Philosophy of science methodology of scientific research. Methodology of science as the most important section of the philosophy of science. science methodology knowledge philosophy
Plan
1. Concept, features, functions of science.
2. Stages of development of science. Scientific revolutions and change of types of scientific rationality.
3. Scientific and philosophical pictures of the world. The structure of scientific knowledge. Patterns of the growth of scientific knowledge.
4. Methods and forms of scientific knowledge.
The philosophy of science is a philosophical discipline, the subject of which is the study of science as a special form of the spiritual activity of society. The philosophy of science studies the essence of science, its functioning in the system of society, its connection with other types of spiritual activity of mankind.
Philosophy of science as a direction of philosophy is represented by a variety of concepts (logical positivism, critical rationalism), suggesting one or another model of the development of science. The philosophy of science arose in response to the need to comprehend the sociocultural functions of science in the conditions of the scientific and technological revolution.
Science in Latin means "knowledge". Therefore, the understanding of science as a system of knowledge is widespread. But science takes place where the process of creating new knowledge takes place. Science is a system of research activities of society, aimed at producing new knowledge about nature, society, and thinking. The goal of science is to obtain objective truth. Scientific knowledge is based on a number of principles: objectivity, causality, rationality, reproducibility, theoreticality, consistency, criticality. It is necessary to characterize these principles. There is also extra-scientific knowledge, in which the results are not reproduced and are not predicted (parascientific, pre-scientific, pseudo-scientific, pre-scientific, anti-scientific, pseudo-scientific). Science performs the following functions: a) cultural and technological; b) social regulation; c) direct productive force; d) descriptions, explanations, predictions; e) worldview, etc. The main function of science is the explanatory function. Scientific knowledge is characterized by extensive and intensive development, differentiation and integration.
Science is not only a system of new knowledge, but also a complex social institution. In this capacity, science arose in the seventeenth century. and includes: a) the production of new knowledge; b) bringing knowledge to their practical use; c) training of scientific personnel.
Domestic scientist V.S. Stepin distinguishes three periods in the development of modern science and three types of scientific rationality. He singles out classical science (XVII century - the end of the XIX century), non-classical (the end of the XIX century - the middle of the XX century), post-non-classical (the middle of the XX century to the present). Prepared the birth of classical science N. Kuzansky, N. Copernicus, J. Bruno. Classical science is characterized by a mechanical picture of the world. But, beginning with I. Kant, dialectical ideas begin to penetrate into science. For non-classical science, the idea of nature as a complex dynamic system is dominant. In post-non-classical science, the world appears as a complex self-organizing system. The classical type of scientific rationality corresponds to classical science. In scientific knowledge, attention is concentrated on the object, eliminating what belongs to the subject. The non-classical type of scientific rationality corresponds to non-classical science. Scientific knowledge takes into account the relationship between knowledge about the object and the nature of the means used. The post-nonclassical type of scientific rationality takes into account the correlation of scientific knowledge with the values and goals of the scientist. In the post-nonclassical period of the development of science, new ethical problems arise: in the field of bioethics, genetic engineering, cloning technologies, and transplantology. The cult of science led to the approval in the twentieth century. scientistic worldview. Anti-scientism comes from the negative consequences of the scientific and technological revolution, it is pessimistic in relation to the possibilities of science. It is necessary to characterize these areas.
The scientific picture of the world is a system of general ideas about the world, developed at the appropriate stages of the historical development of scientific knowledge. The philosophical picture of the world is a system of the most general philosophical concepts, principles, concepts, which at a certain historical stage gives an idea of the world as a whole. These worldviews are interconnected with each other. This interdependence is manifested in the structure of scientific knowledge. Scientific knowledge includes empirical knowledge, theoretical knowledge, ideals and norms of research, scientific picture of the world, philosophical foundations of science. It is necessary to characterize the structural components of scientific knowledge. The question arises: do social and cultural factors influence the content of scientific ideas?
In the Western philosophy of science, there are two points of view when answering this question: a) internalists (K. Popper, I. Lakatos, etc.) believe that science has its own history, regardless of the socio-cultural environment. According to K. Popper, the growth of scientific knowledge is due to the constant change of theories. He puts forward the principle of falsifiability: a theory is considered scientific if it can be refuted by experience. I. Lakatos introduces the concept of "research program"; b) externalists (T. Kuhn, Toulmin, Feyerabend) argue that only by referring to sociocultural factors can one explain the development of science and scientific knowledge. T. Kuhn introduces the concept of a paradigm, as scientific achievements recognized by all, which for a certain time provide a model for posing problems and solving them for the scientific community. Science develops by changing paradigms through the scientific revolution. Feyerabend puts forward the principle of proliferation, the multiplication of hypotheses.
The most important structural component of the organization of the process of cognition are its methods. The method is a set of rules, methods of cognitive and practical activity, due to the nature and laws of the object under study. Methods are divided into general logical and scientific. General logical methods are inherent in all cognition as a whole. They are used both at the ordinary and at the theoretical levels of knowledge. These include analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, analogy, abstraction. These methods are also used in scientific knowledge. But in scientific knowledge it is customary to single out methods of the empirical level of knowledge - observation, measurement, experiment, and methods of the theoretical level - idealization, formalization, modeling, a systematic approach, structural and functional analysis. It is necessary to give a detailed description of these methods. There are also private scientific methods, which are systems of principles of specific scientific theories formulated in an imperative form.
Philosophy plays an important role in scientific research. Such principles as the principle of objectivity, determinism, development, consistency, etc. are an integral part of the dialectical method. The application of this method to scientific activity is the merit of German classical and Marxist philosophy. The system of philosophical categories (considered earlier: individual, general, cause, effect, necessity, chance, essence, phenomenon, possibility, reality) also performs a methodological function. The system of the most general methods of cognition, as well as the doctrine of these methods, is called methodology. Methods contribute to the further development and deepening of knowledge.
Scientific knowledge about objects, phenomena of the material and spiritual world, their properties are expressed in various forms. The main forms of development of scientific knowledge are: fact, theory, problem, hypothesis. A fact is certain knowledge about a single thing. Not every scientific result is recognized as a fact. Only such knowledge becomes a fact, the truth of which can be verified by any scientist using scientific methods under specified conditions. A hypothesis is a form of scientific knowledge, which is a scientifically based assumption, in which, on the basis of a number of facts, a conclusion is made about the existence of objects and the relationships between them, about the reasons for their occurrence and development. A theory is a vast area of knowledge that describes and explains the totality of phenomena, gives knowledge of the real relationships of all the propositions put forward and reduces the laws discovered in this area to a single unifying principle. A scientific problem is a question to which there is no unequivocal answer in scientific knowledge. The solution of a scientific problem is the acquisition of new knowledge and the formulation of a new problem.
test questions
1. What are the signs of scientific knowledge?
2. What are the points of view on the time of the emergence of science and the stages of its development?
3. What are the features and structure of scientific knowledge?
4. Describe the types of scientific rationality (according to V.S. Stepin).
5. What are the methods of empirical and theoretical level of scientific knowledge?
6. What requirements should the main forms of scientific knowledge – fact, hypothesis, theory, problem – meet?
7. What is the structure of scientific theory?
8. What is the role of philosophy in scientific research?
1. Science in the modern sense appeared: a) in the 1st century. AD; b) in the fifteenth century; c) in the VI century. BC.; d) in the 17th century; e) in the twentieth century.
2. The type of scientific rationality, according to which only knowledge about the object of scientific knowledge is true, is called ……………………………….
3. Highlight the levels of scientific knowledge: a) sensory; b) empirical; c) theoretical; d) rational; e) epistemological.
4. Non-classical science has developed: a) from the VI century. BC. until the 17th century; b) from the 17th century. until the end of the 19th century; c) from the end of the 19th century. until the middle of the 20th century; d) from the middle of the 20th century. Until now
5. The mechanical picture of the world appeared: a) in the 17th century; b) in the 13th century; c) in the 19th century; d) in the XX century.
6. Dialectization of modern science involves: a) the development of ideas about the structural nature of matter; b) introduction of the idea of development into all spheres of scientific knowledge; c) the evolution of views on the development of science; d) application of the principle of historicism.
7. Scientism: a) proclaims scientific knowledge as the highest value of culture; b) draws attention to the negative consequences of scientific and technological progress; c) believes that the essence of the world is fundamentally unknowable; d) believes that matter is primary.
8. General scientific methods include: a) observation; b) idealization; c) deduction; d) analogy; e) experiment; e) systems approach; g) formalization; h) analogy; i) modeling.
CREATIVE TASKS
1. Read the text: “Ancient Eastern mathematics was a set of calculation rules, action schemes, which were always focused on application to specific real objects: areas, volumes, sets. For the formation of mathematics as a science, it was necessary to find a special space in which knowledge would exist as a special kind of "ideal being".
- Comment on this text.
– Where does the approach to mathematics as a science appear for the first time?
2. What are the "philosophical foundations of science"? Give examples from your area of professional activity.
3. Read the text: “The growth of scientific knowledge, according to Popper, is due to the constant change of theories, it is a consequence of the fact that each new theory poses and solves new, more complex problems, that is, it carries more information about the world (and therefore has more falsifiability).
What is Popper's principle of falsifiability?
– To what extent does Popper’s model of the development of science correspond to the actual state of affairs?
4. How can one explain that such areas of knowledge as traditional medicine, signs of a farmer or a hunter, the art of a glass blower, or the secrets of violin makers are not considered scientific and are not included in the system of science?
5. There are a number of areas of knowledge that claim the status of sciences, but are not recognized as such. What scientific requirements do not meet astrology, parapsychology?
6. Whether science and scientists are responsible for the negative social and human consequences of scientific and technological progress is a central issue in debates in the field of ethics of science.
– What is the degree of influence of a scientist on the negative consequences of science?
