Naturally scientific and humanities. Humanitarian sciences

Cognitive : this is the main function that reflects the essence of science. It is about understanding the world and equipping people with new knowledge. Examples: Medical scientists have conducted a number of studies on infectious diseases; Scientists - seismologists study the physical processes that occur during earthquakes.

Cultural and ideological : Science influences the formation of the human personality, determines his attitude towards nature and society. A person who does not have scientific knowledge and bases his reasoning and actions only on personal everyday experience can hardly be called cultural. Examples: a group of scientists has put forward a new hypothesis for the origin of life on our planet; philosophical research proves that there is an unlimited number of galaxies in the Universe; N. checks and critically comprehends scientific information.

Production : Science is a special “workshop” designed to supply production with new equipment and technologies. Examples: pharmaceutical scientists have created a new medicine to fight viruses; Genetic engineering experts have developed a new method of weed control.

Social : Science influences the living conditions of people, the nature of work, and the system of social relations. Examples: studies have proven that an increase in education spending by 1% in the coming years will lead to an increase in the rate of economic development; Hearings were held in the State Duma at which scientific forecasts for the prospects for the development of the space industry in the Russian Federation were discussed.

Prognostic : science not only equips people with new knowledge about the world, but also makes forecasts for the further development of the world, pointing out the consequences of changes. Examples: Soviet theoretical physicist, academician A.D. Sakharov published an article “The Danger of Thermonuclear War”; environmental scientists warned about the danger of pollution of the Volga River waters for living organisms.

Scientists and social responsibility

Science includes not only a knowledge system, but also scientific institutions and scientists. Recognized center fundamental research in science in our country is Russian Academy of Sciences (RAN) - heir to the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Peter the Great, who moved to Moscow in 1934. The RAS includes major scientists conducting research in medicine, agriculture, education, energy and many other fields. Scientists, researchers, experts, laboratory assistants are a special category of people. They have a scientific worldview and get great pleasure from scientific creative activities. Their works contribute to the development of a certain branch of science. The main task of scientists is to obtain, substantiate and systematize new true knowledge about the real world.

The reality around us is reflected in scientific knowledge in the form of concepts and terms. This is the fundamental difference between science and art or religion, which reflect knowledge about the world figuratively. Features of scientific thinking and activities of scientists are:

• selection of objective, reliable and accurate scientific facts;
• formulating a problem and constructing a hypothesis that can solve it;
• use of special research methods and data collection;
• theoretical justification of concepts, principles, laws;
• testing knowledge using evidence.

• the principle of “do no harm”;
• there is no place for subjectivity in science;
• truth is most precious;
• honestly acknowledge the merits of your predecessors and many others.

Exercise: Illustrate with an example any function of science🎓

Sciences about man, his life in society. They arose during the times and within the framework of scholasticism. Philosophy was the first to be defined as the science of human actions. The source and means of knowledge in such sciences was the word and thoughts and their interpretation. Now to... ... Fundamentals of spiritual culture (teacher's encyclopedic dictionary)

Encyclopedia of Sociology

HUMANITARIAN SCIENCES- see Humanities. Large psychological dictionary. M.: Prime EUROZNAK. Ed. B.G. Meshcheryakova, acad. V.P. Zinchenko. 2003 ... Great psychological encyclopedia

HUMANITIES, HUMANITIES Sciences and arts, the study of which leads to the harmonious development of a person’s mental and moral powers. In the Middle Ages, classical languages ​​and their literatures were revered as such, to which mainly... ... Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language

Humanitarian sciences- social sciences (history, political economy, philology, etc.) in contrast to natural and technical sciences. Oddly enough, the humanities for the most part study predominantly non-humanoid processes... Theoretical aspects and foundations of the environmental problem: interpreter of words and ideomatic expressions

HUMANITARIAN SCIENCES- in a broad sense, the science of all products of human activity (science of culture). In a more special sense, the science of the products of human spiritual creative activity (science of the spirit). They are distinguished from the natural sciences, which study nature... ... Philosophy of Science: Glossary of Basic Terms

Humanitarian sciences- (from Latin humanitas human nature, education) social sciences that study man and his culture (as opposed to natural and technical sciences) ... Research activities. Dictionary

HUMANITARIAN SCIENCES- English humanities; German Humanwissenschaften. Sciences that study cultural phenomena in their various manifestations and development (for example, literature); G.N., focusing on social. the nature of human activity and his works are societies, sciences... ... Explanatory dictionary of sociology

