Modern natural-scientific picture of the world

Here is collected the most typical information about the modern natural science picture of the world, given in most manuals and textbooks. To what extent these ideas are limited in many ways, and sometimes simply do not correspond to experience and facts, readers can judge for themselves.

The concept of a mythological, religious and philosophical picture of the world

The picture of the world is - a system of views on the objective world and the place of man in it.

The following pictures of the world are distinguished:

 mythological;

 religious;

 philosophical;

 scientific.

Let us consider the features of the mythological ( Mithos- legend, logos- teaching) pictures of the world.

Mythological picture of the world is determined by the artistic and emotional experience of the world, its sensory perception and, as a result of irrational perception, social illusions. Events happening around were explained with the help of mythical characters, for example, a thunderstorm - the result of the wrath of Zeus in Greek mythology.

Properties of the mythological picture of the world:

 humanization of nature ( italics are ours, pay attention to widest distribution in the current science of such humanization. For example, belief in the existence of objective laws of the Universe, despite the fact that the very concept of “law” was invented by man and was not discovered in experiment, and even laws that are clearly expressed in human concepts) , When natural objects endowed with human abilities, for example, “the sea is raging”;

 presence of fantastic ones, i.e. having no prototype in reality gods, for example, centaurs; or anthropomorphic gods resembling humans, such as Venus ( our italics, we draw attention to the general anthropomorphism of the Universe, widespread in science, expressed, for example, in the belief in its comprehensibility by man);

 interaction of gods with humans, i.e. possibility of contact in various fields life activity, for example, Achilles, Hercules, who were considered the children of God and man;

 lack of abstract thinking, i.e. the world was perceived as a set of “fairy-tale” images, did not require rational thinking ( our italics, just as fundamental scientific postulates do not require rational understanding today ) ;

 practical orientation of the myth, which manifested itself in the fact that in order to achieve a certain result it was assumed set of specific actions , for example, sacrifice ( our italics, as to this day, science does not recognize a result that is not obtained through strictly recorded procedures).

Each nation has its own mythological system that explains the origin of the world, its structure, the place and role of man in the world.

On next stage development of mankind, with the advent of world religions, a religious picture of the world emerges.

Religious(religion- holiness) picture of the world based on belief in the existence of the supernatural, such as God and the devil, heaven and hell; does not require proof , rational justification of their provisions; the truths of faith are considered superior to the truths of reason ( italics are ours, just as fundamental scientific postulates do not require proof).

The religious picture of the world is determined specific properties religion. This is availability faith as a way of existence of religious consciousness and cult as a system of established rituals, dogmas, which are an external form of manifestation of faith ( our italics, just like in science the belief in the knowability of the Universe, the role of dogmas-postulates and scientific rituals of “extracting the truth”).

Characteristics of the religious picture of the world:

 the supernatural plays a dominant role in the universe and people's lives. God creates the world and controls the course of history and life individual person;

 the “earthly” and the sacred are separated, i.e. Direct contact between a person and God is impossible, in contrast to the mythological picture of the world.

Religious pictures of the world differ depending on the characteristics of a particular religion. In the modern world there are three world religions: Buddhism, Christianity, Islam.

Philosophical picture of the world based on knowledge, and not on faith or fiction, like mythological and religious. It involves reflection, i.e. contains reflections on one’s own ideas about the world and man’s place in it. Unlike previous paintings, the philosophical picture of the world is logical, has internal unity and system, explains the world based on clear concepts and categories. She is characterized by free-thinking and criticality, i.e. lack of dogma, problematic perception of the world.

Ideas about reality within the framework of the philosophical picture of the world are formed on the basis of philosophical methods. Methodology is a system of principles, generalized methods of organizing and constructing theoretical reality, as well as the doctrine of this system.

Basic methods of philosophy:

1. Dialectics- a method within which things and phenomena are considered flexible, critical, consistent, taking them into account internal contradictions and changes (our italics, the good idea embedded in the dialectical method is difficult to implement in practice due to extreme limitations existing knowledge, often dialectics in science boils over into ordinary tastes)

2. Metaphysics- a method opposite to dialectics, in which objects are considered separately, statically and unambiguously (conducted search for absolute truth ) (our italics, although formally modern science recognizes that any “truth” is temporary and private, nevertheless proclaims that this process eventually converges to a certain limit that playsde facto the role of absolute truth).

Philosophical pictures of the world may differ depending on historical type philosophy, its nationality, specifics of the philosophical direction. Initially, two main branches of philosophy were formed: Eastern and Western. Eastern philosophy is mainly represented by the philosophy of China and India. Western philosophy, dominant in modern natural science concepts, which originated in Ancient Greece, goes through several stages in its development, each of which determined the specifics of the philosophical picture of the world.

Ideas about the world, formed within the framework of the philosophical picture of the world, formed the basis of the scientific picture of the world.

The scientific picture of the world as a theoretical construct

Scientific picture of the world - special shape ideas about the world based on scientific knowledge, which depends on historical period and the level of development of science. At each historical stage in the development of scientific knowledge, there is an attempt to generalize the acquired knowledge to form a holistic picture of the world, which is called the “general scientific picture of the world.” The scientific picture of the world differs depending on the subject of research. Such a picture of the world is called a special scientific picture of the world, for example, a physical picture of the world, a biological picture of the world.

The scientific picture of the world is formed in the process of developing scientific knowledge.

Science is a form of spiritual activity of people, aimed at producing knowledge about nature, society and knowledge itself, with the goal comprehension of truth (our italics, we emphasize the underlying belief in the existence of some objective truth independent of man) And discovery of objective laws (our italics, we draw attention to the belief in the existence of “laws” outside our mind).

Stages of development of modern science

Classical science (XVII-XIX centuries), exploring its objects, sought to eliminate, as far as possible, everything that relates to the subject, means, techniques and operations of its activity in their description and theoretical explanation. This elimination was seen as necessary condition obtaining objective and true knowledge about the world. Here the objective style of thinking dominates, the desire to cognize an object in itself, regardless of the conditions of its study by the subject.

Non-classical science (the first half of the twentieth century), the starting point of which is associated with the development of relativistic and quantum theory, rejects the objectivism of classical science, rejects the idea of ​​reality as something independent of the means of its knowledge, subjective factor. It comprehends the connections between the knowledge of the object and the nature of the means and operations of the subject. The explication of these connections is considered as the conditions for an objective and true description and explanation of the world.

Post-non-classical science (second half of the 20th - beginning of the 21st centuries) is characterized by the constant inclusion of subjective activity in the “body of knowledge”. It takes into account the correlation of the nature of the acquired knowledge about an object not only with the peculiarities of the means and operations of the activity of the cognizing subject, but also with its value-goal structures.

Each of these stages has its own paradigm (a set of theoretical, methodological and other guidelines), your own picture of the world, your fundamental ideas.

Classic stage has mechanics as its paradigm, its picture of the world is built on the principle of hard (Laplacian) determinism, and it corresponds to the image of the universe as a clockwork mechanism. ( Until now, mechanistic ideas occupy approximately 90% of the volume in scientific minds, which is easy to establish simply by talking to them)

WITH non-classical Science is associated with the paradigm of relativity, discreteness, quantization, probability, and complementarity. ( Surprisingly, the idea of ​​relativity still occupies an insignificant place in the practical activities of scientists; even the simple relativity of motion/immobility is rarely remembered, and sometimes it is outright denied)

Post-non-classical The stage corresponds to the paradigm of formation and self-organization. The main features of the new (post-non-classical) image of science are expressed by synergetics, which studies the general principles of self-organization processes occurring in systems of a very different nature (physical, biological, technical, social, etc.). Orientation towards the “synergetic movement” is an orientation towards historical time, consistency and development as the most important characteristics of being. ( these concepts are still accessible to real understanding and practical use only to a tiny number of scientists, but those who have mastered them and actually use them, as a rule, reconsider their vulgarly dismissive attitude towards spiritual practices, religion, mythology)

As a result of the development of science, a scientific picture of the world .

The scientific picture of the world differs from other pictures of the world in that it builds its ideas about the world on the basis of cause-and-effect relationships, that is, all phenomena of the surrounding world have their own causes and develop according to certain laws.

The specificity of the scientific picture of the world is determined by the characteristics of scientific knowledge. Characteristics of science.

 Activities to obtain new knowledge.

 Self-worth - knowledge for the sake of himself knowledge ( our italics, in fact - knowledge for the sake of recognition, positions, awards, funding).

 Rational character, relying on logic and evidence.

 Creation of holistic, systemic knowledge.

 Statements of science required for all people ( our italics, the provisions of religion in the Middle Ages were also considered obligatory).

 Reliance on experimental method.

There are general and special pictures of the world.

Special scientific pictures of the world represent the subjects of each individual science (physics, biology, social sciences, etc.). The general scientific picture of the world presents the most important systemic and structural characteristics of the subject area of ​​scientific knowledge as a whole.

General The scientific picture of the world is a special form of theoretical knowledge. It integrates the most important achievements of the natural, humanities and technical sciences. These are, for example, ideas about quarks ( our italics, it turns out that quarks, never isolated from elementary particles by anyone and even considered fundamentally inseparable, are “the most important achievement”!) and synergetic processes, about genes, ecosystems and the biosphere, about society as an integral system, etc. Initially, they develop as fundamental ideas and representations of the relevant disciplines, and then are included in the general scientific picture of the world.

So what does the modern picture of the world look like?

The modern picture of the world is created on the basis of classical, non-classical and post-non-classical pictures, intricately intertwined and occupying different levels, in accordance with the degree of knowledge of certain areas.

A new picture of the world is just being formed; it must still acquire a universal language adequate to Nature. I. Tamm said that our first task is to learn to listen to nature in order to understand its language. The picture of the world drawn by modern natural science is unusually complex and at the same time simple. Its complexity lies in the fact that it can confuse a person who is accustomed to thinking in classical concepts with their visual interpretation of phenomena and processes occurring in nature. From this point of view, modern ideas about the world look to some extent “crazy.” But, nevertheless, modern natural science shows that everything that is not prohibited by its laws is realized in nature, no matter how crazy and incredible it may seem. At the same time, the modern picture of the world is quite simple and harmonious, since not many principles and hypotheses are required to understand it. These qualities are given to it by such leading principles of construction and organization of modern scientific knowledge as systematicity, global evolutionism, self-organization and historicity.

