atom. According to the theory that prevailed until the middle of the 19th century, it was believed that atoms are indivisible structural elements of matter. In the 80s of the same century, the Russian physicist Stoletov discovered the phenomenon of the photoelectric effect - when irradiated with light, a metal plate was positively charged, that is, it lost electrons. The theory of indivisible atoms could not explain this phenomenon. The conclusion suggests itself that atoms are divisible and consist of electrons and a positively charged base. There are, accordingly, questions about how the atom is arranged. J. J. Thompson proposes the first model of the structure of the atom, where electrons are evenly distributed in a positively charged base. The emergence of new facts (Rutherford's experience) falsified the Thompson model, a planetary model appeared, which was also replaced by the Bohr model at one time. The process of understanding the structure of the atom continues to this day and will continue in the future. Between the emergence of the previous and the next theories, as a rule, there is a period of calm development of science, lasting until the appearance of a certain number of facts that contradict the previous theory. As a rule, facts that appear during periods of calm development either confirm the previous theory or do not contradict it.
Thus, two phases are clearly visible in the development of science - the phase of the calm development of science and the phase of the scientific revolution. It is quite obvious that the phase that determines the further direction of the development of science is the scientific revolution.
What is the mechanism for the development of scientific revolutions? Where do their causes come from - from the “world of ideas” or should their roots be sought in the social environment? The main points of view of modern philosophers on the mechanism of scientific revolutions and on the development of science in general will be given below.
The evolutionary model is built by analogy with Darwin's theory and explains the development of science through the interaction of the processes of "innovation" and "selection". Toulmin identifies the following main features of the evolution of science:
1) The intellectual content of the discipline, on the one hand, is subject to change, and on the other, it reveals a clear continuity.
2) Trial ideas or methods constantly appear in the intellectual discipline, but only a few of them win a firm place in the system of disciplinary knowledge. Thus, the continuous emergence of intellectual innovations is balanced by a process of critical selection.
3) This two-way process produces noticeable conceptual changes only if some additional conditions are present. There must be, first, a sufficient number of people who can support the flow of intellectual innovation; secondly, “forums of competition”, in which tentative intellectual innovations can exist for a long time to discover their advantages and disadvantages.
4) The “intellectual ecology” of any historical and cultural situation is determined by a set of interrelated concepts. “In any problem situation, disciplinary selection “recognizes” those of the “competing” innovations that best meet the “requirements” of the local “intellectual environment”. These 'requirements' cover both the problems that each concept is directly intended to solve and other established concepts with which it must coexist.
Thus, the question of the laws governing the development of science is reduced to two groups of questions: firstly, what factors determine the emergence of theoretical innovations (analogous to the problem of the origin of mutant forms in biology) and, secondly, what factors determine the recognition and consolidation of one or another conceptual variant (analogous to the problem of biological selection).
Toulmin explores these issues later in his book. At the same time, he considers the “curiosity and ability to think of individuals” to be the necessary final source of conceptual changes, and this factor operates under a certain number of conditions. And emerging conceptual innovations can gain a foothold in the disciplinary tradition by passing through the “selection” filter. The decisive condition in this case for the survival of innovation is its contribution to establishing a correspondence between the explanations of this phenomenon and the accepted “explanatory ideal”.
Scientific knowledge is carried out in the following forms: problem, fact, theory, hypothesis. All scientific knowledge begins with a problem. A problem is a question or set of questions that objectively arises in the course of the development of knowledge, the solution of which is of significant practical or theoretical interest. A problem in science is such a task or question, the solution of which cannot be obtained by a logical transformation of the existing scientific knowledge. Solving a scientific problem and going beyond known knowledge, searching for new facts, theoretical data. A simple problem or question involves the use of a ready-made algorithm, scheme, or routine method for obtaining a solution. The problem basically contains some kind of contradiction between theory and practice, old knowledge and new facts, and so on. Problem solving begins with finding and analyzing facts. The whole course of the development of human knowledge can be represented as a transition from the formulation of some problems to their solution, and then the formulation of new ones. A problem is different from a question that has apparent significance. In scientific knowledge, the methods of solving a problem coincide with common methods and research methods. Due to the complex nature of the problems, systemic methods are of great importance. The development of scientific knowledge often leads to problems that take the form of a priori and paradoxes, the resolution of which requires a transition to a different philosophical level of their consideration. At the same time, materialistic dialectics comes to the fore in its empirical methodological function.
