What is science and its role. Science - what is it? Definition, essence, tasks, areas and role of science. in different historical periods

Any society, starting with the family and ending with humanity as a whole, has a social consciousness. Its forms are experience, morality, religion, etc. But, undoubtedly, one of the most important forms is science. It is she who creates new knowledge in society.

What is science

Science is nothing but highly complex based on a number of basic aspects. The concept, signs of science and its aspects determine the entire essence of scientific knowledge. Based on the main aspects, science is considered as:

Knowledge system. In other words, as a process of acquiring new knowledge. This aspect involves studying using epistemology - the study of the knowledge of science. The basis is the subject and object of knowledge. Scientific knowledge results in objective knowledge about the world. It is objective because it does not depend on the state of the subject.
A special kind of worldview. In fact, it is a product caused by the spirituality of human activity, which embodies creative development. From this point of view, science is classified among such important human-created products as religion, art, law, philosophy, etc. When science develops, other areas of culture undergo changes along with it. This pattern also applies in the opposite direction.
Social institution. In this case we are talking about public life, in which science is perceived as a network of various interconnected institutions. Examples of such institutions are universities, libraries, academies and others. They are engaged in solving problems of a certain level and perform functions corresponding to their position. Thus, science is a clearly structured organization whose goal is to meet the needs of society.

Distinctive Features of Science

In order to determine the distinctive features of science, it is necessary first of all to delve into the essence of such a concept as the criteria of scientificity. They are mainly considered in Their study is primarily based on the desire to determine the epistemological side of scientific knowledge, endowed with unique specificity in comparison with other products of knowledge. Even ancient scientists thought about finding the essential features of science through the relationship of knowledge with such forms as opinions, guesses, assumptions, etc. In the process of development, scientists derived general signs of science that helped to understand the term more deeply. Research has identified seven main ones.

The first sign of science is the integrity and systematicity of scientific knowledge, which is an undoubted difference from ordinary consciousness.
The second is openness, or, in other words, the incompleteness of scientific knowledge, that is, its clarification and complementation in the process of the emergence of new facts.
The third involves trying to explain things using facts and a logically consistent way.
Criticality towards knowledge is the fourth characteristic of science.
Fifth is the ability to reproduce scientific knowledge under appropriate conditions in absolutely any place and regardless of time.
The sixth and seventh signs of science are the absence of dependence of scientific knowledge on the personal characteristics of the scientist and the presence of his own language, equipment, and method, respectively.

General classification of all sciences

Answering the question on what criteria sciences are classified, B. M. Kedrov derived a general definition. In his opinion, all sciences can be divided into four classes. The first class is the philosophical sciences, which include dialectics and logic. To the second he included mathematical sciences, including mathematics and mathematical logic. The third is the most extensive, as it immediately includes technical and natural sciences, the list of which includes:

Mechanics;
astronomy;
astrophysics;
physics (chemical and physical);
chemistry;
geochemistry;
geography;
geology;
biochemistry;
physiology;
biology;
anthropology.

And the final class according to Kedrov is which are divided into three subcategories:

History, ethnography, archeology.
Political economy, art criticism, legal sciences and art history.
Linguistics, pedagogical sciences and psychology.

The signs of modern science are classified on a variety of grounds. The most common is the subject and method of cognition, on the basis of which the sciences of nature (natural science), society (social science) and thinking (logic) are distinguished. are allocated to a separate category. Of course, each of the presented groups of sciences can be further divided into subgroups.

in different historical periods

For the first time, Aristotle addressed the issue of dividing sciences into classes back in antiquity. He identified three large groups: practical, theoretical and creative. The Roman encyclopedist Marcus Vorro defined the classification as a list of general sciences: dialectics, grammar, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, astrology, architecture and medicine. The classification of Muslim Arab scholars was the simplest and most understandable. They distinguished two classes of sciences - Arabic and foreign. The former include oratory and poetry, the latter - mathematics, medicine and astronomy. In the Middle Ages, scientists also sought to put forward their own version of separation. Hugo Saint-Victoria, according to his vision, identified four independent groups of sciences:

Theoretical - physics and mathematics.
Practical.
Mechanical - hunting, agriculture, medicine, navigation, theater.
Logical - grammar and rhetoric.

In turn, R. Bacon introduced a classification based on cognitive abilities. The first group includes history, which describes facts, the second - theoretical sciences, the third - art, poetry and literature in the broadest sense. Rojan Bacon believed that it was necessary to classify sciences in four areas. Logic, grammar, ethics, metaphysics should stand separately; mathematics, as well as natural philosophy, should be separated into independent units. Mathematics, in his opinion, is the most important science of nature.