– What is the role of science in preventing negative effects?
Is it possible to predict the results of scientific research?
When answering these questions, you can use the book: Jonas G. Science as a personal experience // Jonas G. The principle of responsibility. Experience of Ethics for Technological Civilization. M., 2004.
7. The concept of "ethos of science" was introduced into circulation by the American sociologist R. Merton, who understood ethos as the totality of norms and principles reproduced in science. Answer the questions:
What is the nature of these values?
– to what extent are they able to subjugate and transform the character traits of an individual scientist, on which the fate of a scientific discovery may depend?
When answering these questions, you can use the work: Barbour I. Ethics in the age of technology. M., 2004. You can also recall the images of scientists created by science fiction writers: the "invisible man" G. Wells, engineer Garin A. Tolstoy.
Cheslav Stanislavovich Kirvel, Anatoly Izotovich Zelenkov, Lyubov Leonidovna Melnikova and others
Philosophy and methodology of science: textbook
admitted
Ministry of Education of the Republic of Belarus as a teaching aid for undergraduates of higher education institutions
Under the editorship of Doctor of Philosophy Professor Ch.S. Kirvel
The authors: V.V. Anokhin, A.A. Borodich, I.V. Busko, PA. Vodopyanov, A. P. Zhdanovsky, LI. Zelenkov, NA. Kandrichin, P.S. Karako, V.V. Karpinsky, Ch.S. Kirvel, N.K. Kisel, A.A. Lazarevich, I.A. Medvedeva, L.L. Melnikova, V. T. Novikov, O.V. Novikova, O.A. Romanov, O.G. Shavrova, N.S. shchekin
Reviewers: Department of Philosophy of the Institute for the Training of Scientific Personnel of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus (Doctor of Philosophy, Professor A.I. Osipov) -, Doctor of Philosophical Sciences A.S. Laptenok
Foreword
The need to adapt the educational experience accumulated at the world's leading universities and advanced innovative technologies in the field of specialized training of graduate students and undergraduates poses a number of new non-traditional tasks for modern higher education. First of all, this is the task of organically combining in-depth professional training and programs for its sociocultural adaptation. We are talking about the formation and development of a meaningful need not only to master the methods of scientific and pedagogical creativity, to effectively solve current research problems, but also to adequately assess the role and significance of new scientific ideas for the development of society, to determine their value and anthropological dimension. Such a strategic orientation in the development of specialized education corresponds to the main trends in the dynamics of modern science, which is increasingly integrating instrumental-technological and socio-cultural parameters of scientific knowledge.
In this regard, it is fundamentally important to organize the educational and research process in postgraduate and master's programs in such a way that it organically combines specific scientific tasks with general methodological training, which involves adequate perception and reflective assessment of the priorities of one's professional activity. It is necessary to positively assess the tradition that has developed in the domestic higher education, according to which the successful training of scientific and pedagogical personnel involved the systematic study of the course of philosophy and the formation on this basis of the skills of reflexive and methodological thinking.
In the current situation, the role and importance of the philosophical and methodological training of graduate students and young scientists is growing even more. This is determined by a complex of objective processes taking place in society and forming the problematic field of sociodynamics at the beginning of the 21st century. Frontal introduction of science and modern information technologies into the most important spheres of society, globalization of world development, permanent aggravation of environmental problems, the emergence of numerous centers of regional tension in connection with the processes of transformation and modernization of post-socialist and developing states, the phenomenon of mass culture and the emergence of non-linear and virtual models of the life of consciousness - these and many other phenomena actualize the problems of the philosophical-ideological and logical-methodological level. Their professional and creative understanding requires serious and focused training of future scientists and teachers.
The course “Philosophy and Methodology of Science” is called upon to contribute to the fulfillment of this cardinal task, which, in accordance with the decision of the Higher Attestation Commission of the Republic of Belarus, is recommended for postgraduate studies and is focused on the tasks of philosophical and methodological support for the scientific and professional activities of graduate students, undergraduates and applicants, their creative understanding relevant philosophical issues that are directly related to the issues of logic, methodology, sociology of science and education.
At the same time, in the structure of the course “Philosophy and Methodology of Science”, important attention is also paid to traditional philosophical and worldview issues, although it is considered in an accentuated modern context, without repeating the general provisions from the basic course of philosophy, which is studied in universities.
It is important, when arguing in this context, to keep in mind the specifics of philosophy, which involves theoretical understanding of the cumulative experience of the history of universal culture in order to develop a holistic theoretical worldview.
It should be emphasized that the private sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, etc.), despite all their achievements, are not able to provide answers to worldview, meaningful (eternal) questions. For upon closer examination it turns out that these questions do not have a scientific solution. Their formulation and comprehension have always been within the competence of philosophy, since only philosophy had the true ability to express the deep foundations of culture and forms of human existence in the world. Apparently, therefore, many scientists and representatives of various branches of knowledge and professions are constantly interested in philosophical problems.
Both in the past and in the present, fundamental discoveries in a particular field of knowledge were made by universally educated people who are well versed in the general social picture of the world, in literature, art, history, etc.
We are talking about the self-determination of a person in the world, about his search for his own way in society, about the need to understand himself, to comprehend his life and destiny. All these problems are extremely important for a person; they affect the very essence of his being. Each of us can and should solve these problems on our own, but it does not follow from this that every time we need to invent means of solving them. These funds were created in the course of the development of various spheres of human culture. In the most concentrated form, they are presented in philosophy, which was professionally oriented towards their search. Hence, the need to solve all these problems is based on the already accumulated knowledge, on the variants of their understanding and interpretation proposed by thinkers of various eras and peoples.
The goal of philosophy is the formation of theoretically enriched minds capable of critical and creative perception of the surrounding reality, of posing and analyzing complex issues, of finding an independent answer to the most important problems of human existence. The task of philosophy is to educate a highly humane and moral person, with a developed sense of civic duty and love for the fatherland. In other words, the purpose of philosophy is to promote the elevation of man, to prove "the existence of man as man" (E. Agazzi). And in the fulfillment of this purpose, philosophy must be courageous and consistent. Philosophy must resist everyone who offends and humiliates a person in others and in himself, who, under the guise of asserting universal human values and implementing the idea of a “new world order”, seeks to fulfill their corporate, selfish interests. This is the great mission of philosophy.
The role of philosophy becomes especially noticeable and important during periods of cultural crises, in transitional eras, when the old ideals, principles and norms are no longer valid, and new ones have not yet been formed. This is exactly the situation we are facing today. The modern phase of human development, full of contradictions and surprises, while opening up many new prospects and opportunities for people, has at the same time radically changed our planet, confronted people with intractable problems that have no analogues in the past, and threatens them with all sorts of upheavals and cataclysms.
Today, a number of crucial questions arise with all their urgency. How to stop the process of destruction of nature and at the same time provide society with the resources necessary to maintain material production and life? How to prevent an anthropological crisis that undermines human identity while maintaining people's health? How to ensure the free development of the individual without sacrificing the social regulation of social processes? Philosophy, having centuries-old experience of critically reflective reflection on the most fundamental problems of human existence, can and should help people in understanding and solving these complex and burning issues of our time, in search of an answer to the challenge of the time.
The authors of this tutorial see one of their most important tasks in identifying promising growth points and problems that are expected in the near and foreseeable future. Not to be a slave to circumstances and the dictates of time, but to be able to resist them - this is the main thing for which it is necessary to prepare the future elite of society.
Philosophy acts as a general methodology of science, as the most important means of scientific knowledge of the world. Each science uses a whole range of methods and, along with specific, conditioned features of the object under study, uses universal mental tools (categories, principles, general scientific methods of cognition). But scientists are not specifically engaged in the development, comprehension of these cognitive means. The epistemological foundations of science are developed by such a section of philosophical knowledge as the philosophy and methodology of science.
Philosophical methodology has its own specifics:
Firstly, it is abstract, that is, it has an extremely general character. The methodological recommendations that philosophy gives are not simple and unambiguous, and even more so - prescription.
Secondly, they are heuristic in nature, that is, they are exhausted, in fact, by certain perspectives, clues, symbols.
All methods of scientific knowledge according to the degree of generality and scope can be divided into the following main groups:
1. Universal (dialectical and metaphysical);
2. General scientific (experiment, observation, modeling, etc.);
3. Private methods characteristic only of certain sciences (densitometry, cross-dating, etc. - in dendrochronology).
The universality of materialistic dialectics lies in the fact that in its laws and categories it reflects the most general laws of objective reality. Dialectics as a method of cognition permeates the entire cognitive process in any field of knowledge.
Philosophy does not put into the hands of the scientist a specific method for studying precisely chemical or mechanical phenomena. But philosophy as a theory of knowledge and dialectical logic equips the researcher with a general method of thinking and general scientific methods. The methodological significance of materialistic dialectics lies in the fact that it acts as the basic principles of a worldview applied to the process of cognition and practice.
So, principle of objectivity acts as a requirement to consider the objects under consideration as existing outside and independently of the cognizing subject. The very content of knowledge is the process of reflection in the consciousness of the cognizing subject of objective connections, properties, relations.
Knowability principle is that there are no fundamental obstacles to gaining knowledge about the outside world. All human history and practice prove that the world, its connections are cognizable and can be used in activity.
The principle of comprehensiveness requires for the knowledge of the object to study all its aspects, properties and connections. In practice, this is difficult to do, but the more we study the subject, the more substantiated and conclusive our knowledge is. The principle of comprehensiveness is implemented in the form of an integrated approach to the objects of knowledge.
The principle of historicism is to study the causes of the object, the stages of its development, the essence of the current stage and its future.
Although the actual historical proceeds from the past through the present to the future, the study of history proceeds in the opposite direction. It begins with the study of the results of development (the present) and then the reconstruction of the past (analysis of the emergence of the object, its genesis and the main stages of historical development).