Humanitarian sciences- philosophy, art history, literary criticism... Sociology: dictionary

division of social sciences into social sciences and humanities- DIVISION OF SOCIAL HUMANITIES SCIENCES INTO SOCIAL AND HUMANITIES - a methodological approach based on the heterogeneity of the sciences about man and society and problematizing the concept of “social humanities”. On the one hand, there is... ... Encyclopedia of Epistemology and Philosophy of Science

Books

• Russian professorship (XVIII - early XX centuries). Humanitarian sciences. Biographical Sciences. Volume 1. A-I, V. A. Volkov, M. V. Kulikova, V. S. Loginov. The volume contains biographies of professors who occupied humanities departments in higher educational institutions of Russia - theologians, historians, philologists, philosophers, economists and linguists. Peculiarity…
• Humanities Univ. enz. schoolboy, . Encyclopedic articles on history, regional studies, art, social sciences and other humanities arranged in alphabetical order will not only help schoolchildren...

In the process of understanding the surrounding world and man himself, various sciences are formed. Natural sciences - sciences about nature - form natural science culture, humanities - artistic (humanitarian) culture.

At the initial stages of knowledge (mythology, natural philosophy), these two types of sciences and cultures were not separated. However, gradually each of them developed its own principles and approaches. The separation of these cultures was also facilitated by different goals: natural sciences sought to study nature and conquer it; Humanities set their goal to study man and his world.

It is believed that the methods of the natural and human sciences are also predominantly different: rational in the natural sciences and emotional (intuitive, imaginative) in the humanities. To be fair, it should be noted that there is no sharp boundary here, since elements of intuition and imaginative thinking are integral elements of natural science comprehension of the world, and in the humanities, especially in history, economics, and sociology, one cannot do without a rational, logical method.

In the Ancient era, a single, undivided knowledge about the world (natural philosophy) prevailed. There was no problem of separating the natural and human sciences in the Middle Ages, although at that time the process of differentiation of scientific knowledge and the identification of independent sciences had already begun. However, for medieval man, Nature represented a world of things behind which one should strive to see the symbols of God, i.e. knowledge of the world was, first of all, knowledge of Divine Wisdom.

In the era of modern times (XVII - XVIII centuries), an exceptionally rapid development of natural science began, accompanied by the process of differentiation of sciences. The successes of natural science were so great that the idea of ​​their omnipotence arose in society. The opinions and objections of representatives of the humanitarian movement were often ignored. The rational, logical method of understanding the world has become decisive. Later, a kind of split emerged between the humanitarian and natural science cultures.

Stages of knowledge of Nature

The history of science shows that in its knowledge of Nature, starting from ancient times, humanity has gone through three stages and is entering the fourth.

1. At the first stage, general syncretic ones were formed, i.e. undivided ideas about the surrounding world as something whole. It was then that natural philosophy appeared - the philosophy of Nature, which contained ideas and guesses that became the rudiments of the natural sciences in the 13th - 15th centuries. Natural philosophy was dominated by methods of observation, but not experiment. It was at this stage that ideas about the world as developing from chaos, evolving, arose.

2. The second stage - analytical - is characteristic of the XV - XVIII centuries. At this stage, mental dissection and isolation of particulars took place, which led to the emergence and development of physics, chemistry and biology, as well as a number of other sciences (along with the long-existing astronomy). The natural desire of researchers to penetrate ever deeper into the details of various natural objects has led to uncontrollable differentiation, i.e. division of the relevant sciences. For example, chemistry was first divided into organic and inorganic, then physical and analytical chemistry, etc. appeared. Today this list is very long. The analytical stage is characterized by a clear predominance of empirical (obtained through experience, experiment) knowledge over theoretical knowledge. An important feature of the analytical stage is the advanced, preferential study of objects of Nature in relation to the study of processes in Nature. The peculiarity of the analytical period of development of natural science is that Nature itself, until the middle of the 19th century, was considered unchanged, ossified, outside of evolution.

3. The third stage is synthetic. Gradually, during the 19th – 20th centuries, the reconstruction of a holistic picture of Nature began to take place on the basis of previously known particulars, i.e. the third, so-called synthetic stage began.

4. A number of researchers believe that today the fourth - integral-differential - stage is beginning to take place, at which a truly unified science of nature is born.