Classification of animal sciences

Speaking about the characteristics by which animal sciences are classified, one important characteristic stands out - belonging to a certain species. The classifier divides animals into vertebrates and invertebrates. Vertebrates are studied in five basic sciences: ornithology (birds), theriology (mammals), batrachology (amphibians), herpetology (reptiles), ichthyology (fish). There are cases when the science that studies primates is distinguished separately, but in most cases it is included in theriology, since by their nature primates are mammals. Invertebrates can also be divided depending on how animal sciences classify them. Protozoology studies the simplest organisms, arthropodology studies arthropods, malacology knows everything about mollusks, and entomology can tell about all the features of insect life. But there is also a science that unites all these areas - zoology, which studies all animals.

Semiotics as one of the most important sciences

Any disease is easiest to cure at the initial stage. In order to identify it in a timely manner, it is necessary to carefully monitor emerging symptoms. Semiotics, as the science of the signs and manifestations of disease, is deeply concerned with this issue. It refers to practical medicine, which, using medical research methods, studies the symptoms of diseases. The science of disease symptoms is divided into general and specific. The general one includes a descriptive description and a complete classification of all symptoms, as well as methods and mechanisms of their appearance through the laws of growth of pathologies. An example of such symptoms is inflammation, dystrophy, degeneration and others. General semiotics also has its own symptomatic varieties according to diagnostic significance:

pathological;
compensatory (reflect organically and functional changes in substrates);
pathognomonic;
are common.

Based on the time of onset, symptoms are divided into early and late. In turn, private semiotics deals with the description of signs and symptoms of certain types of diseases. Any medical discipline begins clinical research with the study of semiotics of a particular type. There is also semiotics based on hereditary pathologies. This study examines hereditary diseases, their symptoms and pathologies.

Keeping order

Legal science is a system of knowledge about the state and law, the laws of their occurrence, development and work. The features of legal science are divided into three categories. In accordance with the first, this science is called a social applied science. As part of this feature, it must study the needs of society, legal practice and education, as well as provide workers in this field with up-to-date information for the publication of new laws.

In the second, it is considered as relating to This is due to the fact that it is based on specific knowledge, which is expressed in exact ratios. There is an opinion that jurisprudence is most similar to medicine, since they both combine both theoretical and applied components. Just like a doctor, a lawyer is faced with solving issues related to health and life. The work of a lawyer includes carrying out preventive work to “cure” the vices in the life of society and the spiritual world of each person. This reveals the humanistic characteristics of science (in this case, jurisprudence and medicine), which originated in ancient times.

The third principle of the existence of legal science is its ability to embody the advantages of the intellectual sciences. This statement is based on the fact that jurisprudence is engaged in the study of issues of reflecting objective reality in legal aspects that arise in the process of formation and implementation of new laws. That is why criminology, as one of the disciplines of legal science, is aimed at understanding the specific features of human thinking and applying specially acquired knowledge in the investigation process.

Who studies the past

Everyone knows that without knowing the past, it is impossible to build the future. Every person must find out what life was like in his city, country and the whole world at different times. History, known to everyone, takes upon itself to convey information about the past. It is she who studies the sources that have been preserved from previous periods of human life, on the basis of which she establishes the sequence of events. In fact, the main features of science and its historical method are to follow the norms and rules for working with primary sources, as well as other evidence discovered in the process of research work and drawing conclusions that allow one to write a correct historical work. These methods were first put into practice by Thucydides. It was work in accordance with historical methods that made it possible to isolate historical periods: primitiveness, the ancient world, the Middle Ages, modern and then modern times. There are dozens of historical disciplines, the functioning of which allows not only to recognize the past, but also to structure it and convey it to people. The main ones include:

archeology - the science of searching and studying material sources of the past;
genealogy - the science of family relationships between people;
chronology is the science of the time sequence of historical events.

In the footsteps of Jules Verne

Popularization of science is nothing more than the dissemination of scientific knowledge among a wide range of people in an understandable format. The main task of popularizing scientists is to process specialized data from scientific language into the language of a listener who is not related to science. They must also create an interesting narrative from dry scientific knowledge that will awaken the desire to immerse themselves in its study.

Science fiction is considered one of the main methods of popularizing science. The beloved Jules Verne played a huge role in the development of this direction. It is important to understand that the more invested in the popularization of science, the greater the likelihood of young people entering this field. Scientists are trying in every possible way to preserve their works and achievements and introduce them to the younger generation. But there are also people in history who believe that scientific knowledge should be available only to people at the helm, since they, unlike the rest of the masses, know exactly how to use it. This opinion was shared by Tycho Brahe. Ludwig Fadeev, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, believes that it is, of course, necessary to popularize scientific knowledge (for example, every taxpayer should understand why taxation exists). But there are moments that absolutely cannot be processed, and therefore information about quarks, strings, and Yang-Mills fields reaches people with a small amount of deception.

the sphere of human activity, the function of which is the development and theoretical systematization of objective knowledge about reality; one of the forms of social consciousness; includes both the activity of obtaining new knowledge and its result - the sum of knowledge that underlies the scientific picture of the world. The immediate goals are the description, explanation and prediction of the processes and phenomena of reality that constitute the subject of its study, based on the laws it discovers. The system of sciences is conventionally divided into natural, social, humanities and technical sciences.