The principle of concreteness requires the study of the object to take into account its features and conditions of cognition.
A separate consideration requires the question of the methodology of the science of Western philosophy. The most significant contribution to their development was made by representatives of postpositivism, a philosophical movement that came in the 60s. XX century to replace neopositivism (K. Popper, T. Kuhn, I. Lakatos, P. Feyerabend).
In concept K. Popper science is considered one of the greatest forces that makes man free. At the same time, it is created by man, and its history is full of errors and delusions. Popper distinguishes two main classes of sciences: theoretical or generalizing (biology, physics, sociology), the purpose of which is the discovery of universal laws or hypotheses, and historical, which study specific specific events and give their causal explanation.
Methodology, according to Popper, is the theory of scientific methods. There are quite a few of these methods, and they are interrelated: empirical and theoretical, inductive and deductive, philosophical and non-philosophical, etc. Unlike neopositivists, Popper does not deny the role of philosophical methods in cognition and believes that philosophical ideas preceded or contributed to the progress of science.
Popper believes that "everything is open to criticism" and considers the critical method to be the greatest method of science. Op proceeds from the fact that no source of knowledge or its form can be excluded from the sphere of criticism. “Nothing is free and should not be considered free from criticism - not even the very basic principle of the critical method” / 4, p. 393/. Popper's critical method is quite dialectical. This “method of detecting and resolving contradictions is also used within science itself, but it has a special meaning precisely for the theory of knowledge. No other method can help us justify our methodological conventions and prove their value” /4, p. 81/.
American philosopher and historian of science T. Kuhn adheres to the historical-evolutionary direction in the philosophy of science. The paradigm is the central concept of the historical-scientific process. It is understood as a conceptual scheme, a set of beliefs, values and technical means adopted by the scientific community and ensuring the existence of scientific traditions. The paradigm is embodied in textbooks and classical works of scientists and for many years determines the range of problems and methods for their solution in a particular field of science. Kuhn refers Ptolemaic astronomy, Newtonian mechanics, and the oxygen theory of combustion to paradigms.
Among the set of "methodological directives" Kuhn also finds a place for philosophical principles, starting with the selection and interpretation of evidence. Kuhn believes that scientists are not obliged and do not want to be philosophers, but, regardless of their desire, they are forced to become one, “especially during periods of awareness of crises, when scientists turn to philosophical analysis as a means to uncover mysteries in their field” /1 , With. 123/.
A slightly different concept of science was proposed I. Lakatos, which he called the methodology of research programs. His methodology sees the growth of a mature science as a succession of a series of continuously connected theories, behind which is a research program.
Each research program has the following structure:
a) "hard core" - an integral system of fundamental, particular scientific and ontological assumptions that are preserved in all theories of this program;
b) "protective belt", consisting of auxiliary hypotheses and ensuring the safety of the "hard core" from damage; it can be modified, partially or completely replaced when faced with counterexamples;
c) normative, methodological rules-regulators prescribing which paths are most promising for further research (“positive heuristic”), and which paths should be avoided (“negative heuristic”).
From the point of view of Lakatos, heuristics are characterized by conjectures, limiting the scope of searches through the analysis of ends, means and materials, attempts to integrate thinking and sensory perception, consciousness and the unconscious. A positive heuristic is more flexible than a negative one, it can be formulated as a philosophical principle and plays the first fiddle in the development of a research program.
In the concept of science P. Feyerabend much attention is paid to the problems of method and methodology. In his opinion, the correct method is one of the important factors in the accelerated development of science, although chance and other non-methodological factors are of no small importance here. Any methodology is not omnipotent, but has its own limits, its scope, beyond which it will be ineffective.
Denying the existence of the only true and universal method, any universal standards and inert traditions, the philosopher develops his own concept of theoretical and methodological pluralism. Its essence lies in two theses: “Diversity of opinions is necessary for objective knowledge, and the method that encourages such diversity is the only one compatible with the humanistic position” /6, p. 178./.
Foreword
The proposed work is by no means original research. It does not form fundamentally new questions and does not offer original solutions to old problems. Yes, this is not required of her at all. For its pathos as a teaching aid is not the study of the unknown and not the establishment of a fundamentally new one, but a description of what is already known and a presentation of what has been achieved. It was compiled in accordance with the curriculum of the course on "Methodology of scientific creativity" taught by the author at SPbGITMO (TU) and is written in the spirit, i.e. "in the image and likeness" of the existing educational literature on the subject of this course. Thus, it partially reproduces the structure and order of presentation of the material, typical for some foreign educational publications on the "philosophy of science" and the domestic textbook "Philosophy and Methodology of Science", published in 1996, edited by V.I. Kuptsov. And this is natural, since it pursues the same goal and performs the same task as these publications, i.e. covers the same issues and expounds the same concepts. Nevertheless, I considered it necessary to express my own opinions on some of the issues discussed, including those of a practical nature. At the same time, I tried not to abuse the polemical form of presentation, which is far from desirable and not always appropriate in an educational publication.
In conclusion, I would like to express the hope that although the proposed textbook was the result of satisfying a higher need rather than an internal need, it will nevertheless be useful to those to whom it is intended and will provide them with real assistance in mastering the relevant educational material.
St. Petersburg, June 1999
Chapter 1
Philosophical image of science
Science is a historically later and, consequently, younger form of social consciousness than myth, religion and philosophy. It arises on the basis of these more ancient forms of worldview.
Science, as a consequence of the social division of labor, has as its beginning the separation of mental labor from physical labor. It is thanks to this factor of social development that a special type of human activity begins to take shape - scientific and cognitive.
Science as a special kind of human activity is determined by a number of essential points or features. It differs from other types of this activity, first of all, by its purpose, its content. The main goal of science is to obtain knowledge about objective and subjective reality. Consequently, knowledge is the product of scientific and cognitive activity. But knowledge is scientific and non-scientific. Scientific knowledge differs from non-scientific knowledge in systematization, validity (or evidence) and objectivity. Science is not a collection of random, unrelated knowledge. On the contrary, it is the essence of systematically organized knowledge. Therefore, scientific knowledge is knowledge transformed into a system.
The second most important characteristic of scientific knowledge is its validity. Science cannot and has no right to take anything on faith. According to the apt remark of the English naturalist Thomas Huxley (1825-1895), "science commits suicide if it takes anything on faith." It creates and applies various ways of substantiating the truth of knowledge. Scientific knowledge is, therefore, not merely verifiable and provable knowledge, but verified and proven knowledge.
The next essential feature of scientific knowledge is its objectivity. Scientific knowledge has an objective, i.e. content independent of man or humanity. True, in Western philosophy of science they prefer to talk not about objectivity, but about the intersubjectivity of scientific knowledge, understanding this latter as transpersonal, i.e. the nature of this knowledge, independent of the personal qualities of the scientist.
Science as a special kind of human activity, in addition to its goal (i.e., its end product), differs from other types of this activity also in the methods and means of realizing its goal and in its subject. It should also be noted the specifics of science as a social institution.
The main means of scientific and cognitive activity is, of course, the language of science. At the same time, it should be noted that science is not limited to the use of natural language, but also creates its own special, so-called artificial languages. In addition to these artificial languages, science also creates the most diverse observational means and experimental facilities that allow it to achieve its goal and obtain its final product.
Along with its means, science also has its own methods, which, as one of the founders of the philosophy of the New Age, F. Bacon, once believed, are the shortest paths leading to the truth. In the methodological arsenal of science, we find a wide variety of empirical and theoretical research methods, such as observation, experiment, comparison, analogy, explanation, foresight, idealization, modeling, formalization, induction, deduction, analysis, synthesis, hypothesis, etc. These and other methods of scientific knowledge will be discussed in more detail later.
Science is also distinguished by its subject matter, which embraces both objective and subjective reality. After all, the object of its study and research is not only reality, nature, but also the inner world of the person himself. She, in addition, studies the so-called "second nature" created by man, i.e. culture. Consequently, the subject of scientific and cognitive activity encompasses nature, society, man (including human thinking and human knowledge), and culture. However, since all of the above moments are elements of a single and integral system - reality or reality, we can briefly characterize science as a reflection and expression of reality that is objective in its content.
Finally, the social status of science as a relatively independent social institution should also be noted. After all, firstly, it is created and developed by a separate social structure and stratum, which is the community of scientists. Secondly, it, as a relatively independent element of the social structure, is in active interaction with its other elements. Science, while actively influencing other social institutions, is itself strongly influenced by them.
So, summing up what has been said, we can define science as a social institution that has its purpose in obtaining systematized, strictly (i.e. logically and experimentally) substantiated, and, therefore, objective knowledge about reality with the help of special methods and means.
It is precisely because of this essential content that science was in the first stages of its formation and development in a very complex and sometimes dramatic relationship with religion.
The prehistory of science begins, in fact, from time immemorial in human history. Even the primitive myth contained elements of empirical knowledge expressing the practical experience of ancient man. And despite the fact that the primitive myth was syncretistic, it was characterized by symbolism, allegorism and generalization. On the basis of the symbolism and allegorism of myth, religion and art subsequently arise historically. As for generalization as an indistinguishable element of primitive myth, it becomes one of the historical foundations or sources for the emergence of philosophy, and through it science.
It should be noted that myth and mythology, as historically the first form of worldview, at a higher stage of their development, treated the elements of scientific knowledge and free philosophical reasoning less zealously and more tolerantly (tolerantly) than the dominant religious ideology subsequently turned to them. This, apparently, is one of the reasons explaining the rise of scientific knowledge and philosophical thought in Ancient Greece.