It is noteworthy that the transition to the third (synthetic) and even to the fourth (integral-differential) stages of the study of Nature does not exclude the manifestation of all the just listed features of the analytical period. Moreover, the processes of differentiation of the natural sciences are now intensifying, and the volume of empirical research is growing sharply. But both of these are now happening against the backdrop of ever-increasing integrative trends and the birth of universal theories that seek to derive all the infinite variety of natural phenomena from one or more general theoretical principles. Thus, there are no strict boundaries between the analytical and synthetic stages of the study of Nature.

Natural scientific revolutions

What is the natural science revolution? Typically there are three main features:

1) the collapse and rejection of ideas that previously dominated science;

2) rapid expansion of knowledge about nature, entry into new areas of nature that were previously inaccessible to knowledge; the creation of new tools and devices plays an important role here;

3) the natural science revolution is caused not by the discovery of new facts in itself, but by radically new theoretical consequences from them; in other words, a revolution is taking place in the sphere of theories, concepts, principles, laws of science, the formulations of which are being radically changed.

In order to cause a revolution in science, a new discovery must be of a fundamental, methodological nature, causing a radical change in the very method of research, approach and interpretation of natural phenomena.

Natural scientific revolutions have an important feature. New theories that received their justification during the natural science revolution do not refute the old ones if their validity was sufficiently substantiated. In these cases, the so-called compliance principle applies:

Old theories retain their significance as an extreme and, in a certain sense, special case of new, more general and accurate ones.

Thus, Newton’s classical mechanics is an extreme, special case of the theory of relativity, and the modern theory of evolution does not refute Darwin’s theory, but complements and develops it, etc.

The first global natural science revolution, which transformed astronomy, cosmology and physics, was the creation of a consistent doctrine of the geocentric system of the world.

The second global natural science revolution represented a transition from geocentrism to heliocentrism, and from it to polycentrism, i.e. the doctrine of the plurality of stellar worlds.

The third global natural science revolution meant a fundamental rejection of any centrism, a denial of the presence of any center in the Universe. This revolution is associated, first of all, with the advent of A. Einstein’s theory of relativity, i.e. relativistic (relative) theory of space, time and gravity.

The fourth global natural science revolution presupposes a certain synthesis of general relativity with quantum (discrete) ideas about the structure of matter into a unified physical theory, similar to the unified theory of all fundamental physical interactions already being created in our time: gravitational, electromagnetic, weak and strong. This revolution has not actually been realized yet. But many researchers believe that the time is not far when they will talk about it as a fait accompli.

Scientific picture of the world

The scientific picture of the world (SPW) includes the most important achievements of science that create a certain understanding of the world and man’s place in it. It does not include more specific information about the properties of various natural systems, or about the details of the cognitive process itself.

Unlike strict theories, the scientific picture of the world has the necessary clarity.

The scientific picture of the world is a special form of systematization of knowledge, mainly its qualitative generalization, ideological synthesis of various scientific theories.

In the history of science, scientific pictures of the world did not remain unchanged, but replaced each other, thus we can talk about evolution scientific pictures of the world. The most obvious evolution seems to be physical pictures of the world: natural philosophy - until the 16th - 17th centuries, mechanistic - until the second half of the 19th century, thermodynamic (within the framework of mechanistic theory) in the 19th century, relativistic and quantum mechanical in the 20th century. The figure schematically shows the development and change of scientific pictures of the world in physics.

Physical pictures of the World

There are general scientific pictures of the world and pictures of the world from the point of view of individual sciences, for example, physical, biological, etc.

In the history of the development of philosophical and scientific thought, there have been repeated attempts to unite various knowledge in accordance with a single universal principle. Various types of classifications, i.e., divisions of things into genus and species, were also applied to the sciences. This includes attempts to classify the sciences of Aristotle, F. Bacon, French encyclopedists, O. Comte and the positivists of the 19th century, Hegel, as the finalizer of German classical idealism, F. Engels and Marxists, as well as many modern scientists.

Aristotle generally followed the general logic and tradition of ancient philosophy, highlighting the sciences of nature (physics), knowledge and soul (logic) and society (ethics). However, it was Aristotle, as the founder of many new sciences (biology, meteorology, etc.), who proposed an additional, original principle for classifying sciences in accordance with the functions they perform: creative sciences (poetics, rhetoric, dialectics), practical sciences (ethics, politics , medicine, astronomy) and theoretical sciences (logic, mathematics, physics, first philosophy).

