Yulia Shaposhnikova

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 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.