Excellent definition

Incomplete definition ↓

THE SCIENCE

specialized activity to create a system of knowledge about nature, society and man, which allows one to adequately describe, explain natural or social processes and predict their development.

Scientific discourse is characterized by claims to intersubjective significance (objectivity), systematicity, logical evidence, the use of a specialized artificial language, and theoreticality. The accumulation of knowledge in ancient societies, despite the achievements of Egyptian, Mesopotamian and other civilizations in the field of astronomy, mathematics, medicine, did not yet have a scientific character in the strict sense, since it did not go beyond the scope of pure experience and was only a collection of practical recommendations.

Science in the proper sense arose around the 6th century. BC e. among the ancient Greeks, who moved from a mythological consideration of the world to comprehending it in concepts. The experimental study of the world is complemented by scientific methodology: the rules of logic are established, the concept of hypothesis is introduced, etc.

In the Middle Ages, interest in experimental knowledge weakened, and the pursuit of science was mainly reduced to the development of formal logical methods (scholasticism) and the interpretation of authoritative texts, including the works of the largest ancient scientists (Aristotle, Euclid, Ptolemy, Pliny the Elder, Hippocrates and etc.), which made it possible to convey the foundations of ancient science to the modern era.

It is in modern times that there is a turn to rationalistic research free from dogmatism, the formation of the humanities begins, and there is a rapid accumulation of new experimental knowledge, undermining the previous picture of the world.

The most important innovation of modern European science is experimentation. If Archimedes, in inventing water screws and convex mirrors, considered the main goal to deceive nature, then in modern times it became important to make it work for oneself, having previously studied it. Knowing a thing is knowing how to use it. The emergence of modern experimental natural science is associated with the name of Galileo (1564–1642), the first to systematically use experiment as the main method of research.

The theoretical justification of the new scientific methodology belongs to F. Bacon (1561–1626), who substantiated in the “New Organon” the transition from the traditional deductive approach (from a general, speculative, assumption or authoritative judgment - to a particular one, i.e. to a fact) to an inductive approach (from a particular, empirical fact - to the general, i.e. to a pattern).

European science reached its highest limit of rationalization in the 17th century. It is to this time that the so-called the scientific revolution that gave impetus to the birth of modern science. The concept of scientific revolution was introduced by the French philosopher A. Koyré, who showed that modern science is not a successor to the medieval doctrina, it arose in the struggle against it.

The recognition of universal laws governing the entire universe was the starting point of classical science. The very concept of “laws of nature” was introduced by R. Descartes (1596–1650), based on the deism that dominated the minds of contemporary scientists.

The turning point in the history of classical science was April 28, 1686, when I. Newton (1642–1727) presented his “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy” to the Royal Society of London. The idea of gravity as the fundamental law governing the world order topped the list of topics for discussion in high society salons for many years. Most thinkers based their theoretical constructions on it, it was ridiculed by French enlighteners, but it truly became the property of mankind only at the beginning of the 19th century. At that time, the most rationalistic philosophical systems appeared, a fundamental reorganization of universities began, and armchair scientists became teachers. The synthesis of knowledge began to be presented in textbooks, and the Newtonian system finally formed the basis of teaching.

Science began to take shape as a social institution in the 17th–18th centuries. - it was then that the first scientific societies, academies and scientific journals arose in Europe. The idea of science as an all-encompassing enterprise was born in 1662, when F. Bacon presented to the Royal Society of London a project for the “restoration of the sciences” - the creation of natural history based on a complete collection of observations, experiments, and practical research. To implement this plan, it was only necessary to organize the scientific community on the principle of a colossal factory. Scientists turned into employees of a world laboratory.

The production nature of new European science is emphasized by M. Heidegger (1889–1976): “By production, first of all, we understand the phenomenon that science, be it natural or humanitarian, today is only revered as real science when it becomes capable of institutionalizing itself. However, research is not production because research work is carried out in institutes, but on the contrary, institutions are necessary because science itself, as research, has the nature of production.”

The acquisition by science of the nature of production determined its new meaning: now it was called upon to bring practical benefits. For the first time, theoretical knowledge found its application in widespread practice, surprisingly, quite late: at the beginning of the 19th century.