F. Bacon (XVII century) divided sciences in accordance with the abilities of the human soul: memory, imagination and reason. Historical sciences (natural, civil history, church history) are associated with memory; with imagination - poetry, as an image of the world not as it really is, but in accordance with the desires and ideals of a person; Sciences about nature, about man and about God are connected with reason, i.e. natural science, theology and what is commonly called extra-scientific, parascientific knowledge (magic, alchemy, astrology, palmistry, etc.).

O. Comte (19th century) rejected the principle of dividing sciences according to various abilities of the mind. He believed that the principle of classification should be based on the subjects of science and determined by the connections between them. Comte's principle ranked the sciences according to the simplicity and generality of their subjects and their corresponding methods. Thus, mathematics has a universal subject and method, followed by mechanics, the sciences of inorganic bodies, the sciences of organic bodies, and sociology.

In the second half of the 19th century. F. Engels connected the subjects of science with the forms of movement of matter. The positivist principle of classification of sciences (O. Comte, G. Spencer) was developed by him, since he left open the possibility of the emergence of new sciences on the basis of still unknown forms of motion of matter.

Modern classifications generally come down to three blocks: natural and mathematical sciences, philosophical and humanities and technical and applied sciences. The basis of this classification clearly shows the influence of ancient thought (Aristotle), positivism, Marxism, and especially the spiritual situation of the 20th century, the focus of which was the problem of man. It is man who has knowledge about nature (natural science), about himself (humanities) and about the fruits of his activities to transform the world (technical sciences).

Natural Sciences. Knowledge about nature is an integral system, the structural complexity and substantive depth of which reflects the endless complexity and depth of nature itself. Knowledge of nature is achieved through practical and theoretical human activity. All knowledge about nature must be capable of empirical verification.

Since all sciences arise from the situation of the relationship between subject and object (according to I. Kant), it is clear that the sciences of nature pay more attention to the object than to the subject. But for modern natural science it becomes fundamentally important to observe a strict measure of attention not only to the object, but also to the subject. The history of natural science provides an object lesson in this sense. So, for classical natural science, starting from the 17th century. characterized by a tendency to completely “exclude from the description and explanation everything that relates to the subject and the procedures of his cognitive activity.”

Non-classical natural science (late 19th - mid-20th centuries) is characterized by the assumption of correlations between an object and the procedures of cognitive activity; the concept of an “object within an instrumental situation” arises, which may differ significantly from an “object outside an instrumental situation.”

Finally, in post-non-classical natural science the very subject of research has changed. Now it is not limited only to the object determined by the means of scientific knowledge, but includes its orbit and the subject. The subject of science is already a subject - an object system in its self-movement and development.

For a long time, the paradigms of natural science determined the course of development of the entire complex of sciences, and even philosophy. Thus, Euclid’s geometry is reflected in I. Kant’s formulation of the a priori foundations of human sensory knowledge and reason - so convincing was its “paradigmality” for the German philosopher. The same situation developed around the physics of I. Newton (XVII century) and physics A. Einstein (beginning of the XX century), around the discoveries of G. Mendel (end of the 19th century), D. Watson and F. Crick (mid-20th century .).

In the 20th century The “palm” is gradually moving from the natural sciences to the social and humanities. The political economic studies of K. Marx and the sociology of M. Weber are becoming a model of a truly scientific approach for many scientists and scientific schools.

Humanitarian sciences. The very concept of humanitarian, i.e. human, comes from the first humanists of the Renaissance, who in the XV-XVI centuries. took upon themselves the work of reviving in the original the heritage of ancient thinkers, primarily poets, writers, philosophers, historians, i.e. those who worked to exalt the human spirit and its power. The humanities are associated with a specific, individual, unique subject and his achievements, which have something in common with the spiritual state of other subjects, that is, causing them a certain spiritual resonance.

Of the three functions of science listed above, understanding (interpretation) is most suitable for the humanities. The humanities deal with single, unique facts, events, phenomena of a sociocultural, spiritual nature, which are least characterized by homogeneity and identical repetition. They are extremely difficult to bring under general concepts, theories, laws, that is, to explain. As for the function of prediction, in the humanities, unlike the natural sciences, it is realized to a rather small extent. Predicting any social event or the further course of history is much more difficult than predicting a solar eclipse or the approach of a meteorite to the Earth.