Systematicity reflects science's reproduction of the fact that the Universe appears to us as the largest system known to us, consisting of a huge number of subsystems various levels complexity and orderliness. The effect of systematicity consists in the appearance of new properties in the system, which arise due to the interaction of its elements with each other. Another of its most important properties is hierarchy and subordination, i.e. the consistent inclusion of systems of lower levels into systems of higher levels, which reflects their fundamental unity, since each element of the system is connected with all other elements and subsystems. It is precisely this fundamentally unified character that Nature demonstrates to us. Modern natural science is organized in a similar way. Currently, it can be argued that almost the entire modern picture of the world is permeated and transformed by physics and chemistry. Moreover, it includes an observer, on whose presence the observed picture of the world depends.

Global evolutionism means recognition of the fact that the Universe has an evolutionary character - the Universe and everything that exists in it is constantly developing and evolving, i.e. At the heart of everything that exists are evolutionary, irreversible processes. This testifies to the fundamental unity of the world, each component of which is a historical consequence of the evolutionary process begun by the Big Bang. The idea of ​​global evolutionism also allows us to study all processes occurring in the world from a single point of view as components of the overall world development process. Therefore, the main object of study of natural science becomes a single indivisible self-organizing Universe, the development of which is determined by the universal and practically unchanging laws of Nature.

Self-organization- this is the ability of matter to complicate itself and create more and more ordered structures in the course of evolution. Apparently, education is increasingly complex structures processes of the most varied nature occur according to a single mechanism, which is universal for systems of all levels.

Historicity lies in recognizing the fundamental incompleteness of the present scientific picture of the world. Indeed, the development of society, changes in its value orientations, awareness of the importance of studying the uniqueness of the entire set of natural systems in which integral part including man, will continuously change the strategy of scientific research and our attitude to the world, because the entire world around us is in a state of constant and irreversible historical development.

One of the main features of the modern picture of the world is its abstract character And lack of visibility, especially at a fundamental level. The latter is due to the fact that at this level we experience the world not through the senses, but using a variety of instruments and devices. At the same time, we fundamentally cannot ignore those physical processes with the help of which we obtain information about the objects under study. As a result, it turned out that we cannot talk about an objective reality that exists independently of us, as such. Only physical reality is available to us as part of objective reality, which we cognize with the help of experience and our consciousness, i.e. facts and figures obtained using instruments. When deepening and clarifying the system of scientific concepts, we are forced to move further and further away from sensory perceptions and from the concepts that arose on their basis.

Data from modern natural science increasingly confirm that the real world is infinitely diverse. The deeper we penetrate into the secrets of the structure of the Universe, the more diverse and subtle connections we discover.

Let us briefly formulate those features that form the basis of modern natural science picture peace.

. Space and time in the modern picture of the world

Let us briefly summarize how and why our seemingly obvious and intuitive ideas about space and time have changed and developed since physical point vision.

Already in the ancient world, the first materialistic ideas about space and time were developed. Subsequently, they went through a difficult path of development, especially in the twentieth century. The special theory of relativity established the inextricable connection between space and time, and the general theory of relativity showed the dependence of this unity on the properties of matter. With the discovery of the expansion of the Universe and the prediction of black holes, the understanding came that there are states of matter in the Universe in which the properties of space and time should be radically different from those familiar to us in earthly conditions.

Time is often compared to a river. The eternal river of time flows by itself strictly evenly. “Time flows” - this is our sense of time, and all events are involved in this flow. The experience of mankind has shown that the flow of time is unchanged: it can neither be accelerated, nor slowed down, nor reversed. It seems independent of events and appears as a duration independent of anything. This is how the idea of ​​absolute time arose, which, along with absolute space, where the movement of all bodies occurs, forms the basis of classical physics.

Newton believed that absolute, true, mathematical time, taken by itself without relation to any body, flows uniformly and evenly. The general picture of the world drawn by Newton can be briefly expressed as follows: in an infinite and absolute unchanging space, the movement of worlds occurs over time. It can be quite complex, the processes celestial bodies varied, but this does not in any way affect space - the “scene” where the drama of the events of the Universe unfolds in unchanging time. Therefore, neither space nor time can have boundaries, or, figuratively speaking, the river of time has no sources (beginning). Otherwise, this would violate the principle of the immutability of time and would mean the “creation” of the Universe. Let us note that already to the materialist philosophers of Ancient Greece the thesis about the infinity of the world seemed proven.

In Newton's picture there was no question either about the structure of time and space, or about their properties. Apart from duration and extension, they had no other properties. In this picture of the world, concepts such as “now,” “earlier,” and “later” were absolutely obvious and understandable. The course of the earth's clock will not change if you transfer it to any cosmic body, and events that happened with the same clock reading anywhere should be considered synchronous for the entire Universe. Therefore, one watch can be used to establish an unambiguous chronology. However, as soon as the clocks move away to ever greater distances L, difficulties arise due to the fact that the speed of light c, although high, is finite. Indeed, if we observe distant clocks, for example, through a telescope, we will notice that they lag behind by the amount L/c. This reflects the fact that there is simply no “single world flow of time”.

Special relativity has revealed another paradox. When studying movement at speeds comparable to the speed of light, it turned out that the river of time is not as simple as previously thought. This theory showed that the concepts of “now,” “later,” and “earlier” have a simple meaning only for events that occur close to each other. When the events being compared occur far away, these concepts are unambiguous only if the signal, traveling at the speed of light, managed to reach from the place of one event to the place where another occurred. If this is not the case, then the relationship “earlier” - “later” is ambiguous and depends on the state of movement of the observer. What was “earlier” for one observer may be “later” for another. Such events cannot influence each other, i.e. cannot be causally related. This is due to the fact that the speed of light in vacuum is always constant. It does not depend on the movement of the observer and is extremely large. Nothing in nature can travel faster than light. Even more surprising was that the passage of time depends on the speed of the body, i.e. The second on a moving clock becomes “longer” than on a stationary clock. Time flows slower the faster the body moves relative to the observer. This fact has been reliably measured both in experiments with elementary particles and in direct experiments with clocks on a flying airplane. Thus, the properties of time only seemed unchanged. Relativistic theory established an inextricable connection between time and space. Changes in the temporal properties of processes are always associated with changes in spatial properties.

The concept of time was further developed in general theory relativity, which showed that the tempo of time is influenced by the gravitational field. The stronger the gravity, the slower time flows compared to its flow away from gravitating bodies, i.e. time depends on the properties of moving matter. Time observed from outside on a planet flows slower the more massive and dense it is. This effect is absolute. Thus, time is locally inhomogeneous and its course can be influenced. True, the observed effect is usually small.

Now the river of time seems to flow not everywhere equally and majestically: quickly in narrowings, slowly in reaches, divided into many branches and streams with different flow speeds depending on conditions.

The theory of relativity confirmed the philosophical idea that time is devoid of independent physical reality and, together with space, is only a necessary means of observation and knowledge of the surrounding world by intelligent beings. Thus, the concept of absolute time as a single stream flowing uniformly regardless of the observer was destroyed. There is no absolute time as an entity separated from matter, but there is an absolute speed of any change and even the absolute age of the universe, calculated by scientists. The speed of light remains constant even in non-uniform time.

Further changes in ideas about time and space occurred in connection with the discovery of black holes and the theory of the expansion of the Universe. It turned out that in a singularity, space and time cease to exist in the usual sense of the word. The singularity is where the classical concept of space and time breaks down, as well as all known laws of physics. In the singularity, the properties of time change radically and acquire quantum features. As one of the most famous physicists of our time, S. Hawking, figuratively wrote: “... the continuous flow of time consists of an unobservable truly discrete process, like a continuous flow of sand in an hourglass viewed from afar, although this flow consists of discrete grains of sand - the river of time is fragmented here into indivisible drops...” (Hawking, 1990).

But we cannot assume that singularity is the boundary of time, beyond which the existence of matter occurs outside of time. It’s just that here the spatio-temporal forms of the existence of matter acquire a completely unusual character, and many familiar concepts sometimes become meaningless. However, when we try to imagine what it is, we find ourselves in a difficult situation due to the peculiarities of our thinking and language. “Here a psychological barrier arises before us due to the fact that we do not know how to perceive the concepts of space and time at this stage, when they did not yet exist in our traditional understanding. At the same time, I get the feeling as if I suddenly found myself in a thick fog, in which objects lose their usual outlines” (B. Lovell).

The nature of the laws of nature in the singularity is still only being guessed at. This is the cutting edge of modern science, and much of this will still be clarified. Time and space acquire completely different properties in the singularity. They can be quantum, have a complex topological structure, etc. But at present it is not possible to understand this in detail, not only because it is very difficult, but also because experts themselves do not know very well what all this can mean, thereby emphasizing that visual intuitive ideas about time and space as unchanging The durations of all things are correct only under certain conditions. When moving to other conditions, our ideas about them must also change significantly.

. Field and matter, interaction

The concepts of field and matter, formed within the framework of the electromagnetic picture, received further development in the modern picture of the world, where the content of these concepts has significantly deepened and enriched. Instead of two types of fields, as in the electromagnetic picture of the world, four are now considered, while electromagnetic and weak interactions have been described by a unified theory of electroweak interactions. All four fields are interpreted in corpuscular language as fundamental bosons (13 bosons in total). Every object of nature is a complex formation, i.e. has a structure (consists of any parts). Matter consists of molecules, molecules - of atoms, atoms - of electrons and nuclei. Atomic nuclei consist of protons and neutrons (nucleons), which, in turn, consist of quarks and antiquarks. The latter themselves are in a free state, do not exist and do not have any separate parts, like electrons and positrons. But according to modern ideas, they can potentially contain entire closed worlds that have their own internal structure. Ultimately, matter consists of fundamental fermions - six leptons and six quarks (not counting antileptons and antiquarks).

In the modern picture of the world, the main material object is the omnipresent quantum field, its transition from one state to another changes the number of particles. There is no longer an impassable boundary between matter and field. At the level of elementary particles, mutual transformations of field and matter constantly occur.