Religion, as a form of social consciousness, as a historical form of worldview, comes not from experience and reason, which form the basis of scientific knowledge, but from logically and empirically unfounded faith. It is blind faith in the supernatural and otherworldly, faith in the unreasonable, and, ultimately, the absurd, that forms the foundation of the religious picture of the world. And I think it's better, that is. Tertullian, the apologist of Christianity, expressed this simple truth most precisely and brightly with his famous thesis: "Credo quia absurdam" - "I believe because it is absurd."
And, of course, therefore, religion, having become an undividedly dominant ideology, does not just drive scientific knowledge into a corner, i.e. greatly limits its capabilities, but also literally turns it into a means of consolidating and strengthening its dominant position. Thus, in the dark ages of medieval Europe, science is reduced to the level of a mere servant of theology. And mankind had to pay a very dear price to free science from the cruel power of religion. It is enough to recall the names and surnames of the great martyrs of science - Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), Lucilio Vanini (1585-1618), Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639), Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) and many others to agree with this.
The beginning of a difficult and complex process of liberation of philosophy and, along with it, science from the dictates of religious fanaticism and religious obscurantism was laid by the theory of the duality of truth, developed by the Arab philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes) (1126-1198). According to this theory, as if there are two truths - one for philosophy (respectively, for science), and the other for religion. That is why differences between science and religion, between philosophy and theology are quite acceptable. What appears true to philosophy or science may well be false from the point of view of theology or religion, and vice versa. In accordance with this, the autonomy of both science and religion is proclaimed, i.e. the principle of their non-interference in each other's affairs is declared.
This principle was the basis for the charter and activity, created in 1660, the prototype of the modern scientific community - the Royal Society of Naturalists of London, as evidenced by the charter of this society, which strictly declares the autonomy of natural science.
Undoubtedly, such an approach responded to the gradually emerging needs of society in the institutionalization of science. But before becoming an independent social institution, science had to be born and develop to the level at which it could become one of the most important elements of the social structure.
So, where and when did science originate? There is no unequivocal answer to this question yet and it is unlikely to be. The fact is that different authors invest in the concept of "Science" different content. So, according to some scientists, science is identified, in fact, with the practical and cognitive experience of mankind, and that is why we can assume that it appeared at the dawn of human history. Others understand science as the first attempts at systematic knowledge and therefore they believe that it was born around the 5th century BC. in Ancient Greece. Still others prefer to talk about the late Middle Ages (XIII-XIV centuries) as the time of the birth of science, since by science they understand experimental knowledge. At the same time, they refer to the activities of such thinkers as Roger Bacon (1210-c.1294), who owns the thesis that has become an aphorism: "Knowledge is power",
However, most experts agree that science in its modern sense appears only in the 16th-17th centuries. After all, it was precisely at this time that a new natural science took shape and began its ascent in Europe. Some researchers transfer the date of birth of science to the first half of the 19th century. There are those who believe that real science has not yet been born and that it will appear only in the 21st century.
At the same time, it should be noted that historians of science show greater unanimity in determining the birthplace of science. The vast majority of them believe that science was born in Europe. Therefore, many of them explore the problems of their subject from the standpoint of Eurocentrism. However, some historians of science reject such an extreme position and recognize the crucial importance of the contribution that the East (both ancient and medieval) made to the formation and development of scientific knowledge. So, for example, J. Nidam emphasizes the most important role of Chinese civilization in the development of science and technology, and Alexander Koyre directly states that "the Arabs were teachers and educators of the Latin West." But the Arabs, as you know, learned from the ancient Greeks and Persians, just as the ancient Greeks learned from the ancient Egyptians, Phoenicians and Babylonians, and the ancient Persians from the Babylonians. These facts show that the birth of science or culture as a whole cannot be associated with any particular people or with any particular region. Many civilizations have contributed to this process. Of course, it should be recognized that the contributions of different peoples and regions to the creation and development of scientific knowledge are different both in volume and content. However, this circumstance in no way denies or refutes, but, on the contrary, confirms and proves the international nature of science as a universal human creation.
With the beginning of the autonomization of science, in fact, the process of its institutionalization also begins. Starting from the XVI-XVII centuries. the intrinsic value of science, its importance for the functioning of the social whole, is increasingly recognized. In the Age of Enlightenment (18th century), science began to be viewed as the decisive driving and transforming force of social reality. From the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, the process of institutionalization of science enters a new phase, which is characterized by two significant points, namely: the increasing economic efficiency of scientific research and the professionalization of scientific activity associated with this. In this regard, the so-called "big science" begins to take shape - a kind of synthesis of science, technology and production. In this new scientific and technical field, the distance between scientific and technical developments and their practical applications and implementation in the production process is significantly reduced. The activity of a scientist in this new sphere is motivated and stimulated not so much by the spiritual demands of the search for truth, but by the desire to obtain a practical, technical-production effect. It is in this way that the commercialization of science takes place, its ever greater involvement in the economic whirlpool, which, of course, causes serious concern and fear among many scientists.
As for the professionalization of science, it continues to gain momentum and has become such an essential element of modern scientific activity that the image of an amateur scientist has sunk into oblivion. The time of dilettantes and self-taught in science has passed. Modern scientific knowledge in any kind of integral sphere has become so vast and rich in content and complex in structure that it is no longer possible to master it without special academic training. In this regard, science becomes a profession in the sense that one must devote one's life to scientific pursuits. In other words, it turns into a source of existence for those who have chosen a scientific occupation as a kind of their activity. The professionalization of science is expressed, finally, in the formation of a system of moral imperatives that regulate the relations of scientists within the scientific community, i.e. in the formation of professional responsibility or professional ethics of scientists.
Chapter 2
Methodology of science as the most important section of the philosophy of science
Above we touched on the relationship between science and religion. Let us now dwell on the relationship between science and philosophy.
It should be noted that the relationship between science and philosophy was fundamentally different in comparison with the relationship between science and religion. The fact is that many sciences, and especially natural ones, such as physics, astronomy, biology, in their embryonic state, i.e. in the form of sporadic knowledge, first appeared in the bosom of philosophy and only after developing and reaching, so to speak, a mature state, did they sprout from it. That is why the relationship between philosophy and the emerging science was not just trusting, but also, in a certain sense, had a genetic character, i.e. were, figuratively speaking, motherly warm. This circumstance was, apparently, one of the reasons for the prevailing understanding of philosophy as the "mother" or "queen" ("queen") of sciences until the middle of the last century. However, such an understanding of the relationship between philosophy and science actually also reduces science to the miserable state of a ward, as a result of which this latter also loses its autonomy and independence. And it is possible that it was this attempt to strangle science in the arms of philosophy that forced one of the greatest minds of mankind - Isaac Newton (1634-1727) to throw his famous cry: "Physics, beware of metaphysics" (by metaphysics he meant philosophy ).
The dominant view in ancient and classical philosophy on the relationship between science and philosophy, according to which this latter was placed above science as its highest and strict mistress, was subjected to serious criticism by the middle of the past, albeit from different positions, and fundamentally revised, as in Marxist philosophy and in positivism.
Marxist philosophy has developed a tradition of approaching the problem of the relationship between science and philosophy and solving it from the standpoint of the dialectic of the universal, the general, and the particular. According to this tradition, philosophy has as its subject the universal connection of the phenomena of reality, i.e. those universal patterns that operate and reveal themselves in all areas or fragments of reality. Meanwhile, science deals only with particular or, at best, with general laws that act and manifest themselves either in a separate area of reality, or only in some of its fragments. Because of this, philosophy, according to the Marxist point of view, can perform and actually performs in relation to science only a general methodological function. It is declared the general methodology of scientific knowledge. However, being the general methodology of science, philosophy, in turn, experiences a certain active influence from science. So, for example, it cannot clarify its concepts and ideas and develop further otherwise than by summarizing the most important data and achievements, if not of all sciences, then at least of many of them.
Consequently, philosophy and science, as the most important spheres or areas of unified human cognition, are, according to the Marxist philosophical concept, in dialectical interaction with each other, in relation to active mutual influence.
As for positivism, it exposes the model "Philosophy - queen of the sciences" criticism and revision, based on completely different fundamental considerations. The founder of positivism, the French philosopher and sociologist Auguste Comte (1798-1857) believes that speculative, i.e. speculative philosophy (or, as he calls it - metaphysics ), in principle, is impossible due to its "non-empiricism". The fact is that science, according to him, can only perform a descriptive function. It does not deal with entities (because they are unknowable), but only with phenomena. That is why Comte believes only those knowledge that are either directly "derived from experience" or are reducible (at least in the final analysis) to the elements of sensory experience - to sensations are scientific. As for metaphysical (i.e. philosophical) problems and ideas, they, due to their "non-empiricism", cannot be evaluated by us in any way. Therefore, Comte declares them meaningless. So, positivism essentially rejects the very right of metaphysics (or philosophy in its traditional sense) to beings ing as a special section of human knowledge. Attempts to rehabilitate philosophy as an integral part of this knowledge, undertaken by the so-called third positivism (i.e., neo-positivism), ended in the ultimate narrowing and impoverishment of the subject of philosophy, both in scope and content. So philosophy, according to logical positivists (M. Schlick (1882-1936), Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970) and others), can and should have only the study of the logical-epistemological structure of knowledge as its subject. In contrast to the logical positivists, the proponents of analytic philosophy (Bertrand Russell (1871-1970), Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)) defined the subject of philosophy as a critique of language.
The post-positivist tradition (Karl Popper (1902-1994), Imre Lakatos (1922-1974) and others), although it does not reject, following the example of the positivist tradition, metaphysics (philosophy), nevertheless, emphasizes only the conjectural nature of the metaphysical (as well as any other, including scientific) knowledge. Therefore, in full agreement with the Popperian concept of "critical rationality", it requires that philosophy be open to rational criticism.
Until now, we have focused only on the view of philosophers on the problem of the relationship between science and philosophy. Now let us briefly characterize the view of the scientists themselves on this problem.