Views on the subject of the humanities are extremely contradictory. According to G. Rickert, laws in the humanities are not nomological (reflecting regular, repeating connections between objects or phenomena), but ideographic (interpreting unique individual facts and phenomena from the perspective of specific authors). According to neo-Kantians, the humanities should be based not on causal relationships and laws, but on the goals, intentions, motives, and interests of people. Marxist point of view

48 ma, on the contrary, historical patterns “make their way” in society with the necessity of a natural process and act beyond the guidance and desires of people. Such an antinomy, however, is resolvable within the framework of the humanities itself, although it requires qualified philosophical assistance.

The conscious activity of people, presented here in the form of motives and interests, is always determined by a certain historical situation that has developed in the past, but, in turn, determines the future contours of history, thus becoming, as it were, part of an objective “historical landscape.” One goes into the other and back again. If we separate the sphere of conscious activity of people from the historical conditions in which it occurs, then we cannot avoid fatalistic or voluntaristic interpretations, subjective-idealistic or objectivist concepts of the philosophy of history.

Comprehension of the subject of the humanities is increasingly associated with hermeneutics, which originally existed as exegesis. Hermeneutics means not only the method of the humanities (the art and theory of interpretation of texts), but also the doctrine of being (ontology). Currently, it traditionally distinguishes two approaches: psychological and theoretical. Psychological includes understanding based on one person’s experience of the spiritual experience of another, his feelings, moods, emotions. To understand the author, you must internally experience what he experienced. The theoretical approach involves revealing the meaning of the ideas, goals, and motives of the authors, i.e., it seeks to understand what they wanted to convey to us and how this information conveyed to us can enrich our understanding of life. The writer must be understood better than he understood himself, says the principle of hermeneutics. Another principle is that the understanding of a single fragment is conditioned by the understanding of the whole (text, document, history) and, conversely, the whole can be comprehended thanks to the achieved understanding of individual fragments (the so-called “hermeneutic circle”). Another important principle of hermeneutics states that to understand means to understand another, that is, to find commonality with him in worldview, culture, rights, language, etc. . The question arises: can hermeneutics be used to study nature? At first glance, it seems that no, because in nature we are dealing with repeating, similar, uniform groups of objects and phenomena. But in nature, scientists also encounter unique, inimitable objects and phenomena that do not fit into the framework of known patterns and existing theories. In this case, the scientist also seeks to understand and interpret the nature of such objects and phenomena, to identify a pattern or put forward a new 49 hypothesis for their explanation. However, in this case, the natural object inevitably loses its “uniqueness”. Against this background, the example of different interpretations of microworld objects by different scientists and scientific schools is especially clear.

The ideal option would be to use hermeneutics in natural science, if we assume that “nature is a text written by God” that needs to be deciphered. G. Galileo also thought in this vein: nature is a book written in the language of mathematics, and a person not versed in mathematics will not understand it.

The methods of natural sciences can be used in certain aspects to understand social phenomena. The experience of studying economic, demographic, environmental processes, for example in the activities of the Club of Rome, in the calculations of the “nuclear winter” scenario by K. Sagan and N. Moiseev, shows the relative success of such use. The same applies to the justification of the partial application of the historical concept of K. Marx or the concepts of A. Toynbee, O. Spengler (about the closedness and cyclical nature of civilizational processes). All these theories have a very clear and rational, but dry and abstract scheme. The specificity of the very subject of research with its colorfulness, fullness of life, individuality disappears from these schemes, as if they took the life of Russian society in the middle of the last century as an object of study and studied it only according to political, economic, demographic, etc. theories, forgetting about JI novels. Tolstoy, F. Dostoevsky. K. Marx himself believed that reading the novels of O. Balzac gives him an understanding of the economic situation in France at the beginning of the 19th century. incomparably more than the most careful study of economic tables and stock market reports.

Technical sciences study nature transformed and placed at the service of man. "Techne" translated from ancient Greek means art. In ancient theatrical performances, at the climax, the “God ex machina” often appeared, driven by a skillfully designed pulley mechanism. Thus, technology (art) became a mediator between man and God, man and fate, man and nature. T. Campanella (16th century) believed that a person in his desires does not stop at the things of this world, but wants even more - to rise above the sky and the world. Not having legs as fast as a horse, man invents the wheel and cart, not being able to swim like a fish, he invents ships, and, dreaming of flying like a bird, he creates flying machines. The phenomenon of technology includes a number of meanings. The first is an instrumental understanding of technology. Technology is understood as a set of artificially created material means of activity or a set of artifacts used as a means of activity. In this sense, technology is always things created by people from an inorganic substrate and used by them. In the second sense, technology is understood as a skillful process of activity or as skill, for example, the technique of agriculture, navigation, healing, etc. Nowadays, the word “technology” is most often used in this meaning, denoting the totality of knowledge and skills in manufacturing something. The third meaning of technology is understood extremely broadly as a way of activity, a way of life and a way of thinking, for example, language, first oral and then written - this is technology, modern world religions are also technology.