According to modern views, interaction of any kind has its physical intermediary. This idea is based on the fact that the speed of transmission of influence is limited by a fundamental limit - the speed of light. Therefore, attraction or repulsion is transmitted through the vacuum. A simplified modern model of the interaction process can be represented in the following way. The fermion charge creates a field around the particle that generates its inherent boson particles. By its nature, this field is close to the state that physicists attribute to vacuum. We can say that the charge disturbs the vacuum, and this disturbance is transmitted over a certain distance with attenuation. Field particles are virtual - they exist very a short time and are not observed in the experiment. Two particles, once within the range of their charges, begin to exchange virtual particles: one particle emits a boson and immediately absorbs an identical boson emitted by the other particle with which it interacts. The exchange of bosons creates the effect of attraction or repulsion between interacting particles. Thus, each particle participating in one of fundamental interactions, corresponds to its own bosonic particle that transfers this interaction. Each fundamental interaction has its own boson carriers. For gravity these are gravitons, for electromagnetic interactions - photons, strong interaction is provided by gluons, weak interaction - by three heavy bosons. These four types of interactions underlie all other known forms of matter motion. Moreover, there is reason to believe that all fundamental interactions are not independent, but can be described within the framework of a single theory, which is called superunification. This is another proof of the unity and integrity of nature.

. Interconversions of particles

Interconvertibility is a characteristic feature of subatomic particles. The electromagnetic picture of the world was characterized by stability; No wonder it is based on stable particles - electron, positron and photon. But stable elementary particles are the exception, and instability is the rule. Almost all elementary particles are unstable - they spontaneously disintegrate and turn into other particles. Mutual transformations also occur during particle collisions. As an example, we will show possible transformations in the collision of two protons at different (increasing) energy levels:

p + p → p + n + π+, p + p → p +Λ0 + K+, p + p → p +Σ+ + K0, p + p → n +Λ0 + K+ + π+, p + p → p +Θ0 + K0 + K+, p + p → p + p + p +¯p.

Here p¯ is an antiproton.

Let us emphasize that during collisions what actually occurs is not the splitting of particles, but the birth of new particles; they are born due to the energy of colliding particles. In this case, not all particle transformations are possible. The ways in which particles transform during collisions are subject to certain laws that can be used to describe the world of subatomic particles. In the world of elementary particles there is a rule: everything is allowed that is not prohibited by conservation laws. The latter play the role of exclusion rules governing the interconversion of particles. First of all, these are the laws of conservation of energy, momentum and electric charge. These three laws explain the stability of the electron. From the law of conservation of energy and momentum it follows that the total mass of decay products is less than the rest mass of the decaying particle. There are many specific “charges”, the conservation of which is also regulated by the interconversions of particles: baryon charge, parity (spatial, temporal and charge), strangeness, charm, etc. Some of them are not conserved in weak interactions. Conservation laws are associated with symmetry, which, as many physicists believe, is a reflection of the harmony of the fundamental laws of nature. Apparently, it was not for nothing that ancient philosophers considered symmetry as the embodiment of beauty, harmony and perfection. One could even say that symmetry in unity with asymmetry rules the world.

Quantum theory has shown that matter is constantly in motion, never remaining at rest for a moment. This speaks of the fundamental mobility of matter, its dynamism. Matter cannot exist without movement and formation. The particles of the subatomic world are active not because they move very quickly, but because they are processes in themselves.

Therefore, they say that matter has a dynamic nature, and the constituent parts of the atom, subatomic particles, exist not in the form of independent units, but in the form of integral components of an inextricable network of interactions. These interactions are fueled by an endless flow of energy, manifested in the exchange of particles, the dynamic alternation of stages of creation and destruction, as well as in the ceaseless changes in energy structures. As a result of interactions, stable units are formed, from which material bodies are composed. These units also oscillate rhythmically. All subatomic particles are relativistic in nature, and their properties cannot be understood outside of their interactions. All of them are inextricably linked with the space around them, and cannot be considered in isolation from it. On the one hand, particles influence space, on the other hand, they are not independent particles, but rather clots of a field that permeate space. The study of subatomic particles and their interactions reveals to us not a world of chaos, but a highly ordered world, despite the fact that rhythm, movement and constant change reign supreme in this world.

The dynamic nature of the universe manifests itself not only at the level of the infinitesimal, but also in the study of astronomical phenomena. Powerful telescopes help scientists monitor the constant movement of matter in space. Rotating clouds of hydrogen gas, condensing, become denser and gradually turn into stars. At the same time, their temperature increases greatly, they begin to glow. Over time, the hydrogen fuel burns out, stars grow in size, expand, then contract and end their lives in gravitational collapse, with some turning into black holes. All these processes occur in different parts of the expanding Universe. Thus, the entire Universe is involved in an endless process of movement or, in the words of Eastern philosophers, in a constant cosmic dance of energy.

. Probability in the modern picture of the world

Mechanical and electromagnetic pictures of the world are built on dynamic laws. Probability is allowed there only in connection with the incompleteness of our knowledge, implying that with the growth of knowledge and clarification of details, probabilistic laws will give way to dynamic ones. In the modern picture of the world, the situation is fundamentally different - here probabilistic patterns are fundamental, irreducible to dynamic ones. It is impossible to predict exactly what transformation of particles will occur; we can only talk about the probability of one or another transformation; it is impossible to predict the moment of particle decay, etc. But this does not mean that atomic phenomena occur in a completely arbitrary manner. The behavior of any part of the whole is determined by its numerous connections with the latter, and since we, as a rule, do not know about these connections, we have to move from the classical concepts of causality to the concepts of statistical causality.

The laws of atomic physics have the nature of statistical laws, according to which the probability of atomic phenomena is determined by the dynamics of the entire system. If in classical physics the properties and behavior of the whole are determined by the properties and behavior of its individual parts, then in quantum physics everything is completely different: the behavior of the parts of the whole is determined by the whole itself. In the modern picture of the world, randomness has become a fundamentally important attribute; it appears here in a dialectical relationship with necessity, which predetermines the fundamental nature of probabilistic laws. Randomness and uncertainty are at the core of the nature of things, so the language of probability has become the norm when describing physical laws. The dominance of probability in the modern picture of the world emphasizes its dialectical nature, and stochasticity and uncertainty are important attributes of modern rationalism.

. Physical vacuum

Fundamental bosons represent excitations of force fields. When all fields are in the ground (unexcited) state, they say that this is a physical vacuum. In previous pictures of the world, vacuum was seen simply as emptiness. In modern times, this is not emptiness in the usual sense, but the basic state of physical fields, the vacuum is “filled” with virtual particles. The concept of a “virtual particle” is closely related to the uncertainty relation for energy and time. It is fundamentally different from an ordinary particle that can be observed in experiment.

The virtual particle exists for such a short time ∆t that the energy ∆E = ~/∆t determined by the uncertainty relation turns out to be sufficient for the “birth” of mass, equal mass virtual particle. These particles appear on their own and immediately disappear; it is believed that they do not require energy. According to one of the physicists, the virtual particle behaves like a fraudulent cashier who regularly manages to return the money taken from the cash register before they notice. In physics, it is not so rare for us to encounter something that exists quite realistically, but does not manifest itself until the occasion. For example, an atom in its ground state does not emit radiation. This means that if you do not act on it, it will remain unobservable. They say that virtual particles are unobservable. But they are unobservable until they are acted upon in a certain way. When they collide with real particles having the appropriate energy, then the birth of real particles occurs, i.e. virtual particles turn into real ones.

The physical vacuum is a space in which virtual particles are created and destroyed. In this sense, the physical vacuum has a certain energy corresponding to the energy of the ground state, which is constantly redistributed between virtual particles. But we cannot use the vacuum energy, because this is the lowest energy state of the fields, corresponding to the very minimum energy (it cannot be less). In the presence of external source energy, excited states of fields can be realized - then ordinary particles will be observed. From this point of view, an ordinary electron now appears to be surrounded by a “cloud” or “fur coat” of virtual photons. An ordinary photon moves “accompanied” by virtual electron-positron pairs. Electron-electron scattering can be considered as an exchange virtual photons. In the same way, each nucleon is surrounded by clouds of mesons, which last a very short time.

Under certain circumstances, virtual mesons can turn into real nucleons. Virtual particles spontaneously arise from the void and dissolve back into it, even if there are no other particles nearby that can participate in strong interactions. This also testifies to the inextricable unity of matter and empty space. A vacuum contains countless randomly appearing and disappearing particles. The connection between virtual particles and vacuum is dynamic in nature; figuratively speaking, the vacuum is a “living emptiness” in the full sense of the word; endless rhythms of birth and destruction originate in its pulsations.

As experiments show, virtual particles in a vacuum have a very real effect on real objects, for example, on elementary particles. Physicists know that individual virtual particles of vacuum cannot be detected, but experience notices their total effect on ordinary particles. All this corresponds to the principle of observability.

Many physicists consider the discovery of the dynamic essence of vacuum one of the most important achievements of modern physics. From being the empty container of all physical phenomena, the void has become a dynamic entity of great importance. Physical vacuum is directly involved in the formation of qualitative and quantitative properties of physical objects. Properties such as spin, mass, charge appear precisely when interacting with vacuum. Therefore any physical object is currently considered as a moment, an element of the cosmic evolution of the Universe, and the vacuum is considered the world's material background. Modern physics demonstrates that at the level of the microworld, material bodies do not have their own essence, they are inextricably linked with their environment: their properties can only be perceived in terms of their effects on the surrounding world. Thus, the inextricable unity of the universe manifests itself not only in the world of the infinitely small, but also in the world of the super-large - this fact is recognized in modern physics and cosmology.

Unlike previous pictures of the world, the modern natural science picture views the world at a much deeper, more fundamental level. Atomistic concept was present in all previous pictures of the world, but only in the 20th century. managed to create a theory of the atom, which made it possible to explain the periodic system of elements, the formation of chemical bonds, etc. The modern picture explained the world of microphenomena, explored unusual properties micro-objects and radically influenced our ideas, which had been developed over centuries, forced us to radically reconsider them and decisively break with some traditional views and approaches.

All previous pictures of the world suffered from metaphysics; they proceeded from a clear delineation of all studied entities, stability, staticity. At first, the role of mechanical movements was exaggerated, everything was reduced to the laws of mechanics, then to electromagnetism. The modern picture of the world has broken with this orientation. It is based on mutual transformations, the play of chance, and the diversity of phenomena. Based on probabilistic laws, the modern picture of the world is dialectical; it reflects the dialectically contradictory reality much more accurately than previous paintings.

Previously, matter, field and vacuum were considered separately. In the modern picture of the world, matter, like a field, consists of elementary particles that interact with each other and interconvert. Vacuum has “turned” into one of the varieties of matter and “consists” of virtual particles interacting with each other and with ordinary particles. Thus, the boundary between matter, field and vacuum disappears. At a fundamental level, all boundaries in nature really turn out to be conditional.

