From the Principle of Objectivity of Scientific Knowledge to the Reconstruction of Different Situations of Knowledge Production

In: Idei i idealy: naučnyj žurnal = Ideas & ideals : a journal of the humanities and economics, Band 14, Heft 3-1, S. 75-92

Abstract

The article proposes to move from the principle of objectivity of scientific knowledge to the reconstruction of different situations of knowledge production. To do this, it is first shown that this principle does not work in the humanities and social sciences and has partially ceased to work in natural science (in the field of micro and macro phenomena). A scheme of the genesis of the principle of objectivity is outlined (the need to substantiate knowledge in the natural sciences, the proposals of Kant and Hume). As an alternative to the principle of objectivity, a reconstruction of different situations of knowledge production is proposed, containing two plans: including an external position, on the assumption that we know how everything really happened, and a borrowed one, in which the concept of cognition of those subjects that are subject to analysis is characterized. To demonstrate the logic of this reconstruction, several situations of the production of new knowledge are considered: using schemes (Plato's work), ideas about thinking (Aristotle), mathematics and experiment (Galileo), interpretations of the researcher (Z. Bauman). Criteria for the truth and effectiveness of new knowledge, which differ significantly in the natural and human sciences, are discussed. For the natural sciences, it is a mathematical description of the processes and mechanisms of a certain natural phenomenon, as well as an experiment that makes it possible to calculate and predict, and create engineering structures. For the humanities, it is an interpretation of a phenomenon that ensures its understanding and use in certain audiences. Since the social sciences are focused on solving two problems at once (the ability to calculate and predict social processes and to comprehend (understand) the social actors who initiated these processes and act in them), insofar as the criteria of authenticity and effectiveness in the social sciences partially coincide with the criteria of the natural sciences indicated here, partly humanitarian.