Unlike natural sciences, technical sciences (applied mechanics, radio electronics, mining, agronomy, genetic engineering, pharmacology, etc.) are more specific, because they study specific objects created by man, “second nature,” and also utilitarian, since they are focused not on understanding the essence of the phenomenon as such, but on a specific result that has practical application. But without the natural sciences, technical sciences cannot develop, in principle, because the former give them the basis and reveal the essence of the processes used in technical systems.

In turn, the humanities also have an impact on the technical sciences. Technology is created by man and for his needs. It is included as an integral part in the process of his life and at the same time should not subjugate a person to himself, deprive him of freedom and creativity. The technical and engineering ethics that arose on this basis is intended to prevent the distortions of society towards technicalism.

Technical sciences tend to progress, which is determined by the social need for practical scientific achievements used in production. However, there is a limit and a transition to its opposite: progress in one respect is regression in another. It is not for nothing that it has long been believed that technology, as a “gift of the gods,” can turn out to be a “Pandora’s box.”

A person has knowledge about the nature around him (the Universe), about himself and his own works. This divides all the information he has into two large sections - into natural science (natural in the sense that what is studied is what exists independently of man, as opposed to artificial - created by man) and humanitarian (from “homo” - man) knowledge, knowledge about man and the spiritual products of his activity. In addition, there is technical knowledge - knowledge about specific material products of human activity (Table 5.2.).

Typology of sciences

Table 5.2

As follows from the definition, the differences between natural science and humanitarian knowledge are that the former are based on the separation of the subject (man) and the object (nature, which is cognized by man - the subject), with primary attention paid to the object, and the latter are primarily related to to the subject himself.

Natural science in the full sense of the word is universally valid and provides “generic” truth, i.e. truth suitable and accepted by all people. Therefore, it has traditionally been regarded as the standard of scientific objectivity. Another large complex of sciences - the humanities, on the contrary, has always been associated with group values ​​and interests that exist both among the scientist himself and in the subject of research. Therefore, in the methodology of the humanities, along with objective research methods, the experience of the event being studied, the subjective attitude towards it, etc., become of great importance.

So, the main differences between the natural, humanitarian and technical sciences are that natural science studies the world as it exists independently of man, the humanities study the spiritual products of human activity, and technical sciences study the material products of human activity.

However, it is in principle impossible to draw a clear line between the natural, humanities and technical sciences, since there are a number of disciplines that occupy an intermediate position or are complex in nature. Thus, at the junction of the natural and human sciences there is economic geography, at the junction of natural and technical sciences there is bionics, and a complex discipline that includes natural, humanitarian, and technical sections is social ecology.

Separate from the three cycles of sciences, there is mathematics, which is also divided into separate disciplines. Of the three cycles, mathematics is closest to natural science, and this connection is manifested in the fact that mathematical methods are widely used in the natural sciences, especially in physics.

The results of scientific research are theories, laws, models, hypotheses, and empirical generalizations. All these concepts can be combined in one word - “concepts”. Having clarified the main features of modern science, we can define natural science. It is a branch of science based on the reproducible empirical testing of hypotheses and the creation of theories or empirical generalizations that describe natural phenomena.

The subject of natural science is facts and phenomena that are perceived by our senses or instruments that are their continuation. The scientist's task is to summarize these facts and create a theoretical model that includes the laws governing natural phenomena. It is necessary to distinguish between: 1) facts of experience, 2) empirical generalizations, 3) theories that formulate the laws of science. Phenomena, such as gravity, are directly given in experience; the laws of science, for example the law of universal gravitation, are options for explaining phenomena. The facts of science, once established, retain their permanent significance; laws can be changed during the development of science, just as, say, the law of universal gravitation was adjusted after the creation of the theory of relativity.

The relationship between feelings and reason in the process of finding truth is a complex philosophical issue. In science, a position that is confirmed by reproducible experience is recognized as truth. The basic principle of natural science is that knowledge about nature must be capable of empirical verification. Not in the sense that every particular statement must necessarily be empirically verified, but in the fact that experience is ultimately the decisive argument for the acceptance of a given theory.