In the modern picture of the world, physics is closely united with other natural sciences - it actually merges with chemistry and acts in close union with biology; It’s not for nothing that this picture of the world is called natural science. It is characterized by the erasure of all and every edge. Here space and time act as a single space-time continuum, mass and energy are interconnected, wave and corpuscular motion combine and form single object, matter and field are mutually transformed. The boundaries between traditional sections within physics itself are disappearing, and seemingly distant disciplines such as particle physics and astrophysics turn out to be so connected that many are talking about a revolution in cosmology.

The world we live in consists of different scale open systems, the development of which is subject to general patterns. At the same time, it has its own history, generally known modern science, starting from the Big Bang. Science knows not only the “dates,” but also, in many ways, the very mechanisms of the evolution of the Universe from the Big Bang to the present day. Brief chronology

20 billion years ago Big Bang

3 minutes later Formation of the material basis of the Universe

A few hundred years later, the appearance of atoms (light elements)

19-17 billion years ago Formation of different-scale structures (galaxies)

15 billion years ago The appearance of first generation stars, the formation of heavy atoms

5 billion years ago Birth of the Sun

4.6 billion years ago Formation of the Earth

3.8 billion years ago Origin of life

450 million years ago The appearance of plants

150 million years ago The appearance of mammals

2 million years ago The beginning of anthropogenesis

The most important events are given in table 9.1 (taken from the book). Here we paid attention primarily to the data of physics and cosmology, because it is these fundamental sciences that form the general contours of the scientific picture of the world.

Change of natural scientific tradition

Reason is the ability to see the connection between the general and the particular.

The achievements of natural science, and above all physicists, at one time convinced humanity that the world around us can be explained and its development can be predicted, abstracting from God and man. Laplace's determinism made a person an outside observer, and a separate knowledge was created for him - humanitarian knowledge. As a result, all previous pictures of the world were created as if from the outside: the researcher studied the world around him detachedly, out of connection with himself, in full confidence that it was possible to study phenomena without disturbing their flow. N. Moiseev writes: “In the science of the past, with its desire for transparent and clear schemes, with its deep conviction that the world is fundamentally quite simple, man turned into an outside observer, studying the world “from the outside.” A strange contradiction has arisen - man still exists, but he exists as if on his own. And space, nature are also in themselves. And they united, if it can be called unification, only on the basis of religious views.”

(Moiseev, 1988.)

In the process of creating a modern picture of the world, this tradition is decisively broken. It is being replaced by a fundamentally different approach to the study of nature; Now the scientific picture of the world is no longer created “from the outside,” but “from the inside,” the researcher himself becomes an integral part of the picture he creates. W. Heisenberg said this well: “In the field of view of modern science, first of all, there is a network of relationships between man and nature, those connections by virtue of which we, bodily beings, are a part of nature, dependent on its other parts, and by virtue of which nature turns out to be the subject of our thought and action only together with man. Science no longer occupies the position of only an observer of nature; it recognizes itself as private view human interaction with nature. The scientific method, which boiled down to isolation, analytical unification and ordering, had encountered its limits. It turned out that its action changes and transforms the object of knowledge, as a result of which the method itself can no longer be removed from the object. As a result, the natural-scientific picture of the world, in essence, ceases to be only natural-scientific.” (Heisenberg, 1987.)

Thus, knowledge of nature presupposes the presence of a person, and we must clearly realize that we, as N. Bohr put it, are not only spectators of the play, but at the same time characters dramas. The need to abandon the existing natural scientific tradition, when man distanced himself from nature and was mentally ready to dissect it in infinite detail, was well understood by Goethe already 200 years ago:

Trying to eavesdrop on life in everything,

They hasten to despirit the phenomena,

Forgetting that if they are violated

An inspiring connection

There's nothing more to listen to. (“Faust.”)

A particularly striking new approach to the study of nature was demonstrated by V. Vernadsky, who created the doctrine of the noosphere - the sphere of Reason - the biosphere, the development of which is purposefully controlled by man. V. Vernadsky considered man as the most important link in the evolution of nature, who is not only influenced by natural processes, but also, being the bearer of reason, is able to purposefully influence these processes. As N. Moiseev notes, “the doctrine of the noosphere turned out to be exactly the link that made it possible to connect the picture born of modern physics with the general panorama of the development of life - not only biological evolution, but also social progress... Much is still not clear to us and hidden from our sight. Nevertheless, a grandiose hypothetical picture of the process of self-organization of matter from the Big Bang to modern stage“when matter recognizes itself, when it becomes characterized by intelligence capable of ensuring its purposeful development.” (Moiseev, 1988.)

Modern rationalism

In the 20th century physics has risen to the level of a science about the foundations of existence and its formation in living and inanimate nature. But this does not mean that all forms of existence of matter are reduced to physical foundations, we're talking about about principles and approaches to modeling and development whole world a person who himself is part of it and recognizes himself as such. We have already noted that the basis of all scientific knowledge lies rational thinking. The development of natural science led to a new understanding of scientific rationality. According to N. Moiseev, they distinguish: classical rationalism, i.e. classical thinking - when a person “asks” questions to Nature, and Nature answers how it works; non-classical (quantum physical) or modern rationalism - a person asks Nature questions, but the answers depend not only on how it is structured, but also on the way these questions are posed (relativity to the means of observation). The third type of rationality is making its way - post-non-classical or evolutionary-synergetic thinking, when the answers depend on how the question was asked, and on how Nature is structured, and what its background is. The very formulation of the question by a person depends on the level of his development, his cultural values, which, in fact, are determined by the entire history of civilization.

. Classical rationalism

Rationalism is a system of views and judgments about the world around us, which is based on the conclusions and logical conclusions of the mind. At the same time, the influence of emotions, intuitive insights, etc. is not excluded. But you can always distinguish a rational way of thinking, rational judgments from irrational ones. The origins of rationalism as a way of thinking lie in ancient times. The entire structure of ancient thinking was rationalistic. The birth of the modern scientific method is associated with the Copernicus-Galileo-Newton revolution. During this period, the views that had been established since antiquity underwent a radical overthrow, and the concept of modern science was formed. It was from here that the scientific method of forming statements about the nature of relationships in the surrounding world was born, which is based on chains of logical conclusions and empirical material. The result was a way of thinking that is now called classical rationalism. Within its framework, not only the scientific method was established, but also a holistic worldview - a kind of holistic picture of the universe and the processes that occur in it. It was based on the idea of ​​the Universe that arose after the Copernicus-Galileo-Newton revolution. After Ptolemy's complex scheme, the Universe appeared in its amazing simplicity; Newton's laws turned out to be simple and understandable. New views explained why everything happens the way it does. But over time, this picture became more complex.

In the 19th century the world has already appeared before people as a kind of complex mechanism, which was once launched by someone and which operates according to very specific, once and for all outlined and knowable laws. As a result, a belief in the unlimitedness of knowledge arose, which was based on the successes of science. But in this picture there was no place for the man himself. In it, he was only an observer, unable to influence the always certain course of events, but capable of recording ongoing events, establishing connections between phenomena, in other words, cognizing the laws governing this mechanism and, thus, predicting the occurrence of certain events, remaining an outside observer of everything that happens in the Universe. Thus, the man of the Enlightenment is just an outside observer of what is happening in the Universe. For comparison, let us remember that in ancient Greece man was equated with the gods; he had the power to intervene in the events taking place around him.

But a person is not just an observer, he is capable of cognizing the Truth and putting it at his service, predicting the course of events. It was within the framework of rationalism that the idea of ​​Absolute Truth arose, i.e. about what really is - what does not depend on a person. Conviction in the existence of Absolute Truth allowed F. Bacon to formulate the famous thesis about the conquest of Nature: man needs knowledge in order to put the forces of Nature at his service. Man is not able to change the laws of Nature, but he can force them to serve humanity. Thus, science has a goal - to multiply human forces. Nature now appears as an inexhaustible reservoir designed to satisfy his endlessly growing needs. Science becomes a means of conquering Nature, a source of human activity. This paradigm ultimately led man to the brink of the abyss.

Classical rationalism established the possibility of knowing the laws of Nature and using them to assert the power of man. At the same time, ideas about prohibitions appeared. It turned out that there are various restrictions that are fundamentally insurmountable. Such restrictions are, first of all, the law of conservation of energy, which is absolute. Energy can change from one form to another, but it cannot arise from nothing and cannot disappear. This implies the impossibility of creating a perpetual motion machine - this is not technical difficulties, but the prohibition of Nature. Another example is the second law of thermodynamics (the law of non-decreasing entropy). Within the framework of classical rationalism, a person realizes not only his power, but also his own limitations. Classical rationalism is the brainchild of European civilization, its roots go back to the ancient world. This is the greatest breakthrough of mankind, opening the horizons of modern science. Rationalism is a certain way of thinking, whose influence has been experienced by both philosophy and religion.

Within the framework of rationalism, one of the most important approaches to the study of complex phenomena and systems has emerged - reductionism, the essence of which is that, knowing the properties of the individual elements that make up the system and the features of their interaction, one can predict the properties of the entire system. In other words, the properties of the system are derived from the properties of the elements and the structure of interaction and are their consequence. Thus, the study of the properties of a system is reduced to the study of the interaction of its individual elements. This is the basis of reductionism. This approach has solved many of the most important problems in natural science and often produces good results. When they say the word “reductionism,” they also mean attempts to replace the study of a complex real phenomenon with some highly simplified model, its visual interpretation. The construction of such a model, simple enough to study its properties and at the same time reflecting certain and important properties for the study of reality, is always an art, and science cannot offer any general recipes. The ideas of reductionism turned out to be very fruitful not only in mechanics and physics, but also in chemistry, biology and other areas of natural science. Classical rationalism and the ideas of reductionism, which reduce the study of complex systems to the analysis of their individual components and the structure of their interactions, represent an important stage in the history of not only science, but also the entire civilization. It is to them that modern natural science primarily owes its main successes. They were a necessary and inevitable stage in the development of natural science and the history of thought, but, although fruitful in certain areas, these ideas turned out to be not universal.