The first to serve big business was chemistry, a science capable of analyzing the properties of commercially important ores and metals, oil, natural gas and dyes. Germany and the USA were at the forefront of the development of applied science. Industry began to develop in these countries later than, for example, in Great Britain, and therefore they did not have conservative traditions that separated science from technology. It was then that science took the form of a conveyor belt for the production of socially useful products, and scientific discovery gave way to invention.

With the development of new science, the need arose for a deeper division into special ones. By the middle of the 19th century. The disciplinary organization of science is formed, a system of disciplines with complex connections between them arises. Rationalization of the field of science leads to its bureaucratization by the destruction of individual creativity and the development of research groups and state scientific policy. Science is turning into a special type of scientific knowledge production, including diverse types of scientific associations, including large research teams, targeted funding, their social support, a complex division of labor and targeted training. “Only the West,” writes M. Weber (1864–1920), “knows the rational and systematic, i.e. professional, scientific activity of specialist scientists in that specific modern sense, which presupposes their dominance in a given cultural situation, first of all , as specialist bureaucrats, the pillars of the modern Western state and the modern Western economy."

By the beginning of the 20th century. A difficult situation has arisen in fundamental science: most sciences have been shaken by a crisis of foundations. According to E. Husserl (1859–1938), the cause of the crisis was the collapse of faith in reason. The new natural science broke away from its eternal basis - philosophy and became its gravedigger, turning into a research technique that mathematized the world and eliminated the qualitative certainty of phenomena. Science now carries out only one pragmatic function, and this function cannot replace a person’s need to understand the world, which was satisfied by the science of past eras, which has not lost its connection with philosophy. Husserl is convinced: only a return to metaphysics and the application of a holistic method of consideration in all areas of science can overcome its “crisis.”

The crisis of the sciences manifested itself most clearly in physics, which in its purest form contained classical methodology. According to many scientists, the crisis in the foundations of physics, which seemed to have been successfully resolved already in the first third of the 20th century, continues - despite the conquest of space, the fission of the atomic nucleus and other equally impressive successes of scientists. The fact is that the main goal of fundamental science - the unification of particular physical theories on a consistent conceptual basis and the construction of a unified picture of the world - has never been achieved.

The foundations of modern physics were laid in the first third of the 20th century. - in connection with overcoming the crisis of the foundations of science due to the influence of the irrational cultural and methodological background that reigned at that time. As A. Poincaré (1854–1912) noted, the quantum doctrine was accepted despite its incompatibility with the principle of causality and the axioms of mathematical physics. The paradoxical nature of a theory becomes almost a criterion of its truth.

In the works of many philosophers of science (T. Kuhn, G. Bachelard, P. Feyerabend), the unconventional methods of the new physics were retrospectively justified epistemologically - by developing the concept of “new scientific rationality”. The point was that in the conditions of the emergence of non-classical rationality, the line between the rational and the irrational is blurred. “Democracy” in science, which rejects the “totalitarianism” of a single picture of the world and a single comprehensive metanarrative for describing reality, implies a certain anarchy in methodology. Modern science proclaims itself to be internally pluralistic and no longer intends to impose one single model of understanding reality. According to the creator of anarchist epistemology, P. Feyerabend, the only universal principle of knowledge can be the principle of “everything is permitted,” and scientists have the right to invent any methods and theories.

Scientific and technological power is one of the most important components of the national power of the state. The leader is the United States, which spends more on research and development (R&D) than all other countries. If R&D in the USA is financed by 40–45% from taxpayers, then in Japan this figure does not exceed 20%: in this country they believe that the concentration of scientific potential in companies shortens the path from the emergence of an idea to its implementation in a product.

Until the early 1990s. The USSR was at least not inferior to the USA in terms of the number of scientists and designers. The Soviet scientific system, focused on the needs of super-industrialization and the military-industrial complex, was one of the most important factors providing the country with the status of a superpower. The orders that she received from the state (nuclear project, space program) were of not only national, but also world-historical significance.

Society had great respect for people of science. And science lived up to public expectations. The world's first nuclear power plants and nuclear-powered ships were built. New scientific centers emerged - Dubna, Akademgorodok. Soviet physicists began to receive Nobel Prizes (1958, 1962, 1964). Soviet rockets conquered space.

And yet the greatness of Soviet science was one-sided. Thus, the humanitarian sector was rather poorly represented in it, which turned out to be one of the reasons for the defeat of the USSR in the Cold War. When the collapse of the USSR occurred, domestic science lost its main, and most importantly, systemic customer. This led to a deep crisis in the scientific structure. Industrial research centers and academic institutions, deprived of government funding, were on the verge of collapse. In 1996, R&D expenditures in the United States amounted to $184.7 billion, and in Russia, even according to clearly inflated official data, only $5.3 billion.