The first science was astronomy(from the Greek “astron” - star and “nomos” - law) - the science of the structure and development of cosmic bodies and their systems. Let us pay attention to the fact that the second root in the name of this science is nomos, and not logos - knowledge, as usual in the name of sciences (biology, geology, etc.). This is due to historical reasons. The fact is that during this period astrology already existed, which was not a science, but was engaged in drawing up horoscopes (this continues to be fashionable today, and astrological forecasts are published in many publications). To distinguish scientific studies of the Universe from non-scientific ones, a new name was required, which contains the word “law”, reflecting the fact that science aims to study the laws of development and functioning of the world. The first truly scientific theory was the heliocentric system of the world, created by the Polish scientist N. Copernicus.

In the 17th century it appeared physics(from the Greek “fuzis” - nature). The name is explained by the fact that in Ancient Greece physics was understood as a science that studies all natural objects. As other natural sciences emerged, the subject of physics became limited. The first of the physical disciplines was mechanics - the science of the movement of natural bodies, and its first major achievements were the laws of motion of the English scientist I. Newton and the law of universal gravitation discovered by him. Also in the 17th century. appeared chemistry- the science of the composition and structure of bodies, and in the 18th century. - biology(from the Greek “bios” - life) as the science of living bodies.

Humanities, of which they are a part social and humanitarian (public) - sciences that study society began to develop later. The first one is sociology, the name of which was proposed by O. Comte by analogy with the name of the science of living nature - biology. The fact that it was Comte who proposed the new science is not accidental. He was the founder of a new philosophical trend - positivism and believed that human thinking went through three stages in its development - theological, metaphysical and positive (scientific), the latter being more fruitful because it is based on empirical (experimental) testing of hypotheses and theories, discovering the laws of nature. According to Comte, scientific thinking was first established in the study of nature. Natural sciences emerged - astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology. Then the scientific approach was to triumph in the study of society, and the science of the laws of social development could be called sociology.

However, if we now define sociology as the science of society, then this will not be accurate. The fact is that in the XIX-XX centuries. other sciences appeared that studied individual social phenomena. In the first half of the 19th century. appeared political science, and in the second half of the 19th century. - ethnography, later, in the middle of the 20th century, - cultural studies and other humanities. This is a natural process of scientific development. Physics once arose as a science of nature, but if we now call it a science of nature, we would be wrong. Now it is one of the natural sciences, since others have appeared - astronomy, chemistry, biology. To distinguish physics from other natural sciences, a more precise definition must be given. The same must be done with regard to sociology.

The difference between natural science and humanities knowledge is deeply embedded in the difference in their methodology. In methodology - the study of methods, approaches, methods of scientific research - it is stated that each science has its own special methodology. The difference between explanation (as a methodology of the natural sciences) and understanding (as a methodology of the humanities) will become clearer if we consider the situation of the formation of methodology in sociology. Sociology, according to Comte, recognizes the priority of the whole over the part and synthesis over analysis. In this way, its methodology differs from the methodology of the sciences of inanimate nature, in which, on the contrary, there is a priority of the part over the whole and analysis over synthesis.

After the task of creating sociology was formulated, the next step was the introduction into sociological research of the scientific method, which was formulated in the natural sciences. What F. Bacon demanded for the development of science in modern times, E. Durkheim repeated for sociology, setting the task of identifying the “foundations of the experimental order” that should be part of the humanities. The discussion was about the status of the empirical level of research in sociology. In The Method of Sociology, Durkheim first formulated a clear idea of ​​the methodology of sociology, which was generally contained in the teachings of Comte, but was not developed with such exhaustive completeness. Durkheim can be considered the founder of the methodology of sociology, since he was the first to define the conditions under which research becomes scientific.

In his methodological works, Durkheim emphasized that sociologists should study their subject with the same open mind as natural scientists. “Thus, our rule... requires only one thing: that the sociologist immerse himself in the state of mind in which physicists, chemists, and physiologists find themselves when they enter a new, as yet unexplored area of ​​their science.” Durkheim identifies two formulas designed to justify the existence of the subject of sociology and its accessibility to empirical research. First: social facts should be considered as things, i.e. observe social facts from the outside - objectively as existing independently of the consciousness of the researcher. This point of view is called positivism in sociology.