Despite the successes of rationalism and the rapid development associated with it natural sciences, rationalism as a way of thinking and the basis of worldview has not turned into some kind of universal faith. The point is that in any scientific analysis there are elements of the sensory principle, the intuition of the researcher, and the sensory is not always translated into logical, since in this case some of the information is lost. Observation of nature and the successes of natural science constantly stimulated rationalistic thinking, which, in turn, contributed to the development of natural science. Reality itself (i.e., the world around us perceived by man) gave rise to rational schemes. They gave birth to methods and formed a methodology, which became a tool that made it possible to paint a picture of the world.

The separation of spirit and matter is the weakest point in the concept of classical rationalism. In addition, it led to the deep-rooted conviction in the minds of scientists that the world around us is simple: it is simple because such is reality, and any complexity is due to our inability to connect the observed in simple diagram. It was this simplicity that made it possible to build rational schemes, obtain practically important consequences, explain what was happening, build machines, make people’s lives easier, etc. The simplicity of reality, which was studied by natural science, was based on such seemingly “obvious” ideas as the idea of ​​the universality of time and space (time flows everywhere and always the same way, space is homogeneous), etc. These ideas could not always be explained, but they always seemed simple and understandable, as they say, self-evident and not in need of discussion. Scientists were convinced that these were axioms, defined once and for all, because in reality it happens this way and not otherwise. Classical rationalism was characterized by the paradigm of absolute knowledge, which was affirmed throughout the Enlightenment.

. Modern rationalism

In the 20th century this simplicity, what seemed self-evident and understandable, had to be abandoned and accepted that the world is much more complicated, that everything can be completely different from what scientists are used to thinking, based on the reality of the environment, that classical ideas are just partial cases of what might actually happen.

Russian scientists also made a significant contribution to this. The founder of the Russian school of physiology and psychiatry, I. Sechenov, constantly emphasized that a person can be known only in the unity of his flesh, soul and the Nature that surrounds him. Gradually, the idea of ​​the unity of the surrounding world, the inclusion of man in Nature, and the idea that man and Nature represent an indissoluble unity were established in the consciousness of the scientific community. A person cannot be thought of only as an observer - he is himself an active subject of the system. This worldview of Russian philosophical thought is called Russian cosmism.

One of the first who contributed to the destruction of the natural simplicity of the surrounding world was N. Lobachevsky. He discovered that in addition to Euclidean geometry, there can be other consistent and logically harmonious geometries - non-Euclidean geometries. This discovery meant that the answer to the question of what the geometry of the real world is is not at all simple, and that it may be different from Euclidean. Experimental physics must answer this question.

IN late XIX V. Another one of the fundamental ideas of classical rationalism was destroyed - the law of addition of velocities. It was also shown that the speed of light does not depend on whether the light signal is directed along or against the speed of the Earth (Michelson-Morley experiments). In order to somehow interpret this, we had to accept as an axiom the existence of a maximum speed of propagation of any signal. At the beginning of the 20th century. collapsed again whole line pillars of classical rationalism, among which the change in the idea of ​​simultaneity was of particular importance. All this led to the final collapse of routine and obviousness.

But this does not mean the collapse of rationalism. Rationalism has moved into a new form, which is now called non-classical or modern rationalism. It destroyed the apparent simplicity of the surrounding world and led to the collapse of everyday life and obviousness. As a result, the picture of the world, beautiful in its simplicity and logic, loses its logic and, most importantly, its clarity. The obvious ceases to be not only simply understandable, but sometimes simply incorrect: the obvious becomes incredible. Scientific revolutions of the twentieth century. have led to the fact that a person is already ready to face new difficulties, new improbabilities, even more inconsistent with reality and contrary to ordinary common sense. But rationalism remains rationalism, since the pictures of the world are based on created by man, what remains are the patterns created by his mind on the basis of empirical data. They remain a rational or logically rigorous interpretation of experimental data. Only modern rationalism acquires a more liberated character. There are fewer restrictions that this cannot happen. But the researcher more often has to think about the meaning of those concepts that until now seemed obvious.

A new understanding of man’s place in Nature began to take shape in the 20s of the twentieth century. with the advent of quantum mechanics. It clearly demonstrated what E. Kant and I. Sechenov had long suspected, namely the fundamental inseparability of the object of research and the subject studying this object. She explained and showed with specific examples that relying on the hypothesis about the possibility of separating subject and object, which seemed obvious, does not carry any knowledge. It turned out that we, people, are also not just spectators, but also participants in the global evolutionary process.

Scientific thinking is very conservative, and the establishment of new views, the formation of a new attitude towards scientific knowledge, ideas about truth and a new picture of the world took place in the scientific world slowly and difficultly. However, at the same time, the old is not completely discarded or crossed out; the values ​​of classical rationalism still retain their significance for humanity. Therefore, modern rationalism is a new synthesis of acquired knowledge or new empirical generalizations, it is an attempt to expand the traditional understanding and include the schemes of classical rationalism as convenient interpretations, suitable and useful, but only within a certain and very limited framework (suitable for solving almost all everyday practice) . However, this expansion is absolutely fundamental. It makes you see the world and the person in it in a completely different light. You have to get used to it, and it requires a lot of effort.

Thus, the original system of views on the structure of the surrounding world gradually became more complex, the original idea of ​​​​the simplicity of the picture of the world, its structure, geometry, and ideas that arose during the Enlightenment disappeared. But not only was there an increase in complexity: much of what had previously seemed obvious and commonplace turned out to be simply wrong. This was the most difficult thing to realize. The distinction between matter and energy, between matter and space, has disappeared. They turned out to be related to the nature of the movement.

We must not forget that all individual ideas are parts of a single inextricable whole, and our definitions of them are extremely conditional. And the separation of the human observer from the object of research is not at all universal; it is also conditional. This is just a convenient technique that works well in certain conditions, not universal method knowledge. The researcher begins to get used to the fact that in nature everything can happen in the most incredible, illogical way, because in reality everything is somehow connected to each other. It’s not always clear how, but it’s connected. And man is also immersed in these connections. The basis of modern rationalism is the statement (or the postulate of systematicity, according to N. Moiseev): the Universe, the World represent a certain unified system (Universum), all elements of the phenomenon of which are somehow interconnected. Man is an inseparable part of the Universe. This statement does not contradict our experience and our knowledge and is an empirical generalization.

Modern rationalism is qualitatively different from the classical rationalism of the 18th century. not only because instead of the classical ideas of Euclid and Newton, a much more complex vision of the world came, in which classical ideas are an approximate description of very particular cases relating primarily to the macroworld. The main difference lies in the understanding of the fundamental absence of an external Absolute observer, to whom the Absolute Truth is gradually revealed, as well as the absence of the Absolute Truth itself. From the point of view of modern rationalism, the researcher and the object are connected by indissoluble bonds. This has been experimentally proven in physics and natural science in general. But at the same time, rationalism continues to remain rationalism, because logic was and remains the only means of constructing conclusions.

1. Introduction
2. Features of the scientific picture of the world
3. Basic principles of constructing a scientific picture of the world
4. General contours of the modern scientific picture of the world
5. Conclusion
6. References