In the post-Soviet space, only Russia, despite financial difficulties, managed to maintain a powerful scientific and technical potential. A number of fundamental studies have yielded results of global significance. In the field of computer science and computer technology, a multiprocessor computing system with a peak performance of a trillion operations per second has been created. A breakthrough has been made in the field of thermonuclear fusion, astrophysics and mechanics. Russian academician Zh. Alferov received the Nobel Prize in physics in 2000.

However, the authority of modern Russian science is still far from its former Soviet one. In the citation ranking compiled based on the results of 2005, Russia occupies only 18th place, behind not only the USA, England, Germany, Japan, but even China and Israel.

The decline of Russian science is largely explained by the exodus of scientists abroad in search of better living and working conditions: in 1992, the average salary of scientists in Russia was just over $5. During the 1990s More than 250 thousand scientists left Russia, and in total more than 2.4 million people left science, i.e. two-thirds of the payroll. As a result, the most valuable know-how was lost, including in the field of defense technologies and nuclear energy, entire areas of research were lost, the level of inventive activity and the average citation index of the works of Soviet scientists in world literature decreased by 90%. If in the mid-1960s. it was inferior to the American one by about 1.5 times, then in the early 1990s. this gap has grown in favor of the United States by 14 times. If Russia is still in first place in the world in terms of the number of scientific workers, then in terms of competitiveness it is only 70th.

According to experts from the Council of Europe Commission on Education, our country’s financial losses from the emigration of scientists reach $1 billion a year. The “worth” of just one MIPT graduate is estimated on the world market at about $1 million, and every fifth graduate leaves.

Russian science is rapidly aging. In many institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the average age of scientists exceeds 60 years, while back in the era of space exploration this figure was 38 years. The shortage of scientific workers in Russian research institutes is more than 175 thousand, or over 20%.

The first steps towards restoring the potential of domestic science began to be taken only in the early 2000s, when serious progress was made in the field of financing fundamental science, increasing remuneration for scientists, etc.

On April 26, 2007, V. Putin, in his annual address to the Federal Assembly, set the task for Russian science to make a breakthrough in the field of the most advanced technologies, primarily nanotechnologies, which will allow Russia to regain its lost leadership in science.

Excellent definition

Incomplete definition ↓

Many of us wonder what science is. Usually this term itself is understood as something very serious, bringing benefit to humanity. Let's consider the concept of science and its significance in the human world.

Definition

Traditionally, science is understood as a field of human activity aimed at obtaining objective facts of a real picture of the world. Science is based on knowledge and proof of its truth. It operates with a whole categorical apparatus, which includes methods, methodological approaches, the subject and object of knowledge, goals and objectives, etc.

Based on the data obtained, science forms certain theories or axioms for the development of the natural world or the cultural world.

According to the famous scientist K. Popper, in order to understand what science is, it is necessary to define the following criteria: the purpose of science, the result of scientific activity and methods for obtaining it. The scientist believes that the ultimate goal of science is to obtain new knowledge or answers to problems of interest to scientists. The result of scientific activity is the improvement of old knowledge and improvement of technologies, a new look at already existing solutions to problems.

Methods of scientific knowledge are very diverse. Different fields of science offer different methods. If we study the humanities, then the leading methods there will be analysis and synthesis, collection of empirical data, observation, conversation, experiment. The natural sciences rely most heavily on experimental research, but they also use observation and analysis.

History of the phenomenon of science

The question of what science is was asked by people of the ancient world. According to historians, our ancestors obtained their first scientific knowledge through natural observation of the natural world. Thanks to the advent of writing, this knowledge began to be passed on through generations. As knowledge accumulated, it gave birth to new experience, which later formed the basis of science.

Science was born simultaneously in different parts of our planet. We can talk about ancient science (physics, geometry, mathematics, linguistics) and the science of Eastern countries (arithmetic, medicine, etc.). It is believed that philosophy was the founder of science. Therefore, the ancient Greek thinkers, who tried to find out the fundamental principle of the material world, became the first scientists on earth (Thales, Demosthenes, etc.).

Science received widespread development during the Renaissance in Europe due to a confluence of several circumstances: firstly, enough knowledge had already been accumulated in the natural world, the world of things and human activities, and, secondly, in contrast to the Muslim East, which imposed a ban on knowledge of creation Allah, Christian Europe sought to actively transform the world.

Who are scientists?

Having posed the problem of what science is, one cannot ignore the question of its main creators - scientists. A scientist is a person who is professionally engaged in science, creates an objective picture of the world, and works in the field of creating new knowledge. The profession of a scientist, like other professions of a socially active type, presupposes a certain service of a person to his work. In this case, it is implied that new knowledge can help humanity to ennoble itself and give a new impetus to technical progress.