It should be noted that some modern scientists have remained true to Newton's cry: "Physics, beware of metaphysics." At the same time, unlike I. Newton, they more or less clearly proceed from positivist attitudes.
However, among modern natural scientists we find many great figures who, in a rather categorical manner, rejected such an approach. And, in order not to be unfounded, here are the statements of two great physicists of our time - Albert Einstein (1879-1955) and Max Born (1882-1970).
"Without faith in that, wrote A. Einstein, that it is possible to embrace reality with our theoretical constructions, without faith in the inner harmony of our world, there could be no science. This faith will forever remain the main motive of any scientific creativity." "In our time," he wrote elsewhere, "the physicist is forced to deal with philosophical problems to a much greater extent than the physicists of previous generations had to do. Physicists are forced to do this by the difficulties of their own science." And then we read from him that "science without a theory of knowledge (as far as it is generally conceivable) becomes primitive and confused."
And Max Born stated no less clearly and categorically that "a physics free from metaphysical hypotheses is impossible." Further, he noted: "No tricks can avoid the question of the existence of an objective, independent of the observer of the world, the world "on the other side" of phenomena." Therefore, Max Born believed that physics cannot do without philosophy, the subject of which, in his opinion, is "the study of the general features of the structure of the world and our methods of penetrating this structure."
The methodological function that philosophy performs in relation to science receives its vivid expression and direct personification in a special section of philosophical knowledge, which, since the second half of our century, has been given the name "Philosophy and Methodology of Science". And generally speaking, the methodology of scientific knowledge is the main core of the philosophy of science. It is the essence of such a section of philosophical knowledge, which deals, first of all, with the substantiation of scientific knowledge. Its task is also to reveal the principles of this knowledge and methods for obtaining it. In other words, methodology is the doctrine of the foundations, methods and principles of scientific activity. Method (Greek methodos - literally means the way to something), as the central concept of methodology, denotes a way to achieve a goal or solve a corresponding problem. Therefore, the scientific method can be defined as a path or method of research that ensures and guarantees the receipt of scientific knowledge.
In the methodology of cognitive activity, methods are usually distinguished between philosophical (i.e., general), general scientific, and private methods. Let us first dwell briefly on philosophical methods.
In philosophy, two main methods of reasoning and understanding can be distinguished - metaphysical and dialectical.
The term "metaphysics" appeared, one might say, purely by accident. The fact is that who lived in the 1st century BC. the systematizer of Aristotle's works, Andronicus of Rodsky, placed in the list of these works compiled by him Aristotle's work, devoted to the study of beings immediately after his physics. And, since the work in question did not have a name then, after the announcement of the list of Andronicus of Rodsky, it began to be called "metaphysics" (Greek meta physikos, that is, what comes after physics). And since in this work Aristotle poses and solves purely philosophical problems, problems related to that sphere of knowledge, which he calls the "first philosophy", the term "metaphysics" in the subsequent period began to be used as a synonym for the term philosophy. Hegel for the first time puts a completely different content into the term "metaphysics", considering it as a method of thinking and philosophical reasoning. According to Hegel, and then to K. Marx, metaphysics is understood as anti-dialectics. Under the metaphysical method of thinking and research, they understood the way in which things, phenomena, relationships, etc. are taken and studied as something frozen, constant, motionless, unchanging, devoid of internal inconsistency, isolated, cut off from all its connections, lifeless, mortified. The essence of the metaphysical method is clearly expressed by the formal-logical law of identity "A is A".
The direct opposite of the metaphysical method is the dialectical method, by which both Hegel and Marx understood such a way of thinking and research that takes and understands things, phenomena and relations in the form of a continuous process, i.e. as something living, mobile, constantly changing and developing, internally contradictory, in constant interaction with the environment, i.e. taken in all its connections. The main and essential points or features of the dialectical method are the unity and struggle of opposites, the mutual transition of quantity into quality and vice versa, and the negation of negation.
Both philosophical methods have value, and the importance of any of them in philosophical and cognitive research cannot be denied. However, since the overall result of human knowledge more and more convinces us that reality is a continuous process and is in constant development, it is the dialectical method that should be recognized as the leading one. Therefore, any attempt to absolutize the meaning of the metaphysical method will inevitably lead to a separation from reality.
Unlike philosophical methods, which are of a general nature, general scientific and particular methods are used in most areas or individual areas of scientific knowledge. Let us dwell briefly on the most important methods of scientific research, both experimental and theoretical, and try to give them a brief definition.
The simplest and, therefore, the initial method of empirical knowledge is observation. Observation is a purposeful perception of phenomena without interference in the natural course of their functioning and development on the part of their observer. It provides the raw material for scientific research.
Unlike observation, experiment (lat.experimentum - test, experience) is an active research procedure, which consists in the active influence of the researcher on the subject of his research. Consequently, within the framework of the experiment, the observer (or rather, the researcher) interferes, as it were, in the natural course of events or the functioning of phenomena in order to better, more clearly identify, reveal and understand certain properties, relationships, etc., to be studied. In a certain sense, one can consider an experiment as an active and specially organized observation.
Description is directly adjacent to observation and experiment. It, as a research procedure, consists in fixing the data of observation and experiment through, i.e. with the help of notation systems accepted in science. Description, being a function of scientific knowledge, prepares the necessary ground for theoretical research, which is most immediately realized in the form of an explanation.
Explanation is both a method and a function of scientific knowledge, consisting in revealing and revealing the essence of the object under study. It is carried out by revealing and establishing the internal law of this object. The explanation can be attributive, genetic (in particular, causal), functional, structural, etc. It is closely connected with the description, which, as a rule, constitutes its premise, the basis. That is why without a description of the phenomena, their explanation is, as usual, impossible. However, this also means that the description itself, as it were, finds its true purpose and purpose in the explanation. It should be added to this that the explanation itself is the basis for foresight as another important function of scientific knowledge.
As a research method or procedure, foresight consists in making a prediction about its future (or past) state on the basis of a description and explanation of the object under study. In the first case, foresight is realized in the form of a prediction, and in the second case, in the form of a so-called retrotelling. Abstraction (or abstraction) plays an important role in the previous methods. As a method of scientific research, abstraction (lat. abstractio - distraction) consists in abstracting from real objects of any particular property or relationship for the purpose of its independent and detailed study.
In direct connection with abstraction is generalization as a research procedure (method), which consists in the transition from the individual and particular to the general, from the less general to the more general knowledge.
As a prerequisite for generalization, comparison can be considered, which, as a method of scientific research, consists in comparing the objects under study in order to identify signs of their identity and (or) differences. Comparison plays an important role in another research method - analogy.
Analogy (Greek analogia - correspondence) is the essence of a methodological technique consisting in the study of objects by identifying and establishing similarities or correspondences between them.
Formalization, idealization and modeling play an important role in scientific research. Formalization is understood as a research method, which consists in abstracting from the content of the concepts and provisions of a scientific theory in order to study its logical structure. In mathematics and logic, formalization is the reconstruction of a meaningful scientific theory in the form of a formalized language.
Idealization - is a mental procedure that has as its goal the creation of abstract (i.e. ideal) objects, which, as limiting cases of real objects (i.e., as having a finite number of properties of objects) can serve as a basis, i.e. means for their study. Examples of such abstract or ideal objects are, for example, "point" or "straight line" in mathematics, "absolutely rigid body" or "absolutely black body" in physics. Idealization is closely connected, as we see, with abstraction.
Modeling (fr. modele - sample, prototype) as a research method consists in reproducing the properties of an object to be investigated in another object in order to study them. And this second object appears in relation to the first as its model. Therefore, between the original and its model, there must be a relationship of similarity, expressed in the similarity of physical properties, or functions, or structures, etc. Modeling is usually resorted to in the event that a direct study of the original itself, due to certain circumstances, is impossible or difficult to access.
A special form of theoretical modeling is a thought experiment, which is used to study and study currently unfeasible processes or systems. It, unlike the material experiment, operates with ideal objects.
An important method of constructing a scientific theory is the axiomatic method. With this method, a scientific theory is built on the basis of such provisions, the truth of which is not proved, but is accepted (i.e., allowed) as a given within the framework of the theory being created. Such provisions are usually called axioms (Greek axioma - accepted position) or postulates (Latin postulatum - required), It is from these initial positions that all other provisions of the scientific theory being created are derived, according to the axiomatic method. Under the scientific theory (Greek theoria - observation, consideration, research) one should understand a system of generalized reliable (i.e. proven) knowledge about a certain area of reality, which describes, explains the functioning and (or) predicts the change of its constituent objects.
Unlike theory, hypothesis (Greek hypothesis - basis, assumption) is a system of generalized, unverified and, therefore, not reliable, but only hypothetical knowledge obtained by inference.
There are two main types of reasoning - induction and deduction.
Induction (lat. inductio - guidance) is one of the main types of inference and a method of scientific research that provides a transition from single facts to general provisions. Induction, whether popular or scientific, can only guarantee probable knowledge. Reliable knowledge can only be given by complete induction, in which the conclusion is made on the basis of taking into account all individual cases and facts without exception.
Deduction (lat. deductio - inference) is another basic type of inference and a method of scientific research that provides a transition from general knowledge to particular. It gives reliable knowledge with correct premises.
Adjacent to induction and deduction are such methods of scientific research as analysis and synthesis.
Analysis (Greek analysis - decomposition) is a methodological procedure consisting in the mental or actual decomposition of the whole (or complex) into its component parts (or simple).
Synthesis (Greek synthesis - connection) is a reverse methodological procedure, consisting in the reunification of the whole (complex) from its parts (simple).
Closely related to analysis is reduction as a method of scientific research. Reduction (lat. reductio - pushing back, returning) is such a methodological technique in which the current state of the object under study is reduced to its previous state (and more generally, in reducing complex to simple) in order to explain and understand it. The absolutization of the meaning of reduction as a research method leads to the reductionism of the concept, which allows for the metaphysical, i.e. complete and one-sided, the reduction of the higher to the lower.