Introduction

Knowledge of individual things and processes is impossible without simultaneous knowledge of the universal, and the latter, in turn, is known only through the former. This should be clear to every educated mind today. In the same way, the whole is understandable only in organic unity with its parts, and the part can only be understood within the framework of the whole. And any “particular” law discovered by us - if it is truly a law and not an empirical rule - is a concrete manifestation of universality. There is no science whose subject would be exclusively the universal without knowledge of the individual, just as a science that limits itself only to the knowledge of the particular is impossible.
The universal connection of phenomena is the most general pattern of the existence of the world, which is the result and manifestation of the universal interaction of all objects and phenomena and is embodied as a scientific reflection in the unity and interconnection of sciences. It expresses the internal unity of all elements of the structure and properties of any integral system, as well as the infinite variety of relationships of a given system with other systems or phenomena surrounding it. Without understanding the principle of universal connection there can be no true knowledge. Awareness of the universal idea of ​​the unity of all living things with the entire universe is included in science, although more than half a century ago in his lectures given at the Sorbonne, V.I. Vernadsky noted that not a single living organism is in a free state on Earth, but is inextricably linked with material and energy environment. "In our century, the biosphere is gaining a completely new understanding. It is emerging as a planetary phenomenon of a cosmic nature."
Natural science worldview (NSWW) is a system of knowledge about nature that is formed in the minds of students in the process of studying natural science subjects, and mental activity to create this system.
The concept of “picture of the world” is one of the fundamental concepts of philosophy and natural science and expresses general scientific ideas about the surrounding reality in their integrity. The concept of “picture of the world” reflects the world as a whole as a single system, that is, a “connected whole”, the knowledge of which presupposes “knowledge of all nature and history...” (Marx K., Engels F., collected works, 2nd ed. volume 20, p.630).
Features of the scientific picture of the world
The scientific picture of the world is one of the possible pictures of the world, therefore it has something in common with all other pictures of the world - mythological, religious, philosophical - and something special that distinguishes the scientific picture of the world from the diversity of all other images of the world. Like all other pictures of the world, the scientific picture of the world contains certain ideas about the structure of space and time, objects and their interactions, laws and the place of man in the world. This is something common that is present in every picture of the world. The main thing that distinguishes the scientific picture of the world from all other pictures of the world is, of course, the “scientific nature” of this picture of the world. Therefore, in order to understand the peculiarity of the scientific picture of the world, it is necessary to understand the peculiarity of science as special type human activity. For about a century, there has been a special direction in philosophy called “philosophy and methodology of science.” This direction is trying to understand what science is? At first, philosophers thought that science was fundamentally different from non-scientific types of knowledge, and scientific knowledge had such a feature as “ criterion of demarcation.” It shows that science begins behind it, and everything on the other side is something unscientific. Different philosophers proposed different signs as a “criterion of demarcation.” For example, some said that the main thing in science is the use of a special method of thinking called “induction,” i.e. transition from particular facts to their generalizations in general judgments. Others said that the main thing in science is the use of mathematics, while others argued that only science uses judgments from which consequences can be drawn and these consequences can be verified or refuted in experiment. All the proposed characteristics, to one degree or another, turned out to belong to non-scientific types of knowledge. Then philosophers decided that science is not sharply different from non-science, but gradually grows out of non-scientific types of knowledge, strengthening some features and weakening others. The main feature of science is not one thing, but the whole system properties, which in some special combination and proportions is inherent specifically in scientific knowledge, although each individual element of this system can be found far beyond the boundaries of science. All those signs that were previously proposed as a “demarcation criterion”, they are all little by little true, but now they should be considered together, as separate aspects. One of the biggest problems of human thinking is the problem of connecting facts and ideas. There is, on the one hand , what we observe through our senses is the so-called “sensory cognition”, and there are thoughts, ideas, logic - this is the area of ​​“rational cognition”. Usually people either limit themselves only to sensory cognition, or break away from facts and observations and use hypotheses divorced from life. The first feature of science is the combination of the sensory and rational species knowledge. In science, you don’t just need to invent hypotheses, but only those hypotheses that could either be confirmed or refuted by facts. On the other hand, the facts themselves must be objective, i.e. verified by many people and expressing certain patterns and theoretical models. Bringing facts closer to theory, science considers facts as consequences of theories (“deduction”), bringing theory closer to facts, science uses theories that are obtained on the basis of generalization (induction) of facts. The unity of inductive and deductive methods in knowledge increases the scientific nature of this knowledge, bringing closer rational and sensual forms knowledge. One of the signs of scientific knowledge is the use mathematical methods. Mathematics is the science of structures. A structure is, for example, a set natural numbers together with the operations and relations on it, a set of vectors in three-dimensional space. Mathematics studies various structures and builds theories about these structures - introduces concepts and their definitions, axioms, proves theorems. Theories about structures are constructed using special symbolic languages ​​and rigorous logical reasoning (logical proofs). Structures in their pure form cannot be observed anywhere through our senses, for example, the numbers “two” or “three” cannot be seen anywhere, we always see some specific two or three objects, for example, two apples, three trees, etc. . At the same time, it cannot be said that the number “two” has nothing to do with two apples. For example, if we add the number “three” to the number “two”, we get the number “five” - and all this happens so far only within the framework pure mathematical structure. But it turns out that if you add three apples to two apples, you also get five apples. Thus, the number of apples is subject to the same laws as numbers in general - these are the laws of structure. So, the number of apples is, to some extent, just a number, and in this sense, you can study various numbers of objects by studying number in general. A mathematical structure can realize itself in the sensory world. Implementation of the structure is already, as it were, special case structures, when the elements of the structure are given in the form of specific observable objects. But the operations, properties and relationships remain the same in this case as in the mathematical structure. So science discovered that the world around us can be represented as realizations of many different mathematical structures, and next feature science - the study of the world around us as implementations of mathematical structures. This explains the great importance of mathematics for transforming ordinary knowledge into science. Real science is unthinkable without a scientific experiment, but understanding what a scientific experiment is is not so easy. Let's start with an example here. Until Galileo's discovery of the law of inertia, Aristotle's mechanics dominated in physics. The great ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle believed that force is proportional not to acceleration, as Newton later suggested, but to speed, i.e. F=mv. For example, if a horse is dragging a cart with a load, then as long as the horse applies force, the cart moves, i.e. speed is not zero. If the horse stops pulling the cart, then the cart will stop - its speed will be zero. Now we know that in fact there is not one, but two forces present here - the force with which the horse pulls the cart, and the force of friction, but Aristotle thought differently. Galileo, reflecting on the problem of mechanical motion, built such thought experiment. Galileo imagined what would happen to a body that had received a push and was moving along a smooth surface. Having received a push, the body continues to move for some time and then stops. If the surface is made more and more smooth, then from the same push the body will pass all the way longer distance to the stop. And then Galileo, having imagined a sequence of such situations in which the body moves on an increasingly smooth surface, moves to the limit - to the case of such an ideal situation when the surface is already absolutely smooth. Taking the tendency to move further and further after a push to the limit, Galileo now claims that on an ideally smooth surface a body will never stop after a push. But after the push, the force does not act on the body, therefore, the body will move indefinitely, the speed is not zero in this case, and the force will be zero. Thus, force is not proportional to speed, as Aristotle believed, and force-free motion is possible, which we today call uniform rectilinear motion. Summarizing this example, we can draw the following conclusion. The experiment involves some transformation of the real situation, and in this transformation the real situation, to one degree or another, approaches some ideal limit. It is important that in the experiment it would be possible to achieve an ever greater idealization of the real situation, building, as it were, a limiting sequence of experimental situations tending to some ideal-limit. In scientific knowledge, experiment plays the role of a kind of “isolator” of limit states from real natural situations. These limits are usually called “models” and are implementations of certain mathematical structures. Thus, another feature of science is the use of such structures that are obtained as the limits of experimental situations. So, the scientific picture of the world assumes that the world around us consists of two principles - form and matter. Forms are simply another name for various mathematical structures that make up, as it were, a regular and logical skeleton of all processes and phenomena in the world. Thus, at the core of everything are structural forms , expressing themselves in numbers, operations and relationships. This kind of philosophy is close to the philosophy of “Pythagoreanism,” named after the great ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras, who taught that numerical structures are the basis of everything. The scientific picture of the world further assumes that structure-forms are clothed in matter and are thus realized in the form of the infinite variety of sensory-perceptible phenomena and processes. Structures do not simply repeat themselves in the sensory-material world, they are largely transformed, weakened and mixed. Therefore, a special method is needed that could allow us to see pure structures behind their material implementations. This is a method of experiment, a method of unity induction and deduction, method of mathematics. The scientific picture of the world assumes that we can understand the world around us only to the extent that we can see the underlying form-structures behind it. Structures constitute the part of the world that is comprehended by our mind. Form-structures constitute the logical basis not only of the reality that lies outside our consciousness, but they are also the logical foundation of the human mind. The structural unity of the human mind and the world is a condition for the cognizability of the world, and, moreover, its cognizability precisely through structures. Science is in many ways a special method of cognition, a unique way of obtaining structural knowledge. But in science there is always another component that presupposes this or that philosophy or even religion. For example, during the Renaissance, science was closely connected with the so-called “pantheism” - the idea of ​​God as penetrating any part of the world and coinciding with the infinite Cosmos. Later, science adopted the philosophy of materialism and atheism. Therefore, we can talk about two types of principles of the scientific picture of the world: 1) internal principles of science, providing the scientific method of cognition as the method described above for restoring the structures lying behind the visible shell of the sensory world, 2) external principles of science, determining the connection of science as a method of cognition with a particular picture of the world. Science can connect with any picture of the world, as long as the internal principles of science are not destroyed. From this point of view, a pure (i.e. built only on the basis of internal principles) scientific picture of the world does not exist. In all those cases when we talk about the scientific picture of the world, there is always one or another a picture of the world (as a system of external principles of science), which is consistent with the internal principles of science. From this point of view, we can talk about three scientific pictures of the world: 1) pantheistic scientific picture of the world - here the internal principles of science are combined with pantheism (this is the picture of the world of the Renaissance) , 2) a deistic scientific picture of the world - here the internal principles of science are combined with deism (“deism”, or “the doctrine of double truth” is the doctrine that God intervened in the world only at the beginning of its creation, and then God and the World exist completely independent of each other, therefore the truths of religion and science are also independent of each other. This picture of the world was accepted in the Age of Enlightenment), 3) the atheistic scientific picture of the world - here the internal principles of science are combined with atheism and materialism (this is the modern scientific picture of the world). In the Middle Ages, the dominant religious picture of the world too suppressed the existence and development of the internal principles of science, and therefore we cannot call the medieval picture of the world scientific. But this does not mean at all that the impossibility of combining the Christian picture of the world and the scientific method of cognition in the Middle Ages is the final argument against the possibility of harmonizing the internal principles of science and Christianity in the general case. In this regard, one could imagine the possibility of a fourth version of the scientific picture of the world: 4) a theistic scientific picture of the world (“theism” is the doctrine of the creation of the world by God and the constant dependence of the world on God). The development of the modern scientific picture of the world speaks for this , that the external principles of science are gradually changing, the influence of atheism and materialism in the modern scientific picture of the world is weakening. One of the most powerful arguments of defenders of the atheistic scientific picture of the world is the principle of objectivity. Scientific knowledge is objective knowledge, and objective is that which does not depend on human consciousness Therefore, scientific knowledge must involve going beyond the framework of human subjectivity, as if throwing out from the sphere of scientific knowledge everything that relates to psychology, consciousness and the humanities in general. The principle of objectivity is presented by supporters of the atheistic scientific picture of the world as one of the principles of materialism and only then in In this form, it is presented as one of the most essential internal principles of science, as a necessary condition for the knowability of the structures of reality. We can try to explain this by separating the two principles of objectivity - structural and materialistic. The structural principle of objectivity is one of the internal principles of science, which presupposes the construction of scientific knowledge on the basis of precisely objective structures that are common to man and nature. The materialistic principle of objectivity is an external principle of science that limits the area of ​​objective structures only to the framework of predominantly inorganic structures, i.e. structures that realize themselves in the material-sensory world on inorganic processes and phenomena. Moreover, the development of modern science leads to an ever greater convergence of natural science and humanitarian knowledge, showing in practice that it is possible to build scientific knowledge, and therefore to implement the principle of objectivity, not only in the sphere of dead nature, but also in the field of humanitarian knowledge. Moreover, penetration scientific methods research in humanities has recently been achieved not through reduction to inorganic structures, but on the basis of the humanization of the methods and means of scientific knowledge themselves. So, we can conclude that the scientific picture of the world always consists of two types of principles - internal and external. What unites all scientific pictures of the world is precisely the presence in them of the internal principles of science, providing it as a specific, structural-empirical method of cognition and presupposing a philosophy of matter and form-structure. The difference in scientific pictures of the world stems from the possibility of accepting different external principles of scientific knowledge that are consistent with its internal principles. From this point of view, we have identified pantheistic, deistic, atheistic and theistic scientific pictures of the world. It can be assumed that the development of the modern scientific picture of the world gradually leads to a departure from the external principles of atheism and materialism and the emergence of some 5) synthetic scientific picture of the world, in which coordination of the internal principles of science will apparently be achieved with external principles expressing the synthesis of external principles individual (analytical) scientific pictures of the world.
Basic principles of constructing a scientific picture of the world

