Lada Shipovalova

The article attempts to develop the “oxymoron formula” proposed by N.I. Kuznetsova to interpret the ideas and fate of the representatives of the Vienna Circle. The combination of incompatible reveals the content of this formula. The author of the article proposes to see a combination of incompatible, firstly, in the temporal nature of the work of the Vienna Circle, which unites, on the one hand, the desire for finality in solving problems and, on the other, openness to development. Secondly, she describes the combination of incompatible through the relation and difference of the positions of M. Schlick and O. Neurath in the discussion about protocol sentences. The author defines Schlick’s position as a philosophical desire to combine incompatible and offer a translation of affirmations as expressions describing subjective immediate experience into the intersubjective language of science, the meaning of which is emphasized by Neurath.

The article explores the contemporary philosophy of science in the context of the idea of eternal return. The problematization of the intellectual field “after postpositivism” runs through the renewed questions “what?”, “how?”, “who?” and “for what?” of scientific research. This questioning is a search for bearings in the historical space and time that determines “after what?” or “back to whom?” the thinking about science unfolds. Such a reflexive appeal to the origins leads to the ideas of the philosophy of science of the first half of the twentieth century. It is then that the main differences within the research of science were formed: between sociological and methodological approaches, between philosophy and disciplines that study science, between the goals of forming a worldview and managing science. The philosophy of science “after postpositivism” expresses itself in the controversial interpretation of the subject matter and method of the study of science, in the division of labor between disciplines and approaches that lose the possibility of constructive interaction and reach the point of “science wars”. In conclusion, it is argued that philosophy as the "hard core” of scientific research, a historical appeal to the origins of scientific activity and the interpretation of the scientific revolution as a renewal of tradition can make such modernity valuable for return.

The author starts from the contemporary image of “post-normal science”, which implies the openness of science to policy. She considers the idea of post-normal science as a normative basis for the scientists’ demand for the politicization of science, as a conceptual condition for grasping crises and the role of scientific expertise in their resolution, and as a designation of a special phenomenon of contemporary science with the ambiguous status of a scientist-expert. Based on the analysis of the concept, the author emphasizes the problem of combining scientific validity and political relevance, inherent in post-normal science. The elements of this problem are the danger of including science in politics, the violation of objectivity and the lack of demarcating scientific and non-scientific knowledge. The author argues that the solution of the problem becomes possible if the political relevance of science is interpreted as interaction, and scientific validity as objectivity are revealed through attention to the concept of “knowing-how”.

Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Volume 52, Issue 5, Page 290-298, September 2022. Disputes in the field of science and technology studies demonstrate its topicality as they elucidate the prospects for a postmodern world, and William Lynch in his book, in search of a constructive solution to current controversies, employs the dialectical approach of Lakatos and Feyerabend. Lynch takes a bold step to present an apparently “degenerated scientific research program” as a competitive alternative to the established and “progressive” mainstream. The book offers not only a theoretical justification for this “minority report,” but also its empirical confirmation, as well as the possibility of practical and socio-political application. We believe that Lynch’s book actualizes the discussion about the nature of sociality as related to scientific cognition, as well as provokes the question of the possibility of specific ontology of scientific knowledge. However, the internal heterogeneity of the sociology of scientific knowledge seems to be slightly underestimated, which sometimes prevents Lynch recognizing his real allies and opponents in modern STS. Lynch’s approach to analyzing scientific alternatives to dominant paradigms and to science communication practices helps problematize current controversies through demonstrating their incommensurability not incomparability. Hopefully this will increase their mutual understanding and collaboration.

F. Bacon in his work New Organon proposes a project of a new science, which ensures the desire of human race “to recover its right over nature”. The article examines the work on the universal owner of “the right over nature” in two historical contexts. The first context determines the emergence of modern science. Here Bacon plays the role of an expert mediator who introduces the new scientific method in its broader social meaning. His work on the universal owner of “the right over nature” combines and intersects the cognitive and political aspects of scientific endeavor. The second context covers the present situation after the Scientific-Technical Revolution, when the use of the “right over nature” becomes actual, and not only possible. The contradictions revealed in the first context in the activities of the expert mediator serve as the basis for analyzing the present situation of interaction between science and society. The author describes the expert mediator, corresponding to the modern context of uncertainty and conflict of values, through the concept of “honest broker of policy alternatives” by R. Pielke, as well as through the palette of expert knowledge types presented by the STS researchers. She shows why the presented differentiation of expert knowledge types is not enough to organize the work of an expert mediator as an “honest broker”. In conclusion, she puts forward the hypothesis about distributed expertise, which can represent contemporary work on the owner of the “right over nature” and describes some aspects of this work. The author associates the significance of the hypothesis of distributed expertise with the preservation of the openness of the project of Bacon's new science.

The article is a response to the arguments by O.B. Koshovets and I.E. Frolov on the emergence of "technoscience”. Technoscience is opposed by the authors to the classical science characterized by the dominance of the technological component of research and capitalization of knowledge. The article focuses on two tasks. The first one supposes an appeal to the historical origins of technoscience and demonstrates significant relationship between technoscience and classical science. The second one involves the disclosure of contemporary negative trends of technoscience as creating conditions for their own overcoming. In conclusion it associates the work on the autonomy of science with the constructive dialogue between scientific and non-scientific knowledge.

