The Spirit in Man and Society

Cognition as Spiritual Activity: Scientific Cognition

Concepts of Scientific Development

Traditionally, the development of science has been envisioned as a gradual accumulation of new knowledge, a sequential increase in the body of what is known. This approach acknowledges only the quantitative enrichment of science with true knowledge, while neglecting or overlooking its qualitative evolution. It has been assumed that over time, the scientific picture of the world does not fundamentally change but merely expands. This interpretation of scientific development is known as the cumulative view (from the Latin cumulo - to accumulate, to multiply). The prevailing idea here is one of absolute and unchanging foundations of scientific knowledge. The main features of the cumulative model can be summarized as follows: there exist immutable, definitive truths, the accumulation of which constitutes the essence of scientific progress; errors are excluded from scientific knowledge and have no bearing on the history of science (here, a textbook serves as an ideal, representing a collection of distilled knowledge through a filter of truth); the issue of demarcation between science and non-science is understood in a peculiar manner (with "non-scientific" forms being excluded from science); the image of science appears static, as the accumulation of knowledge is believed to pose no threat to its foundations.

An alternative understanding of scientific development is the currently most widespread and accepted non-cumulative, or genuinely historical, approach, which posits that truth is a process rather than a finished product. In this view, the idea of the relativity of the division between absolutely true and absolutely false knowledge transforms the approach to the problem of demarcating scientific from non-scientific knowledge; there exists continuity within scientific knowledge; and there is a socio-cultural dependence of science on the development of society. This approach began to take shape in the 1920s. In 1927, the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962) expressed the idea of viewing science as a historical phenomenon, which at each stage of its development is qualitatively distinctive and cannot be reduced to its origins. Alexandre Koyré posited the unity of human thought, manifested in the unity of science with other components of culture, primarily with philosophy and religion. Thus, the history of physics reveals a series of leaps in metaphysical (philosophical) types of thinking. Their emergence he termed "mutations" of intellect (breakdowns of categorical structures). The British philosopher and historian of science Imre Lakatos (1922-1974) proposed the idea of changing scientific research programs, each defined by a series of theories connected in sequence. Within each program, there exists a "hard core," meaning certain inviolable fundamental assumptions. The quantitative growth of knowledge is consistently accompanied by a revision of the "protective belt," while preserving the "hard core" of the program. Scientists (by virtue of convention) are obliged to maintain the core through the modification of the protective belt.

Recently, the most influential concept of non-cumulative scientific development has been articulated by the American philosopher Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996), who presented his ideas in 1962 in the book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" (with subsequent additions in 1969). According to Kuhn, the development of science occurs through periodic radical transformations and shifts in leading concepts (paradigms), meaning that it proceeds via periodic scientific revolutions. Such revolutions boil down to paradigm shifts. "By paradigms," Kuhn writes, "I mean the universally recognized scientific achievements that provide a model for the scientific community in terms of problem-setting and resolution." In the historical development of science, Kuhn was the first to delineate a pre-paradigmatic period. This is the early phase in the evolution of scientific disciplines, when they have not yet fully formed: among scholars, there is no consensus regarding the foundational principles of research, nor have they reached agreement on the subject of study, its general nature, or the methods of investigation. For instance, the early period of physical optics persisted until the end of the 18th century. From ancient times until the end of this period, a unified, widely accepted perspective on the nature of light had not emerged. Some believed that light consisted of particles emitted by material bodies; others argued that it was a modification of the medium between the object and the eye; still others posited that it was the interaction of the medium with the radiation emanating from the eyes. There were also other views concerning the nature of light. Unable to accept an external, general basis without convincing evidence, each author felt the need to reconstruct physical optics from the ground up, which overall diminished the effectiveness of scientific investigations.

The second, paradigmatic period, marks the phase of normal science, during which paradigms shift through revolutions, signifying the maturity of science. In the phase of establishing normal science, a characteristic feature is that with the adoption of a paradigm, disputes concerning fundamental principles cease; efforts are concentrated on specific investigations, on "bringing order" to particular subject areas, wherein scholars do not aim to create new theories but delve deeply and thoroughly into the essence of fragments of nature. Thanks to the acceptance of a paradigm, scientists’ activities become more professional; in their work, they no longer feel the need to repeatedly justify fundamental concepts (this task belongs to textbook authors, amateurs, or non-professionals), but instead focus on more specialized issues that interest the entire scholarly community. The primary output of such specialists' activities is scientific articles published in professional journals. In contemporary natural sciences, books take the form of either textbooks or retrospective reflections on various aspects of scientific life.

Gradually, within the framework of normal science, conditions for new discoveries begin to form. Discovery commences with the recognition of an anomaly, that is, the establishment of the fact that "nature has somehow violated the expectations induced by the paradigm." The anomaly becomes the subject of widespread study. Initially, attempts are made to accommodate the old paradigm to it, and if that proves unsuccessful, the process leads to the emergence of new scientific theories that replace the old paradigm. Kuhn indicates that scientific development resembles developments in other areas of human activity in many ways, but also possesses its own distinctions: a relative lack of competing schools in developed sciences, a significant dependency of the scientific community on a unique audience and a narrow circle of ideas, the particular nature of scientific education, and so forth. Kuhn's book has prompted reflection for several decades among all those who are not indifferent to science and care about its state in society and its role in human life, leading them to contemplate the nature of science and the peculiarities of its development.