The leading principles of constructing a modern scientific picture of the world are: the principle of global evolutionism, the principle of self-organization (synergetics), the principle of systematicity and historicity.
Global evolutionism is the recognition of the impossibility of the existence of the Universe and all the smaller systems generated by it without development and evolution. The evolving nature of the Universe also testifies to the fundamental unity of the world, each component of which is a historical consequence of the global evolutionary process begun by the Big Bang.
One of the most important ideas of European civilization is the idea of ​​world development. In its simplest and undeveloped forms (preformationism, epigenesis, Kantian cosmogony) it began to penetrate natural science back in the 18th century. And already the 19th century can rightfully be called the century of evolution. First, geology, then biology and sociology began to devote more and more attention to the theoretical modeling of developing objects. more attention. But in the sciences of inorganic nature, the idea of ​​development made its way very difficult. Until the second half of the twentieth century, it was dominated by the original abstraction of a closed reversible system, in which the time factor does not play any role. Even the transition from classical Newtonian physics to non-classical (relativistic and quantum) did not change anything in this regard. True, some timid breakthrough in this direction was made by classical thermodynamics, which introduced the concept of entropy and the idea of ​​irreversible time-dependent processes. Thus, the “arrow of time” was introduced into the sciences of inorganic nature. But, ultimately, classical thermodynamics studied only closed equilibrium systems. And nonequilibrium processes were viewed as disturbances, minor deviations that should be neglected in the final description of the cognizable object - a closed equilibrium system. And, on the other hand, the penetration of the idea of ​​development into geology, biology, sociology, and the humanities in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries was carried out independently in each of these branches of knowledge. The philosophical principle of the development of the world (nature, society, man) in general, did not have a core expression for all natural science (as well as for all science). In each branch of natural science it had its own (independent of other branches) forms of theoretical and methodological concretization. And only by the end of the twentieth century did natural science find in itself the theoretical and methodological means for creating a unified model of universal evolution, identifying general laws nature, linking into a single whole the origin of the Universe (cosmogenesis), the emergence of the solar system and our planet Earth (geogenesis), the emergence of life (biogenesis) and, finally, the emergence of man and society (anthroposociogenesis). Such a model is the concept of global evolutionism. In the concept of global evolutionism, the Universe is presented as a natural whole developing over time. The entire history of the Universe from the “Big Bang” to the emergence of humanity is considered in this concept as a single process in which cosmic, chemical, biological and social types evolutions are successively and genetically related to each other. Cosmochemistry, geochemistry, biochemistry reflect here the fundamental transitions in evolution molecular systems and the inevitability of their transformation into organic matter.
The principle of self-organization (synergetics) is the observed ability of matter to become more complex and create more and more ordered structures in the course of evolution. The mechanism of transition of material systems into a more complex and ordered state is apparently similar for systems of all levels.
The emergence of synergetics in modern natural science was apparently initiated by the preparation of a global evolutionary synthesis of all natural science disciplines. This trend was to a large extent restrained by such a circumstance as the striking asymmetry of the processes of degradation and development in living and inanimate nature. To maintain the consistency of the general picture of the world, it is necessary to postulate the presence of matter as a whole not only of a destructive, but also of a creative tendency. Matter is capable of carrying out work against thermodynamic equilibrium, self-organizing and self-complicating itself.
The postulate about the ability of matter to self-develop was introduced into philosophy quite a long time ago. But its necessity in fundamental and natural sciences (physics, chemistry) has only now begun to be realized. On this wave, synergetics arose - the theory of self-organization. Its development began several decades ago. Currently, it is developing in several directions: synergetics (G. Haken), nonequilibrium thermodynamics(I.R. Prigozhy), etc. The general meaning of the complex of ideas they developed, calling them synergetic (G. Haken’s term).
The main ideological shift produced by synergetics can be expressed as follows:
the processes of destruction and creation, degradation and evolution in the Universe are equal;
processes of creation (increase in complexity and orderliness) have a single algorithm, regardless of the nature of the systems in which they are carried out.
Self-organization is understood as the spontaneous transition of an open nonequilibrium system from less to more complex and ordered forms of organization. It follows that the object of synergetics cannot be any system, but only those that satisfy at least two conditions:
they must be open, i.e. exchange matter or energy with external environment;
they must also be significantly nonequilibrium, i.e. be in
state far from thermodynamic equilibrium.
So, synergetics claims that the development of open and highly nonequilibrium systems proceeds through increasing complexity and orderliness. There are two phases in the development cycle of such a system:
1. Smooth period evolutionary development with well-predictable linear changes, ultimately leading the system to some unstable critical state;
2. Exit from a critical state simultaneously, abruptly, and transition to a new one steady state With to a greater extent complexity and orderliness.
An important feature of the second phase is that the transition of the system to a new stable state is ambiguous. And it follows from this that the development of such systems is fundamentally unpredictable.
The most popular and clear example the formation of structures of increasing complexity is a well-studied phenomenon in hydrodynamics, called Bénard cells.
This phenomenon, which is well known to everyone, is incredible from the standpoint of statistical mechanics. After all, it indicates that at the moment of the formation of Benard cells, billions of liquid molecules, as if on command, begin to behave in a coordinated manner, although previously they were in chaotic motion. (The word “synergetics”, by the way, just means “joint action”). Classical statistical laws clearly do not work here; this is a phenomenon of a different order. After all, if, even by chance, such a “correct” and
A stable “cooperative” structure had been formed, which is almost incredible; it would have immediately disintegrated. But it does not disintegrate under appropriate conditions (influx of energy from the outside), but, on the contrary, remains stable. This means that the emergence of structures of increasing complexity is not an accident, but a pattern.
The search for similar self-organization processes in other classes of open nonequilibrium systems seems to promise to be successful: the mechanism of laser action; crystal growth; chemical clock (Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction), formation of a living organism, population dynamics, market economy- all these are examples of self-organization of systems of very different nature.
The synergetic interpretation of this kind of phenomena opens up new possibilities and directions for their study. In general terms, the novelty of the synergetic approach can be expressed in the following terms:
Chaos is not only destructive, but also creative, constructive; development occurs through instability (chaoticity).
The linear nature of the evolution of complex systems, to which I am accustomed classical science, not the rule, but rather the exception; The development of most such systems is nonlinear. This means that for complex systems there are always several possible ways evolution.
Development is carried out through a random selection of one of several allowed opportunities further evolution at the bifurcation point.
Consequently, chance is not an annoying misunderstanding; it is built into the mechanism of evolution. It also means that the current path of evolution of the system may not be better than those that were rejected by chance.
choice.
The ideas of synergetics are interdisciplinary in nature. They provide the basis for the global evolutionary synthesis taking place in natural science. Therefore, synergetics is seen as one of the most important components of the modern scientific picture of the world.
Systematicity
Systematicity means the reproduction by science of the fact that the Universe appears as the largest system known to us, consisting of a huge number of elements (subsystems) of different levels of complexity and
orderliness.
A system is usually understood as a certain ordered set of interconnected elements. The systematic effect is found in the appearance of new properties in an entire system that arise as a result of the interaction of elements (hydrogen and oxygen atoms, for example,
combined into a water molecule radically change their normal properties). Another important characteristic of a system organization is hierarchy, subordination - the sequential inclusion of lower-level systems into higher-level systems. The systemic way of combining elements expresses their fundamental unity: thanks to the hierarchical inclusion of systems different levels into each other, each element of any system is connected with all elements of all
possible systems. (For example: man – biosphere – planet Earth – Solar system – Galaxy, etc.) It is this fundamentally unified character that the world around us demonstrates to us. In the same way
the scientific picture of the world and the natural science that creates it are organized accordingly. All its parts are now closely interconnected - now there is practically no “pure” science. Everything is permeated and
transformed by physics and chemistry.

Historicity

Historicity, and therefore the fundamental incompleteness of the present, and indeed any scientific picture of the world. The one that exists now is generated both by previous history and by the specific sociocultural characteristics of our time. The development of society, a change in its value orientations, an awareness of the importance of studying unique natural systems, in which man himself is an integral part, changes both the strategy of scientific research and man’s attitude to the world.
But the Universe is also developing. Of course, the development of society and the Universe takes place at different paces. But their mutual overlap makes the idea of ​​​​creating a final, complete, absolutely true scientific picture of the world practically impossible.

General contours of the modern natural-scientific picture of the world

The world we live in consists of multi-scale open systems, the development of which is subject to general laws. Moreover, it has its own long history, generally known to modern science. Here is a chronology of the most important events in this story:

20 billion years ago - Big Bang.
3 minutes later - the formation of the material basis of the Universe (photons, neutrinos and antineutrinos with an admixture of hydrogen, helium and electron nuclei).
After several hundred thousand years - the appearance of atoms (light elements).
19-17 billion years ago – formation of structures of different scales.
15 billion years ago - the appearance of first generation stars, the formation of atoms of heavy elements.
5 billion years ago - the birth of the Sun.
4.6 billion years ago - formation of the Earth.
3.8 billion years ago - the origin of life.
450 million years ago - the appearance of plants.
150 million years ago - the appearance of mammals.
2 million years ago - the beginning of anthropogenesis.
We pay attention primarily to the successes of physics and cosmology because it is these fundamental sciences that form the general contours of the scientific picture of the world.
The picture of the world drawn by modern natural science is unusually complex and simple at the same time. It is complex because it can confuse a person who is accustomed to agreeing with common sense classical scientific ideas. Ideas of the beginning of time, wave-particle dualism of quantum objects, internal structure vacuum, capable of giving birth to virtual particles, and other similar innovations give the current picture of the world a slightly “crazy” look.
But at the same time, this picture is majestically simple, harmonious and in some ways even elegant. These qualities are given to it mainly by the leading principles of construction and organization of modern scientific knowledge that we have already discussed:
consistency,
global evolutionism,
self-organization,
historicity.
These principles for constructing a scientific picture of the world as a whole correspond to the fundamental laws of the existence and development of Nature itself.
These fundamental features of the modern natural-scientific picture of the world mainly determine its general outline, as well as the very way of organizing diverse scientific knowledge into something whole and consistent.
Conclusion

In the modern world, the scientific picture of the world causes people not only admiration, but also fear. You can often hear that science brings people not only benefits, but also the greatest misfortunes. Air pollution, disasters nuclear power plants, an increase in radioactive background as a result of nuclear weapons testing, an “ozone hole” over the planet, a sharp reduction in plant and animal species - people tend to explain all these and other environmental problems by the very factor of the existence of science. But the point is not in science, but in whose hands it is, what social interests behind it, what public and government structures guide its development.
The increase in global problems of humanity increases the responsibility of scientists for the fate of humanity. The question of the historical destinies and role of science in its relation to man and the prospects for his development has never been so acutely discussed as at the present time, in the context of a growing global crisis of civilization.
Science is social institution, it is closely connected with the development of the entire society. The complexity and inconsistency of the modern situation is that science is involved in the generation of global, environmental problems of civilization; and at the same time, without science, solving these problems is in principle impossible. This means that the role of science in the history of mankind is constantly increasing.
I tried to note some fundamental features
modern natural scientific picture of the world. This is just its general outline, having outlined which you can begin a more detailed acquaintance with specific conceptual innovations of modern natural science.