In the modern world, the professional path of a scientist lies through studying at higher educational institutions, working at institutes and universities, and obtaining academic degrees. A scientist, alone or in a group of other colleagues, works on a topic for many years, and sometimes his entire life. He can defend dissertations on this topic, as well as publish his works. Today, the criterion for a scientist’s success is his citation rate (in the world scientific community there is the so-called Hirsch index, which takes into account external links to the works of a particular scientist).

Main scientific directions

Currently, there are several leading scientific directions. This is not surprising, because the science that studies the social relationships of people differs from natural or technical science.

Sciences are usually divided as follows:

Basic Sciences. This includes research into the deep foundations of human existence on earth, the laws of nature, the characteristics of this or that phenomenon, etc. Fundamental sciences cannot give an instant practical result; sometimes such a result must be expected for decades.
Applied Science. We include research that, on the one hand, uses the achievements of fundamental science, and on the other, helps create new technologies.
Research and development. This includes all types of scientific research that cannot be classified either in the first or second group.

Philosophical understanding of science

Due to the fact that the science itself, which studies the objective laws of the universe, came out of philosophy, the question of the connection between science and philosophy still remains open.

Today there is a section of philosophy that studies the very concept of scientific knowledge, the boundaries of scientific activity, the question of the relationship between ethics and scientific progress, and the methodology of science. This section is called philosophy of science.

Among the main directions of this section we can highlight such a philosophical doctrine as positivism (Bacon, Hegel), based on faith in science, in the fact that rational knowledge is the highest value, and it is capable of giving a new impetus to the development of mankind.

Already in the 20th century, positivism was rethought in the works of postpositivism theorists K. Popper and T. Kuhn. These authors became the pioneers of a new direction in science that studies it as an object of knowledge. This direction received the definition of scientific studies.

Russian science: history of origin

Science in our country began to actively develop in the 17th century. It cannot be said that until this time active observations of the natural world were not carried out; they were, however, knowledge, as a rule, was transmitted orally, which slowed down the process of their scientific understanding.

Rus' received some scientific knowledge from Byzantium, however, due to the fall of the great empire and the loss of contact with the Western world, some of this knowledge was not used, and some was lost. However, in general, the development of science in our country coincided with the same period in the West.

Under Peter the Great, science begins to actively develop; Peter creates many educational institutions, reverently treating the exact sciences of applied importance. In 1724, the first Russian Academy of Sciences opened in St. Petersburg. Later, thanks to the work of the Russian scientist M.V. Lomonosov, who did a lot for the development of domestic scientific knowledge, Moscow University was opened.

Since then, Russian science has firmly entered the ranks of Western European science, in no way inferior to them.

Classification of science

From the 19th century to the present day, many classifications of various sciences have been proposed. For example, F. Bacon divided them into three large groups:

theoretical (mathematics and physics);
natural and civil;
poetic (including art and literature).

Later other classifications were proposed.

Scientist B. M. Kedrov believes that modern science includes three large groups, which, in turn, are divided into some subgroups:

social and human sciences (pedagogy, religious studies, psychology, etc.);
technical sciences (geophysics, mechanics, robotics, etc.);
natural sciences (zoology, ecology, chemistry, etc.).

Science today

Today science is one of the most important branches of people's lives. It has good structure and organization. Thus, all states have a ministry of science, responsible for the development of scientific knowledge, the organization of scientific laboratories, modern developments in the field of high technology, etc.

As a matter of fact, it is now impossible for any state to survive without science, because scientific and technological progress is inexorable, technologies are constantly updated (especially in the military sphere), and if the country does not pay due attention to them, it will face military threats from its opponents.

In our country there is a Ministry of Education and Science, which is responsible not only for the development of the scientific industry as a whole, but also for the comprehensive upbringing and education of the younger generation.