The intention of this article is to study the role of imagination in science. We are going to examine the communicative role that imagination plays in interdisciplinary scientific interaction. We are referring to that specific kind of interaction in which science is the object of research that is to a complicated situation in the contemporary science studies. We posit that the interaction between different disciplines engaged in the study of science is far from being concordant. This is especially true of the history and philosophy of science. Currently, the situation is such that, on the one hand, the philosophical reference to the historical research of science has proved being constructive in nature. On the other hand, historians remain mostly indifferent to the philosophy of science, seeking no methodological guidance from philosophers. Revealing the reasons for such an asymmetry of interests, and, as a consequence, the failure of the constructive interaction of history and philosophy of science, we analyze one hypothesis which directly refers to the work of imagination in the Kantian sense. Next, we determine that Kant's appeal to imagination opens the way for another interpretation of both the work of imagination and, as a result, the interaction of history and philosophy of science. We demonstrate why the analysis of the role of image, associated primarily with art, becomes relevant in modern research of science. Additionally, we turn to imagination, not just as a transcendental condition of knowledge but as an effective tool to organize specific research practices of interdisciplinary interaction. Therefore, an important component of our research is an appeal to a “successful” example of the synthesis of historical and philosophical research of science, which is the contemporary historical epistemology, in which one can see imagination in action.

This article describes the two possible consequences of referring to the Marxist roots of modern research in science to which V. Lynch puts attention. First, referring to various Marxist viewpoints, whether they put an emphasis on reflecting reality or on its social construction process, can contribute to current discussions concerning the status of representation in science. Second, the Marxist legitimization of scientific theory competition protects from judgmental relativism in science that may arise in case of the recognition of their proliferation. Moreover, the appeal to the roots reveals the intersections between various scientific studies, and therefore serves as a condition for their possible constructive interaction.

This article discusses mechanisms of demarcation in science, as a case of establishing identity – one of the topical problems of contemporary cultural studies. Evidently, the quality of cultural interaction depends on the status of the other in relation to one’s identity. Contemporary cultural studies distinguish two types of this interaction: exclusion, i.e. suppression of the other as a condi­tion for the formation of one’s identity; and inclusion, a retrieval of the excluded, leading to the transformation of one’s identity. This article claims that the historical epistemology, as a special ap­proach to the history of science, has elaborated a number of strat­egies regulating the relationship of science and non-science in the form of an attitude of present science towards its past. The article examines four of these strategies – three of them construct the identity of science through establishing boundaries and by exclud­ing the other; the fourth presupposes acknowledging the other and endowing it with actuality. The last strategy demonstrates the dialogue between science and its other in action and, more importantly, identifies the necessary condition for the successful interaction – the destruction of a homogeneous scientific identity and allowance of self-identification to continue with­out end. Consequently, study­ing the types of interaction between scientific and non-scientific views in the field of historical epistemology allows one to conceptualize the gen­eral procedure of establishing cultural identification.

The article deals with the problem of representation and considers such points as its necessity in science, contemporary crisis of representation and its possible outcome. The paper also scrutinizes the case of representation of scientific researches by means of scientometrics methods. The need of the representations in science is determined by three points: absence of the direct access to the fact, certainty of the fact which exceeds the certainty of the immediate experience and consolidation of the scientific community by any stable representation. The sense of crisis concerns the confusion of the representation with the reality and the fact that it hides the reality as well. The scientific research is necessarily represented by means of scientometrics methods, which is connected with the unintelligibility of the idea of the scientific researches to the outsiders. The idea of quantitatively estimated scientific outcome replaces the essential, qualitative intentions and impedes to achieve them. This fact evokes the criti­cism against scientometrics methods from the side of scientific community. The authors suggest the ways to overcome this crisis. One of the steps against it implies the attention to the genesis of such type of representation. This means keeping in mind the fact that scientometrics appeared on the basis of the scientific com­munity’s necessity to search for the information about already existing researches and to disseminate the ideas.

The article deals with the problem of representation and considers such points as its necessity in science, contemporary crisis of representation and its possible outcome. The paper also scrutinizes the case of representation of scientific researches by means of scientometrics methods. The need of the representations in science is determined by three points: absence of the direct access to the fact, certainty of the fact which exceeds the certainty of the immediate experience and consolidation of the scientific community by any stable representation. The sense of crisis concerns the confusion of the representation with the reality and the fact that it hides the reality as well. The scientific research is necessarily represented by means of scientometrics methods, which is connected with the unintelligibility of the idea of the scientific researches to the outsiders. The idea of quantitatively estimated scientific outcome replaces the essential, qualitative intentions and impedes to achieve them. This fact evokes the criti­cism against scientometrics methods from the side of scientific community. The authors suggest the ways to overcome this crisis. One of the steps against it implies the attention to the genesis of such type of representation. This means keeping in mind the fact that scientometrics appeared on the basis of the scientific com­munity’s necessity to search for the information about already existing researches and to disseminate the ideas.

The article deals with the problem of representation and considers such points as its necessity in science, contemporary crisis of representation and its possible outcome. The paper also scrutinizes the case of representation of scientific researches by means of scientometrics methods. The need of the representations in science is determined by three points: absence of the direct access to the fact, certainty of the fact which exceeds the certainty of the immediate experience and consolidation of the scientific community by any stable representation. The sense of crisis concerns the confusion of the representation with the reality and the fact that it hides the reality as well. The scientific research is necessarily represented by means of scientometrics methods, which is connected with the unintelligibility of the idea of the scientific researches to the outsiders. The idea of quantitatively estimated scientific outcome replaces the essential, qualitative intentions and impedes to achieve them. This fact evokes the criti­cism against scientometrics methods from the side of scientific community. The authors suggest the ways to overcome this crisis. One of the steps against it implies the attention to the genesis of such type of representation. This means keeping in mind the fact that scientometrics appeared on the basis of the scientific com­munity’s necessity to search for the information about already existing researches and to disseminate the ideas.