Bibliography
1. Concepts of modern natural science. Ed. Lavrinenko V.N. and Ratnikova V.P. M., 2004.
2. Kapitsa S.P. and others. Synergetics and future forecasts. M., 2001.
3. Pakhomov B.Ya. The formation of a modern physical picture of the world. M., 1985.
4. Haken G. Information and self-organization. Macroscopic approach to complex systems. - M., 1991.

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 peace: 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.

From the history of scientific ideas Primitive knowledge

Primitive culture is syncretic - undivided. It closely intertwines cognitive, aesthetic, objective-practical and other types of activities. The following story is interesting. A group of European travelers got lost in the Central Australian desert. The situation in those conditions is tragic. The guide, an aborigine, reassured the travelers: “I have never been to this area before, but I know its… song.” Following the words of the song, he led the travelers to the source. This example clearly illustrates the unity of science, art and everyday experience.

Mythology

In the primitive era, individual aspects and aspects of the world were generalized not in concepts, but in sensory, concrete, visual images. The set of interconnected similar visual images represented a mythological picture of the world.

Myth is a way of generalizing the world in the form of visual images.

Myth carries within itself not only a certain generalization and understanding of the world, but also an experience of the world, a certain attitude.

The primitive myth was not only told, but also reproduced through ritual actions: dances, rituals, sacrifices. By performing ritual actions, a person maintained contact with those forces (beings) that created the world.

Mythological consciousness was gradually transformed by rational forms. The transition to scientific knowledge of the world required the emergence of qualitatively new, in comparison with mythological, ideas about the world. In such a non-mythological world, there are not anthropomorphic, but processes independent of people and Gods.

Milesian school

Natural science begins when the question is formulated: is there a certain unified principle behind the diversity of things? The emergence of European science is usually associated with the Milesian school. Its historical merit consisted in posing the first and most important natural scientific problem - the problem of origin. Representatives of the Milesian school - Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes - were both the first natural scientists and the first philosophers.

Thales of Miletus entered the history of science both as a philosopher and as a mathematician who put forward the idea of ​​mathematical proof. The idea of ​​mathematical proof is the greatest achievement of ancient Greek thinkers.

Plato

Plato proposed the existence of two realities, two worlds. The first world is a world of many individual, changing, moving things, a material world that is reflected by human feelings. The second world is the world of eternal, general and unchanging entities, the world of general ideas, which is comprehended by the mind.

An idea is what is seen by the mind in a thing. This is a kind of constructive beginning, a generative model. These are the old mythological Gods translated into philosophical language. An idea is a general concept, a generalization.

None of the Gods and heroes lived in the world of ideas. The world of ideas is primary in relation to the world of sensory things. Material world derived from the ideal.

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NCM is a systemic vision of the universe, its foundations of origin, organization and its structure, dynamics in time and space. There is a distinction between general (systemic knowledge not only about nature, but also about society) and natural scientific pictures of the world.
The scientific picture of the world is a wide panorama of knowledge about nature and humanity, including the most important theories, hypotheses and facts. Claims to be the core of the scientific worldview. Worldview is a system of views on the world as a whole, a complex alloy of traditions, customs, norms, attitudes, knowledge and assessments.
NCM functions:
1) integrative: NCM is based on reliable knowledge. and it is not just the sum or collection of fragments of individual disciplines. The purpose of NCM is to ensure the synthesis of new values;
2) systemic: building an idea of ​​any part of the world based on currently known data, no matter how modest they may be;
3) normative: NCI does not simply describe the universe, but sets systems of attitudes and principles for mastering reality, influences the formation of sociocultural and methodological norms of scientific research.
4) paradigmatic. Paradigm is a model (image) for setting and solving scientific problems. Pre-paradigm. period is a chaotic accumulation of facts. In the paradigmatic period, standards of scientific practice, theoretical postulates, precise NCM, and the combination of theory and method were established.
Components: intellectual (covered by the concept of worldview) and emotional (through attitude and worldview).
Since philosophy claims to express the fundamental principles of being and thinking, it is right to define a scientific philosophical worldview as the highest, theoretical level of worldviews in general. It is represented by a coherent, scientifically based set of views that give an idea of ​​the laws of the developing universe and determine life positions and programs of human behavior. The modern scientific picture of the world is characterized by rigor, reliability, validity, and evidence. It represents the world as a set of causally determined events and processes covered by a pattern.
The structure of the picture of the world includes a central theoretical core that is relatively stable, fundamental assumptions that are conventionally accepted as irrefutable, particular theoretical models that are constantly being completed. The scientific picture of the world has a certain immunity aimed at preserving this conceptual foundation. Within its framework, there is a cumulative accumulation of knowledge.
A non-classical picture of the world - the absence of strict determinism at the level of individuals is combined with determinism at the level of the system as a whole. Non-classical consciousness constantly felt its extreme dependence on social circumstances and at the same time harbored hopes of participating in the formation of a “constellation” of possibilities.
Post-non-classical picture of the world - tree-like branching graphics. Development can go in one of several directions, which is most often determined by some minor factor.

Historical forms of the scientific picture of the world.

1. Classical scientific picture of the world (XVI-XVII centuries - late XIX century), based on discoveries

Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, but mainly on the principles of Newtonian mechanics:

Key points:

The world is in a state of linear, progressively directed development with strictly

predetermined determination; the case is immaterial;

All states of the world, including the future, can be calculated and predicted;

The natural scientific base is the Newtonian Universe with its substantial (independent

substances that have absolute, constant, unchanging characteristics) pro-

space and time in which material objects (stars, etc.) are located,

moving in a state of uniform motion.

2. Non-classical scientific picture of the world (XX century, Einstein):

Key points:

It all started with thermodynamics, which states that liquids and gases are not purely mechanical.

nic systems - random processes are part of their essence;

Space and time are not absolute, but relative; their specific characteristics

vary depending on the mass of material objects and the speed of their movement (than

closer to the speed of light, the stronger the change in spatial and temporal parameters

object ditch;

The development of the world can be represented as a main line washed by the blue

soida, personifying the role of chance;

Determination in the form of a statistical pattern: the system develops directionally,

but its state at any given moment is not determined.

3. Post-non-classical picture of the world (late 20th century, based on synergetics):

Key points:

The development of the world can be represented as a branching tree;

This implies that the future is fundamentally unpredictable: it is always

there are development alternatives, which are often determined by some random, foreign

where even a minor factor;

The possibility of jumping from one development trajectory to another and losing

system memory. As a result, the past does not always directly determine the present, but

standing is the future. This also implies the fundamental unpredictability of the future.

– only more or less accurate forecasts based on trend analysis are possible;

It is argued that small, local causes may correspond to global consequences.

From all the above provisions it follows that uncertainty acts as an

ribut (fundamental, fundamental characteristic) of being;

The most important concepts of the modern scientific picture of the world are order and chaos (see

this on the issue of synergetics);

The principle of universal evolutionism (thoroughly substantiated by Russian academics)

com N.N. Moiseev. The essence, briefly: any sufficiently complex system that exists in

world - from an atom, a molecule, a microorganism, a person and to the Universe, is the result of co-

corresponding evolution);

Hierarchical structure of the world (in inanimate nature: field and matter are elementary

particles – atom – molecule – macrobodies – stars – galaxies – metagalaxies – universe;

in living nature: cell – tissue – organism – population – biocenosis – biosphere; in general

society – individual – small social groups – large social groups – humanity as a whole).

Scientific picture of the world

Parameter name	Meaning
Article topic:	Scientific picture of the world
Rubric (thematic category)	Culture

The science– a specific form of human spiritual activity that ensures the acquisition of new knowledge, develops means of reproduction and development of the cognitive process, and verifies, systematizes and disseminates its results. The modern scientific picture of the world has a huge impact on the formation of personality. Worldview images of nature, society, human activity, thinking, etc. are largely influenced by the ideas of the scientific picture of the world, which a person becomes acquainted with in the process of learning mathematics, natural sciences, social sciences and humanities.

Scientific picture of the world(NKM) - ϶ᴛᴏ a set of fundamental ideas about the laws and structure of the universe, an integral system of views on the general principles and laws of the structure of the world.

Stages in the development of science associated with the restructuring of the foundations of science are called scientific revolutions. In the history of science, three scientific revolutions can be distinguished that led to changes in the NCM.

I. Aristotelian CM (VI – IV centuries BC): the idea of ​​the Earth as the center of the universe (geocentrism was most fully substantiated by Ptolemy). The world was explained speculatively (since the ancients did not have complex measuring instruments).

II. Newtonian CM (XVI – XVIII centuries): transition from a geocentric model of the world to a heliocentric model of the world. This transition was prepared by the research and discoveries of N. Copernicus, G. Galileo, I. Kepler, R. Descartes. Isaac Newton summed up their research and formulated the basic principles of the new NCM. Objective quantitative characteristics of bodies (shape, size, mass, motion) were identified, which were expressed in strict mathematical laws. Science began to focus on experimentation. Mechanics became the basis for explaining the laws of the world. This NCM can be called mechanistic: the belief that with the help simple forces, acting between unchanging objects, can explain all natural phenomena.

III. Einsteinian CM (turn of the 19th – 20th centuries): it is characterized by anti-mechanism: the Universe is something immeasurably more complex than a mechanism, even a grandiose and perfect one. Mechanical interactions themselves are consequences or manifestations of other, deeper, fundamental interactions (electromagnetic, gravitational, etc.). The basis of the new NCM was the general and special theories of relativity and quantum mechanics. This NCM has abandoned all centrism. The universe is limitless and special center she does not have. All our ideas and all NCM are relational or relative.

Modern NCM is the result of the previous development of science and the global change in scientific pictures of the world. The basic principles of modern NCM are global evolutionism, anthropic principle, the principle of the material unity of the world, the principle of determinism, systematicity, structure, development (dialectics), self-organization and others.

Scientific picture of the world - concept and types. Classification and features of the category “Scientific picture of the world” 2017, 2018.

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