Science is one of the spheres of human activity, the function of which is the production and systematization of knowledge about nature, society and consciousness. Knowledge includes the activity of producing knowledge. The term "N." is also used to designate certain areas of scientific knowledge - physics, chemistry, biology, etc. The prerequisites for the emergence of science are the social division of labor, the separation of mental labor from physical labor, and the transformation of cognitive activity into a specific occupation of an initially small but constantly growing group of people. Certain elements of scientific knowledge appeared in Ancient China, India, Egypt, and Babylon. However, the emergence of N. dates back to the 6th century. BC e., when the first theoretical systems opposing religious and mythological ideas appeared in Ancient Greece. N. became a special social institution in the 17th century, when the first scientific societies and academies appeared in Europe, and the first scientific journals began to be published. At the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. A new way of organizing science is emerging—large scientific institutes and laboratories with a powerful technical base. If until the end of the 19th century. N. played a supporting role in relation to production, then in the 20th century. N.'s development begins to outstrip the development of technology and production, and a unified system “N. - technology - production” takes shape, in which N. plays a leading role. Currently, science permeates all spheres of public life: scientific knowledge and methods are necessary in material production, economics, politics, management, and the education system. N. has a revolutionary influence on all aspects of social life, being the driving force of the scientific and technological revolution. The scientific disciplines that together form the science system as a whole are divided into three groups: natural, social, and technical science. There are no sharp boundaries between these groups. Many disciplines occupy an intermediate position between these groups or arise at their junction. In addition, in recent decades, interdisciplinary and comprehensive research has developed significantly, uniting representatives of very distant disciplines and using methods of different N. All this makes the problem of N. classification very complex. However, the above division of science is still useful in many respects, since it expresses an important difference between them in the subject of study: natural science studies natural phenomena and processes, social science studies society and man, and technical science. explore the features of artificial, man-made devices. Based on their relationship to practice, science and scientific research are usually divided into fundamental and applied. The main goals of fundamental science are to understand the essence of phenomena, discover the laws governing the flow of observed processes, and discover the deep structures underlying empirical facts. In methodological research, science, as a rule, refers to fundamental science. However, in recent decades, applied research has occupied an increasing place in science, the immediate goal of which is to apply the results of fundamental science to solve technical, production, and social problems. It is clear that the development of fundamental science must outstrip the growth of applied research, preparing the necessary theoretical basis for the latter. Attempts to develop a precise definition of science, scientific knowledge, and the scientific method, a definition that would make it possible to separate science from other forms of social consciousness and activities—from art, philosophy, and religion—were not crowned with success. And this is quite natural, because in the process of historical development the boundaries between science and non-science are constantly changing: what yesterday was non-science today acquires the status of science; what we consider N. today may be rejected tomorrow as pseudoscience. However, some features of N. that distinguish it from other forms of social consciousness can still be pointed out. For example, N. differs from art in that it reflects reality not in images, but in abstractions, in concepts, strives for their logical systematization, gives a generalized description of phenomena, etc. Unlike philosophy, N. strives for discovery new facts, to verify, confirm or refute his theories and laws, uses observation, measurement, experiment as methods of knowledge, etc. In relation to religion, N. differs in that he tries not to take a single position on faith and periodically returns to critical analysis of its foundations. Nevertheless, science, art, and philosophy are united by a creative attitude to reality and its reflection; elements of scientific knowledge penetrate art and philosophy, and in the same way, elements of art and philosophy are an irreducible component of scientific creativity. Various aspects of science are studied by a number of special disciplines: history of science, logic of science, sociology of science, psychology of scientific creativity, etc. Since the middle of the 20th century. A special field began to take shape, seeking to unite all these disciplines into a comprehensive study of N. - scientific studies.

Definitions, meanings of words in other dictionaries:

Philosophical Dictionary

A special human response to the challenge of history, to the complication of the social world. It is aimed at obtaining subject knowledge, knowledge of things, processes as such, and includes criticism of one’s own foundations and achievements, that is, subject modality predominates in science. N....

Philosophical Dictionary

One of the spheres of human activity, the function of which is the production and systematization of knowledge about nature, society and consciousness. Knowledge includes the activity of producing knowledge. The term "N." is also used to designate certain areas of scientific knowledge...

Philosophical Dictionary

A special type of cognitive activity aimed at developing objective, systematically organized and substantiated knowledge about the world. Interacts with other types of cognitive activity: everyday, artistic, religious, mythological, philosophical. comprehension of the world. How...

Philosophical Dictionary

The science- the result, the totality of knowledge about nature, society and thinking, accumulated in the course of socio-historical life. The purpose of science is to reveal the objective laws of phenomena and to provide an explanation of phenomena. Without knowledge of the objective laws of nature and society there is no and cannot be scientific knowledge. Marxism proceeds from the fact that science is the enemy of chance, because reality can and should be studied and known not in its random properties, but in its necessary and natural connections.

Knowledge of individual accidents does not give science, since it is not accidents that determine the course of development in nature and society, but objective laws, the denial of which leads to the elimination of science. The task of science is to find and explore behind the random, chaotic, objective laws hidden from a superficial glance, and to equip people with knowledge of these laws in their practical activities. In all fields, science shows us the operation of fundamental laws in the apparent chaos of phenomena. The power of science lies in its generalizations. It develops and moves forward with the development of society; Its progress lies in the fact that it understands reality more and more accurately and deeply.