Durkheim himself preferred the word “rationalism.” Social facts, he believed, have properties that are not contained in the human mind, since society cannot be reduced to the totality of its members. Durkheim argued that society is not just a sum of individuals, but a system created by their association, a special reality with its inherent characteristics. Therefore, social life should be explained by sociological, and not psychological or any other reasons. According to Durkheim, between psychology and sociology there is the same gap as between biology and the physical and chemical sciences. Thus, Durkheim justified his approach by the presence of special emergent properties of social systems formed through sociocultural interaction studied by sociology.

Durkheim also formulated the relationship between theoretical research and practical recommendations. “However, we can rise to this ideal only after we observe reality and isolate this ideal from it.” In Durkheim's methodology, the classifications that he had after formulating the hypothesis were of great importance.

The positivist approach in sociology was opposed by the approach of M. Weber, who took into account fundamental differences between the subject of the humanities and the natural sciences: 1) the great complexity of social systems; 2) social reality depends on both objective and subjective factors; 3) social research includes personal, group and ideological interests; 4) the possibilities of experiment in the social sciences are limited both in the sense of obtaining results and in the sense of testing them, and one often has to be content with observation.

These differences in subject matter determine the specificity of the humanities. It is characterized by the following features: 1) historicity - when a person becomes the object of knowledge, it is completely natural to show interest in the special features of an individual, community, era; 2) connection with culture - the need to understand the values ​​that guide people who create culture (value judgment is subjective, but taking into account values ​​is necessary in humanities research for their organization and selection of facts); 3) in the humanities we are not talking about a hypothetico-deductive system, as in the natural sciences, but about a set of interpretations, each of which is based on a selection of facts and is inextricably linked with a system of values; 4) if in the natural sciences the observed phenomena can be explained through premises that are mathematical in form and nature, and understanding is thus indirect in nature, then in the humanities understanding is direct, since human behavior is the outwardly manifested meaningfulness of individuals endowed with reason.

The specifics of sociology as a science led M. Weber to the conclusion that while Natural sciences aim at explanations, social sciences aim at understanding.“All social, significant human behavior is an expression of motivated mental states, which means that the social scientist cannot be satisfied with observing social processes simply as a sequence of “externally related” events and that the establishment of correlations or even universal connections in this sequence of events cannot be his ultimate goal. On the contrary, he must construct "ideal types" or "models of motivation" - terms in which he seeks to "understand" overt social behavior." According to Weber, the search for truth in sociology is impossible without a sensory relationship to the object of research, experience and “getting used to” it. M. Weber called sociology an “understanding” science, i.e. seeking the meaning of people's social actions. “Understanding sociology” examines phenomena from the inside, but not from the point of view of their physical or psychological properties, but from the point of view of their meaning.

The purpose of the humanities, according to Weber, is twofold: to provide an explanation of causal relationships, as well as an understanding interpretation of the behavior of human communities. At the beginning of humanitarian research, an ideal-typical construction of an individual historical event should be constructed. M. Weber introduced a methodologically important concept in sociology "ideal type" The ideal type is associated with the category of understanding, since every ideal type is the establishment of meaningful connections inherent in any historical integrity or sequence of events. The ideal type identifies not the traits common to all historical individuals and not the average characteristics, but the typical characteristics of the phenomenon as such. The ideal type should not be confused with the ideal. The ideal type correlates with reality, while the ideal leads to a value judgment. There can be an ideal type of any phenomenon, including a negative one.

To make it easier to understand what an ideal type is, it is useful to compare it with the types depicted in works of art: the type of an extra person, a landowner, Turgenev’s girl, etc. One must only keep in mind that the creation of types in works of art is the ultimate goal, while in sociological research it is only a means of constructing a theory. Weber especially emphasized, in contrast to positivism, that “ideal types” are not extracted from empirical reality, but are constructed theoretically. They are a special kind of empirical generalization. So, the humanities are both understanding and causal. This is how the two goals of humanitarian research are combined - to explain and to understand. If Comte substantiated the need for sociology as a science, Durkheim - its irreducibility to other sciences, its independent status, then Weber substantiated the specificity of sociology.

It can be considered that in modern sociology both approaches complement each other. It is recognized that sociology “is both understanding and explanatory. Understanding because it reveals the logic or implied rationality of individual or collective actions. Explanatory - because it builds patterns and includes private, individual actions in wholes that give them meaning." Thus, in a full-fledged humanitarian study, the positive (rational) position of the scientist does not necessarily have to oppose the inclusion of his feelings. Holistic research can only be done by a holistic person. Therefore, both methodological approaches can be used together.

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