In addition to reduction, structural-functional and statistical methods of scientific research adjoin analysis.
Under the structure (lat. structura - structure) in philosophy they understand the method or law of the interconnections of the elements of the whole. The function (lat. functio - performance) as a philosophical concept denotes the form of existence (ie functioning) of an object, an aspect of its life activity. More specifically, it represents the type of activity or work performed.
Structural-functional analysis as a methodological technique means the study of the interrelations of the elements of a given system and the functioning of each of them separately and the system as a whole.
In contrast, statistical analysis focuses on the study of quantitative parameters or characteristics of the phenomena under study. Statistics (German statistic - from ital. Stato - state) is the study of data that expresses the quantitative patterns of reality. More broadly, it denotes a set of various data about a phenomenon or process. In a narrower sense, statistics in science is an analysis of mass phenomena based on the theory of probability. Thus, the statistical method aims to reveal and establish quantitative patterns of the studied phenomena or processes by analyzing statistical data about them. In addition to the above methods, three very important methods of scientific research should also be considered, namely, the historical method, the logical method, and the method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete.
The historical method consists in the study and study of the real history of phenomena in order to identify the patterns of their functioning and development. The logical method, having, in fact, the same goal, achieves it, however, in a different way, namely, by investigating the higher forms of the studied phenomena, since these forms are removed, i.e. contain in a transformed, compressed form all the main milestones of their historical development. That is why the logical method, as F. Engels emphasized in his time, “in essence, is nothing more than the same historical method, only free from historical form and from interfering accidents. Where history begins, the course must begin with the same thoughts and its further movement will be nothing but a reflection of the historical process in an abstract and theoretically consistent form ... ". From the logical method, one should distinguish the logistic method used in mathematics and logic, which consists in the construction of formalized systems or calculi.
It is known that the task of theoretical research in the scientific and cognitive process is to recreate the whole in thought, i.e. specific image of the object under study. However, for that , In order for theoretical scientific knowledge to be able to perform a given task, it must distract or extract, i.e. to abstract individual properties or individual aspects of the functioning and development of this object in order to study them independently and in detail and thus obtain its various abstract definitions. The abstract definition of an object is thus its one-sided characterization. Thus, for example, the interpretation of science as a systematized knowledge is nothing but its abstract definition.
However, when receiving various abstractions (i.e., abstract definitions) of an object, we cannot form a concrete mental representation of it, its concrete definition, by a simple set of them. To get such a definition. it is necessary to holistically reproduce in thought the given object in its entirety or in all the richness of its most important properties and relations. All these procedures just carry out the method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete, which in its broad content means the movement and direction of scientific thought from the concrete in reality to the abstract and from this latter to the concrete in thinking. The task of this method is thus to reproduce the truly concrete as mentally concrete. In a narrower sense, the method of ascending from the abstract to the concrete is to, starting from the abstract definitions of the object under study, mentally reproduce it in all its fullness and richness of its essential properties and relations and thus give its concrete definition.
So, we stopped at the subject of the methodology of science in general and gave brief characteristics or definitions of the most important methods of scientific creativity. We now turn to the problem of the structure of scientific knowledge.
Chapter 3
Similar information.
METHODOLOGY- a type of rational-reflexive consciousness, aimed at studying, improving and constructing methods (see. Method ) in various spheres of spiritual and practical activity. There are methodological ideas and concepts of varying degrees of development and constructiveness, different levels and breadth of coverage (methodology at the level of philosophical reflection, general scientific methodology and methodology of science at the interdisciplinary level, methodology of particular sciences). Currently, methodological concepts are being developed related to certain types of activities (educational methodology, engineering methodology, design methodology, etc.). The formation of the very idea of the doctrine of the method as a kind of “correct path” of cognition and life-sense orientation is associated with the emergence of philosophy, which acts as a rational-theoretical form of worldview and thereby subjecting the initial prerequisites of a person’s relationship to the world to reflexive analysis and control. In ancient philosophy, the idea of the method in the above sense is contained in a fairly developed form in the teachings of Socrates, as it was presented in the so-called. Socratic dialogues of Plato. Socrates in these dialogues offers a certain methodology for the search for truth, aimed at identifying contradictions in the position of the interlocutor, representing the common, everyday opinion, and opening up opportunities for a productive solution to the problem. "Socratic" maieutics was the first historical form of the methodology of a later period. The ideas and practice of philosophical methodology also developed in the works of other major representatives of ancient philosophy, primarily Plato and Aristotle.
The development of universal-theoretical methods is a necessary condition for the formation and development of science as a form of rational-theoretical consciousness, in contrast to the "receptive-technological" nature of pre-science, which is directly inscribed in the practical activities of people. The difference between ancient Greek geometry, which was expressed in Euclid's Elements, which for a long time became the paradigm for structuring systems of scientific and theoretical knowledge, from the "land surveying" of the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia was precisely in the careful development of methods for deploying theoretical systems that laid the foundations for the methodology of deductive Sciences. In Antiquity, methods of scientific and empirical research also arise and develop - descriptions and classifications, primarily associated with the name of Aristotle. The emergence and existence of both philosophy and science as forms of rational-theoretical consciousness is impossible without the presence of a “methodological component”, methodological ideas and concepts that ensure the identification, formulation and regulation of rational thinking methods in these types of spiritual activity. At the same time, the development of methods of rational thinking in philosophy and science from the very beginning had a pronounced projective-constructive character. Methodology not only reveals the already established methods and methods of activity, but actively forms the appropriate norms and methods, thereby producing the very structure of rational-cognitive activity in philosophy and science.
In the New Age, the doctrine of the method turns out to be the prerequisite and ideological core of all the classical philosophical doctrines of this period (F. Bacon, Descartes, Leibniz), which is due to the fundamental principles of the philosophy of the New Age for reflexive control over the content of knowledge, articulation and transparency of this content for the cognizing subject. The method in the understanding of the classical rationalistic (in the broad sense of this term, embracing the epistemology of empiricism) philosophical methodology also acts as a means of this transparency for the self-consciousness of the subject. The critical-reflexive function of this methodology is to find solid foundations of knowledge, the truth of which would be guaranteed by their self-reliance for the cognizing subject, reduction to which and subsequent derivation from which would allow the self-consciousness of the cognizing subject to completely control the entire body of genuine knowledge. This classical rationalistic understanding of methodology had a great impact on all subsequent philosophical and methodological thought and subsequently turned out to be reproduced in the methodology of the neopositivists. Both empiric-inductivist and rationalist-deductivist methodology are different forms of realization of the same classical philosophical and methodological ideal. The development of these variants of the philosophical methodology of the New Age undoubtedly relied on the real practice of scientific thinking of that time: the methodology of empiricism - on empirical research, the methodology of rationalism - on mathematics. Developed in line with this methodology, the empiric-inductivist and rationalist-deductivist concepts of the analysis of scientific knowledge were some models conditioned by well-known philosophical and epistemological ideals, and the real practice of intensively developing science (thought experiment, hypothesis method, etc.) did not fit into the narrow framework of these models. This difference between the classical philosophical and geoseological concepts and the real practice of scientific thinking subsequently gave rise to the attitude towards the development of the methodology of science as an independent discipline that goes beyond philosophy and relies primarily on the realities of scientific knowledge.
The doctrine of method occupied a central place in Kant's philosophy. so-called. Kant's transcendental method was intended to reveal the initial (a priori) prerequisites for all forms of activity of human consciousness. Carrying out a critical-reflexive analysis of scientific knowledge in mathematics and exact natural science within the framework of this program, Kant gives a certain model of the methodology of science, capable of revealing important aspects of scientific cognitive activity in a specific form of Kant's apriorism. At the same time, Kant's teaching on the methods of science was included in the broader context of his philosophical methodology, aimed at substantiating his transcendentalism. In the subsequent development of German classical idealism (Fichte, Hegel), Kant's attitude to the relationship between philosophical and scientific methodology, to their mutual stimulation, is replaced by a one-sided orientation towards the primacy of a methodology of a speculative-philosophical type, which is dialectics. The positive aspects of the development of the dialectical methodology of cognition as the driving force of its development are discredited in the Hegelian system by the unlawful ontologization of the method and methodology, which follows from the objective-idealistic principle of the identity of thinking and being, from the speculative nature of its construction of dialectical methodology, from the separation from the real practice of scientific thinking. Therefore, the sound moments of the dialectical tradition of the methodology of cognition, being associated with speculative Hegelianism, were not perceived in the subsequent intensive development of the methodology of scientific thinking.
The general trend of further development was to expand the scope of methodology, in the emergence of its diverse forms that go beyond the bounds of only philosophical methodology. In the 2nd half of the 19th century. and at the beginning of the 20th century. intensively develop methodological research focused on the real problem of science (P. Duhem, E. Cassirer, E. Mach, A. Poincaré, W. Wavell, etc.). The development of a specific methodology for the social, historical and humanitarian sciences, the sciences of culture begins (W. Windelband, P. Rickert, B. Dilthey, M. Weber). An important role in the development of the methodological culture of science was played by research on the foundations of mathematics, which to a large extent stimulated the directions of the methodology of science, focused on the application of methods of mathematical (symbolic) logic. Development of methods for precise logical analysis, use of logical formalization, etc. had a great positive impact on the level of methodology of science in general. However, the absolutization of these approaches in the methodology of logical positivism, an attempt to build a comprehensive normative methodology based on the so-called. logical analysis of the language of science proved untenable. Their main defect was the separation from the real practice of science, in particular from its history. so-called. post-positivist methodology of science returns to the recognition of the need for an unbiased study of the realities of science, its history. In line with postpositivism, concepts arise that have had a very effective impact on the modern methodology of science (methodology of research programs by I. Lakatos, the concept of "paradigms" by T. Kuhn). At the same time, the failure of the program to develop a universal normative methodology of science based on the so-called. the standard concept of science, formulated by logical positivists, stimulated a radical rejection of the very idea of methodology (the subtitle of P. Feyerabend's work is characteristic - "Against the Method"). The same "anti-methodological" ideology is actively developing at the present time in line with postmodernism. Overcoming the temptations of methodological normativism, the self-consciousness of science, at the same time, must not renounce any methodological regulation. Such a refusal would undermine the very foundation of science as a form of rational consciousness.