Science arises and develops on the basis of the production and practical activities of people. At each stage of social history, science represents the level of awareness of the laws of reality achieved at a given time; it is aimed at mastering and using the forces of nature. Marx and Engels proved that the determining factor in the development of science is not the logical development of problems and concepts, but, first of all, the needs of the development of technology and material production. If technology “depends to a large extent on the state of science, then to a much greater extent science depends on the state and needs of technology. If society has a technical need, then it moves science forward more than a dozen universities.” For example, hydrostatics in the 16th and 17th centuries. was brought to life by the need to regulate the mountain streams of Italy.

The science of nature began to develop especially quickly in connection with the emergence and development of the capitalist mode of production. The bourgeoisie needed science to develop industry. However, under the conditions of capitalism, the spider opposes the working class as the force of capital, and scientific discoveries lead not to easing the labor of the worker, but to increased exploitation. If in the era of the dominance of capitalism natural science, under the influence of the needs of industrial development, achieved enormous success, then in bourgeois social science, directly related to the class interests of the bourgeoisie, with its economic basis, idealism dominated, distorting the actual laws of social life.

Only the ideologists of the proletariat, Marx and Engels, created a true science of the laws of social development. The worldview they developed freed natural science from that philosophical limitation (the influence of idealistic philosophy and the metaphysical method of research) that was characteristic of it during the period of capitalism.

Unlimited opportunities for the development of all sciences were created after the victory of socialism. Of all the classes of modern society, the working class is most interested in the movement of science forward, which, in building a communist society, uses all the positive achievements of science. The Great October Socialist Revolution and socialist construction in the USSR opened a new era in the development of science. For the first time in the history of mankind, science, freed from the power of capital, was put at the service of the working people. Socialism and science are inseparable. The establishment of the socialist system means a huge rise in science. Socialism destroys all barriers erected by capitalism to the development of science.

Dispersal and handicraft, anarchy and spontaneity, individualism and disunity in scientific work, inevitable under capitalism, were replaced in the USSR by the systematic and expedient use of all the forces and means of science to develop pressing problems of the national economy, defense and cultural development of the country of socialism. Already in the first years of the existence of Soviet power, Lenin began to develop a broad plan for the reorganization of the entire national economy on the basis of the latest data from science and technology (electrification plan). Thanks to the socialist organization of science in the USSR, Soviet science has already advanced to first place in world science in a number of fields - in mathematics, in the study of the atomic nucleus, cosmic rays, the stratosphere, higher nervous activity, biology, etc., not to mention social spiders. Soviet scientists put all the achievements of science at the service of the people; they serve the people not under compulsion, but voluntarily, willingly.

Guided by the advanced worldview - the teachings of Marxism-Leninism, Soviet advanced science in its tasks, goals and aspirations, in the support it receives in Soviet society, is a science of the entire people. Not only in setting problems, but also in solving them, it does not isolate itself, but relies on the experience of advanced Soviet people - on the practice and inventive thought of workers in industry, agriculture, experimental livestock breeders, Michurin plant breeders, etc. Science in The Soviet country is moved forward not only by scientists, but also by thousands of innovative workers and experienced collective farmers. In our country, the community of scientists and production workers is growing and expanding, which is a new huge incentive for the successful development of science.

Science in Soviet society is distinguished by its consistent implementation of the principle of unity of theory and practice. New practical experience enriches science, moves it forward, breaking outdated traditions. One of the distinctive features of science in a socialist society is the fight against the ossification of theory, against its transformation into a system of prejudices. Stagnation often occurs in science due to the fact that representatives of the older and distinguished generation of scientists mistakenly begin to view themselves as “monopolists” of science. Truly advanced science is science, which creates wide scope for the penetration of fresh, young forces, growing scientists, practical people, innovators who break outdated traditions in science, creating new, advanced traditions. The most important method of overcoming the contradiction between the new and the old in Soviet science is (see).

Creative disputes and discussions play a major role in the development of science. Marxism teaches that no science can develop without a struggle of opinions, without freedom of criticism. This provision is of great importance for the fight against stagnation, conservatism, and Arakcheevism in science. The experience of holding discussions in the USSR (on philosophy, biology, linguistics, physiology, political economy, etc.) indicates that in the process of the struggle of opinions, in the process of criticism and self-criticism, science achieves new successes: the outdated is discarded, conservative elements clinging to the old are debunked , which has become obsolete, the way is cleared for everything advanced and innovative in science.

The transition from socialism to communism poses enormous tasks for Soviet scientists, creates unprecedented opportunities for a new upsurge in science, and requires Soviet scientists of all specialties to boldly and creatively solve a wide variety of scientific problems. The Communist Party set the task for Soviet scientists to in the near future surpass the achievements of science outside our country. Soviet scientists are successfully working on solving this problem. Science in the USSR, having become the property of the broad masses, is a tool for the construction of communism.