V.S. Shvyrev
TRANSITION FROM THE METHODOLOGY OF SCIENCE TO THE METHODOLOGY OF ACTIVITY. The understanding of methodology as a science of methods of thinking, once very fruitful, is now fading into the background.
Several factors can be identified that determined in the 20th century. the allocation of methodology as a special section of philosophy: the weight of methodological work has increased, in philosophy itself there is a need for independent methodological activity in various sciences and disciplines; crisis and the development of philosophy itself. Since the 1950s methodological approaches and directions are being formed in a number of disciplines - philosophy, science of science, a systematic approach, praxeology, sociology, linguistics, literary criticism, etc.
Significant influence on development in the 20th century. professional methodology had a technological outlook. Being at first only a necessary moment of intellectual activity in philosophy and other disciplines, methodology becomes an independent reality, since during this period the socio-cultural conditions for the reproduction of technology are formed. Disciplines are created in which technology is recognized and comprehended (philosophy of technology, praxeology, methodology itself), specialists practicing in a new field of intellectual practice (technologists, systems engineers, methodologists) are being formed, special technological theories and programs are being created. Under the influence of these socio-cultural conditions, professional methodology is being formed as one of the areas of modern technology - the technology of mental work (activity).
Today, two main orientations can be distinguished in methodology: critical-analytical and design-constructive. Realizing the first orientation, the methodologist acts as a researcher of thinking (activity) in a particular discipline. At the same time, he must carry out reflection of a special kind - critical and research. By implementing a project-constructive orientation, the methodologist helps the specialist to rebuild and develop his subject. An important result of the methodologist's critical activity is the "deobjectification" of concepts and other disciplinary ideas. Within the framework of the design-constructive orientation, the reverse procedure is carried out - “objectification”, i.e. construction of new concepts and ideal objects.
Since the methodologist is focused on building a new subject (discipline), he argues the need to build new concepts, identifies the means and methods necessary for this, develops a plan and strategy of action, and sometimes creates the first fragments of a new subject. In order to move from the existing state of activity to its new state, the methodologist is forced to reflect and "overcome" the objective point of view and ways of thinking. It shows what they are based on, where their boundaries are, what cognitive attitude has determined them.
Both reflection and other forms of methodological work are built today with the conscious use of scientific and design ideas and methods. This means that methodological work realizes itself, on the one hand, as a special kind of research, on the other hand, as a kind of intellectual design. It was the development of scientific and project orientations in methodology that led to the formation of the so-called "general methodology" in contrast to the "private methodology". General methodology develops the basic principles and means of methodological work (approaches, concepts, schemes). At the same time, both the experience of private methodologies and knowledge about thinking and activity are used. The task of private methodology is the methodological support of specific activities in certain sciences, disciplines, and various practices. In the field of general methodology, the methodologist studies and constitutes the "laws" of thinking and activity as such, while he considers thinking and activity as special quasi-natural processes. The hypertrophy of the project orientation of the methodology often leads to the declaration of its role as the supreme "normative discipline", designed to organize and guide all other sciences and disciplines. The reaction of practitioners in this case is unequivocal - even if they need methodological knowledge, they reject the claims of normative methodology. But if the project orientation of methodology is considered as one of the values of methodological work along with others, then in this case it is just as comprehended as, for example, scientific or axiological orientations.
The independent development of the methodology continued until about the beginning of the 1980s. Starting from this period, a crisis of methodological thought is indicated, due, in part, to its isolation from philosophy. The transformation of some directions (for example, the school headed by G.P. Shchedrovitsky) into a pure technology of thinking (based on the theories of activity and mental activity and later organizational games) is a fairly natural phenomenon. This happens, firstly, as a result of the independent development of the methodology, and secondly, its naturalization, i.e. understanding as a normative metatheory. The task of methodology in these directions began to be seen in the regulation of any thinking, in the general methodological expansion into the most diverse fields of activity. Representatives of this normative trend argued that methodology schemes are universal and do not depend on the content and nature of certain subjects. Such a position naturally led to a decrease in interest in methodology and to a completely justified accusation of formalism.
One of the necessary conditions for overcoming the crisis of methodology is the restoration of its links with philosophy. Analysis shows that the goals of methodology and philosophy are still different. The philosopher, to one degree or another, solves the cardinal existential problems of his time. It must be modern, listening to its time and reality. Of course, among the existential problems and dilemmas discussed in philosophy, there are timeless, eternal ones, for example. problems of existence, death, freedom, correlation of true and ordinary reality. Philosophical work becomes necessary when the habitual patterns of thinking and human action cease to work, and reality falls apart. The modern intellectual situation has the following characteristics: a lot of knowledge that describes the world in different ways, a lot of opposite statements about existence, the absence of criteria for evaluating and choosing such knowledge and statements as true. It is in such dramatic situations that the philosopher re-collects the world, restores the lost meaning of being, outlines the solution to the main existential problems of his time. The goal of professional methodology is different - to create conditions for the development of any activity: scientific, engineering, artistic, etc.
Thus, in terms of value and semantics, philosophy and professional methodology differ significantly. Philosophy is always focused on solving modern and eternal existential problems and dilemmas, and professional methodology is focused on the development of activity, understood to a large extent in a technological key. The values and meanings behind such a technological approach, as a rule, are more focused on the same technology and the reproduction of sociality than on a person with his private (which does not negate their existentiality) life problems.
Understanding the current situation in methodology, its relationship with modern philosophy, allows us to say that the independent development of methodology is exhausting itself, that it must ask questions, why is it needed, what are its values, what is it intended to serve, does it fulfill its purpose in culture.
Modern methodology and philosophy face the following problems: 1) overcoming the naturalism of philosophical and methodological thinking, which involves methodological reflection and work aimed at deobjectification of the ontological ideas that we use; 2) the problem of reality, presented as a set of different realities (personal, scientific, artistic, religious, esoteric, etc.) and at the same time as a single reality of being; 3) a new attitude to symbolic systems and realities (art, personal experiences and dreams, thinking, creativity, design, etc.), understood as a very significant independent reality; 4) anthropological and psychological horizons.
The solution of these problems makes it possible to overcome the gap between methodology and philosophy, to understand their complementarity. If the culture and technology of thinking is associated with methodology, then philosophy creates ontological, value and semantic supports and guidelines for the methodology. Currently, these disciplines develop without each other and are guided by divergent and inconsistent values. The path of their unification assumes that the methodology will acquire ethical guidelines, and philosophy will acquire a rational-reflexive consciousness that meets the level of modern thinking.
V.M.Rozin
FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCE METHODOLOGY. Initially, methodology is conceived as a doctrine of the methods of thinking and is included as an integral part of logic. In the logic of Port-Royal, the doctrine of the methods of analysis and synthesis was understood as the final part of the logical doctrine. In a similar way, the doctrine of the methods of thinking was understood by Leibniz, H. Wolf, and even by D.S. Mill. True, for Wolff and the Wolffian school, the doctrine of methods is part of practical logic. Starting with Kant, the doctrine of methods is isolated from the composition of logic, although in the "Logic" Kant interprets the doctrine of methods as part of logic, which should "interpret the form of science in general, or the method of combining the diversity of knowledge into science" ( Kant I. Treatises and letters. M., 1990, p. 435). Methodology should lead to distinctness, solidity, and to the systematic ordering of knowledge into a whole of scientific knowledge. Among the methods analyzed by Kant are methods of logical improvement of knowledge (definition, exposition, description, logical division of concepts, analytical and synthetic methods). Although Kant's methodology is still part of logic, however, its purpose and structure is significantly expanded, since it simultaneously turns out to be a part of the science of science. In the Critique of Pure Reason, he reveals the task of transcendental methodology as the definition of the formal conditions for a complete system of pure reason and divides it into discipline, canon, architectonics and history of pure reason. In essence, transcendental methodology deals with the ways of constructing a systemic form of scientific and theoretical knowledge. The methodology is thus identical, if not to the methods of presentation, then to the methods of constructing systems of theoretical knowledge.
This approach is unacceptable for Hegel. In the composition of logic as a science, he includes consideration not only of the scientific method, but also of the very concept of science ( Hegel. Science of Logic, vol. 1. M., 1970, p. 95). The doctrine of method turns out to be for him not just an analysis of the methods of presentation, “the movement of this method (dialectic. - Auth.) is the movement of the very essence of the matter” (ibid., p. 108), and the method is “awareness of the form of its internal self-movement (logic. - Auth.) content” (ibid., p. 107). Thus, logic coincides with dialectics and with the study of the categorical structure of scientific knowledge, and the method itself, understood meaningfully, turns out to be a form of self-movement of scientific and theoretical knowledge in its universal categorical form. The method must be conceived, according to Hegel, not as an external form, but as “the soul of all objectivity” (ibid., vol. 3, p. 290), as “a self-knowing concept that has itself as its object” as both subjective and objective, as expanding to the system and revealing in the ascent from abstract to concrete definitions to a total-holistic system (ibid., p. 306). Thus, Hegel's doctrine of method turns out to be a part of metaphysics, coinciding with logic and with the science of science.
In the subsequent development of the methodology, it is possible to identify different lines in the interpretation of its goals and subject matter. B. Bolzano, unfolding the logic of science in his "Scientific Teaching", includes heuristics in it - the study of ways and methods of achieving true knowledge. For Herbart, methodology is the first part of metaphysics (Allegemeine Metaphysik. V., 1828, § 182). For Sigwart, methodology is the study of ways to improve our thinking, the purpose of which is to determine the limits of applicability and the significance of research methods (Logik, Bd. 2. B., 1924, S. 3). J. Friz considers methodology as a part of applied logic dealing with logical technique (System der Logik, 1837, S. 12). In the 2nd floor. 19th century specialists in the field of natural sciences acutely felt the lack of study and generalization of the methods of various sciences. The intensively developing special methodology was not limited to the methods of induction and deduction, analysis and synthesis. Historical, comparative, typological methods began to be widely used in natural science, and quantitative and experimental methods began to be widely used in psychology and social sciences. The general methodology, however, left these special methods out of its field of vision. W. Wundt, trying to answer the demands of his time, saw the purpose of methodology in the study of the methods of individual sciences and devoted a special volume of his "Logic" to the analysis of the methods of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, philology, history, economics, jurisprudence (Logik, Bd 2. Methodenslehre Stuttg., 1880). The Neo-Kantians of the Marburg School focused on the methods of mathematics and natural science ( Natorp P. Die logischen Grundlagen der exakten Wissenschaften. Lpz., 1923), while the neo-Kantians of the Baden school - the ideographic methodology of the historical sciences ( Windelband V. Preludes. SPb., 1904). For Windelband, methodology is the application of logic to the cognitive goals of individual sciences, therefore methodology is a technical discipline that uses logical forms and norms in the methods of various sciences. Neo-Kantians are generally characterized by pan-methodology, i.e. the transformation of methodology into a universal philosophical doctrine that determines both the form and content, and the subject of scientific knowledge and, in general, the originality of certain scientific disciplines. In the same period, a clear distinction between presentation methods and research methods begins (either in connection with the distinction between the logic of objectivity and the logic of thinking in M. Honecker, or in connection with the distinction between the logic of descriptive and normative sciences in E. Husserl's Logical Investigations).
In the 1st quarter of the 20th century. the process of separating methodology from logic and turning it into a research area of philosophy unfolds. At the same time, in the special sciences, there is a need for methodological reflection, and the scientists themselves take on the functions of methodologists. In the preface to the book "Method in the Sciences" (Russian translation, St. Petersburg, 1911), it is noted that "the philosophy of sciences, and in particular methodology ... has acquired such importance that the programs of our various educational institutions had to give it special a place that became larger and larger with each new reform. In various sciences, methodological disputes are unfolding between representatives of various areas. This applies both to representatives of the natural sciences (in physics - A. Poincaré, N.A. Umov, E. Mach; in biology - C. Bernard, K. Frisch), and to representatives of socio-humanitarian knowledge (in history - R. Yu. Vipper, A.S.Lappo-Danilevsky, N.I.Kareev; in law - B.A.Kistyakovsky, P.I.Novgorodtsev; in economics - G.Schmoller, L.Mises, A.I.Chuprov). Alternative methodological programs are being formed, for example. the program of "descriptive physics" (G. Hertz, Clifford), as opposed to the methods of explanation in the physical sciences, in mathematics, various directions in the justification of mathematics begin to form - logicism, intuitionism. In the same period, criticism of the concepts of causality and deterministic explanation in scientific knowledge unfolded, interest in statistical, probabilistic methods, metamathematical and metalogical problems increased. The goal of philosophy is seen in the critical analysis of experience (empirio-monism, empirio-criticism), and then the language of science.
The methodology of science in Russia has also come a long way of development. Already in the second half of the 19th century. in domestic philosophy, the study of deductive and inductive methods (F.A. Zelenogorsky, P.E. Leikefeld), methods of empirical sciences (N.S. Strakhov), social sciences (G.N. Vyrubov), understanding of the comparative historical and typological methods (I.I. Yagodinsky, V.S. Shilkarsky). A logical study of the methods of mathematics and logic itself is being developed (P.S. Poretsky, S.N. Povarnin). Along with attempts to single out a specific dialectical methodology coinciding with the construction of a system of categories (Η.Γ.Debolsky), various options for a neopositivist analysis of the methods of empirical sciences are being built (empirio-criticism of V. A. Bazarov, empirio-symbolism of P. S. Yushkevich, empirio-monism of A. A. Bogdanov) . Studies are being carried out on the specifics of the methodology of social sciences in general (S.L. Frank, N.N. Alekseev) and historical ones in particular (A.S. Lappo-Danilevsky, N.I. Kareev, R.Yu. Vipper, A.I. Vvedensky). In the methodology of mathematics, research is being carried out on the connection between proof and intuition in geometry (V.F. Kagan, A.S. Bogomolov), the history of the formation and development of the axiomatic-deductive method (D.D. Mordukhay-Boltovskoy). Studies of the specifics of the methodology of the humanities are being carried out (G.G. Shpet, M.M. Bakhtin, A.F. Losev). Various methodological programs in psychology are being formed - from the orientation towards experimental methods to the methods of introspection, from the methods of psychoanalysis to the methods of objective reflexology (G.I. Chelpanov, V.M. Bekhterev). By the end of the 1920s. methodology is being formed in Russia as a specific area of philosophical analysis of scientific thinking. VN Ivanovsky wrote one of the first books on methodology - "Methodological Introduction to Science and Philosophy" (Minsk, 1923); GA Gruzintsev conducted in his work "Essays on the Theory of Science" (Dnepropetrovsk, 1927) a distinction between methods of substantiation and research methods. In the same years, the methodology of special sciences was intensively developed, often from alternative positions (in biology - N.I. Vavilov, A.A. Lyubishchev, A. G. Gurvich; in physics, primarily the theory of relativity, - K.A. .A. Fridman, A.F. Ioffe and others). In the same period, a very broad program of system-organizational understanding of methodology was put forward - the tectology of A.A. Bogdanov. The problems of applying mathematical methods in various sciences are discussed - from biogeochemistry (V.I. Vernadsky) to biology (A.A. Lyubishchev).
Dogmatic Marxism, while defending the position of the coincidence of dialectics, logic, and the theory of knowledge, by no means assumed the development of either one or the other, or the third. All logical-methodological work (from the 1930s to the mid-1950s) was carried out within the framework of a special methodology and was carried out more by scientists themselves than by philosophers. Turn to methodology and intensive logical-methodological work since the mid-1950s. were not only a way to avoid ideological dogmas, but also a form of response to the methodological challenges of the natural and social sciences, to those urgent problems that needed philosophical and methodological understanding. And here the greatest successes in Russian philosophy were achieved. Already in 1952, the Moscow Methodological Circle began to work, which served as the source of a number of new programs in the methodology of science. At first, a logical and methodological analysis of the method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete is carried out (A.A. Zinoviev, E.V. Ilyenkov), a program of “content logic” and methodology of mental activity is formed (G.P. Shchedrovitsky, N.G. Alekseev) , which has turned into a program of organizational and activity games. Since the mid 1950s. Both general and special methodology are intensively developing, and in completely different directions: from the methodology of history (in Moscow - M.Ya. Gefter, V.S. Bibler, A.Ya. Gurevich, in Tomsk - A.I. Danilov) to the methodology physics (the program for studying the methodological principles of physics - B.M. Kedrov, N.Φ. Ovchinnikov, I.S. Alekseev), from the analysis of the construction of a physical theory (M.E. Omelyanovsky, E.M. , E.A. Mamchur) to the methods of biological sciences (I.T. Frolov, R.S. Karpinskaya, S.V. Meyen), from the methodology of historical and scientific research (B.S. Gryaznov, N.I. Rodny) to the methods of semiotics and hermeneutics (V.S. Ivanov, Yu.M. Lotman). A program for the logic of scientific research is being developed (P.V. Kopnin, M.V. Popovich, B.S. Krymsky). Methodologically significant are the developments of modern logic (A.A. Zinoviev, V.A. Smirnov, B.N. Pyatnitsyn). Research is being carried out on the methodology of system research (I.V. Blauberg, E.G. Yudin, V.N. Sadovsky), within the framework of which the methodology for designing organizational management systems and artificial intelligence is being formed (S.P. Nikanorov, D.A. Pospelov ). The methodology outgrows the framework of the methodology of science and more and more turns into a methodology for the activity and design of ergonomic man-machine systems, intelligent systems, and organizational management systems.
Methodological work both inside and outside of philosophy is expanding significantly. If in the pre-war period, in connection with the development of quantum mechanics, the methodological principles of physics - observability, complementarity, correspondence, uncertainty, symmetry (N. Bohr, A. Einstein, W. Heisenberg, E. Schrödinger, E. Wigner), then in the post-war For years, the methodological principles of other sciences - biology, psychology, sociology - have been discussed. Along with the deployment of the methods of modern logic (primarily the logical syntax and semantics of formalized languages), which are widely used as a methodology of scientific knowledge, a number of new directions are being formed that search for a new methodology in different ways - the “logic of research” by K. Popper, non-Aristotelian logic in neo-rationalism of G. Bashlard, a turn from logical semantics to pragmatic methodology in the works of representatives of the Lviv-Warsaw school (T. Kotarbinsky, K. Aidukevich), which, focusing on praxeology, analyzes the maxims related to the method and actions in accordance with them. In the post-war period, the final separation of methodology from the logic and philosophy of science takes place. This process is due to the deployment of the methodology of special sciences, which analyzes and generalizes the methods of scientific knowledge, methods of both empirical (natural and social) and non-empirical sciences, and at the same time, a turn to methodology in connection with a much wider class of problems in the design of technical and intellectual systems. , reflexive analysis and understanding of the goals and norms of human activity in diverse areas of public life - from technical invention to social engineering.
A.P. Ogurtsov
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