1. SCIENCE: ROLES AND PURPOSES
"Science is an attempt to bring the chaotic diversity of our sensory experience in line with some unified system of thinking." - Albert Einstein.
What role does science play in the life of man and mankind? What is the purpose of science, what questions can scientific knowledge answer, and which ones remain outside the scope of its competence? We will try to answer these and other questions in this work.
What is Science?
First you need to decide on the terminology. Science, according to the generalized definitions of the main significant dictionaries, is one of the ways of knowing the world, a sphere of human activity, the main task of which is to develop and systematize objective knowledge about the world. Objectivity, in turn, presupposes the possibility of proving, therefore, scientific knowledge has a methodology, based on which it is possible to recognize or refute a scientific assumption. The main stages of scientific knowledge are:
- Observation, research, measurement, subsequent description of the phenomenon, object.
- Analysis of the results.
- Subsequent synthesis (generalization) and hypothesis formation.
- Formulation of the consequences of the hypothesis by using the tools of logic.
- An experiment that can confirm the correctness of a hypothesis or disprove it.
Sciences are divided into fundamental and applied. The first are designed to develop general concepts, laws and methods, the second - to find the implementation of hypotheses and theories in the practical life of a person.
Philosophy and mathematics, which, in their essence, are strictly theoretical, serve as a methodological and conceptual support for more practical sciences, such as physics, biology, chemistry, etc., stand somewhat apart.
Many areas of medicine (which is a complex of sciences) and psychology also deserve special attention as a science in which the experiment is unacceptable or limited: directly touching a person, neither medicine nor psychology can use the general scientific standard methodology, although they strive to develop objective knowledge.
Promotional video:
History of science
It is generally accepted that a prerequisite for the formation of a scientific approach to the knowledge of the world was a person's separation from the world, that is, the formation of subject-object perception.
Such a separation did not always exist: in the early stages, mankind possessed a syncretic consciousness - this was the time of the birth of myth, the period of the earliest knowledge of the surrounding world by man. Human development in a sense repeats the development of mankind, and in young children we observe the same phenomenon: the inability to separate oneself and the world in the way that adults can.
Humanity developed, acquired the ability to analyze, generalize, create something new … Social life became more and more complex: small settlements grew into cities, and cities - into states. There was a need to run a joint household and distribute benefits. Science played the role of a practical assistant in construction before it took a separate niche in the cultural space.
It is customary to distinguish several periods in the history of science:
- Pre-science that originated in the civilizations of the Ancient East. First of all, these are astrology, numerology, pre-Euclidean geometry and literacy. This period in the history of science is characterized by lack of evidence and directiveness: knowledge was passed from mouth to mouth as something indisputable, constituting the basis of the world order. During this period of time, science was still very close to craft, performing only practical functions.
- The development of philosophy in Ancient Greece, the propensity for analysis, doubt and, accordingly, the need for proof gave rise to a new round in the development of science, called ancient. This is a period of comprehension of the surrounding world: mankind not only used science to solve practical problems, but saw knowledge as an end in itself.
- The medieval period is characterized by the active introduction of experiment, which was facilitated by the growing popularity of alchemical experiments. In addition, the Middle Ages is the heyday of Christianity, and, contrary to popular belief, religion is not a hindrance to science. Monotheism as a philosophical system that perceives a person as the master of the world and the crown of creation has become an excellent tool for the development of scientific thought.
- Renaissance
- The classical period is the time of the formation of science in its modern sense. The return to tradition as a reaction to the Renaissance gave rise to the need to debunk a number of myths, to make the world simpler, understandable to any person.
Postclassical science has undergone a crisis of traditional rational representations and has formed new theories - these are Einstein's theory of relativity, the Big Bang theory, Mandelbrot's fractal geometry, etc.
Specificity of scientific knowledge
The main feature of scientific knowledge is the inability of any system of judgments to substantiate from the point of view of its own logic all the judgments included in it (one of the conclusions of the Gödel theorem on the incompleteness of formal systems).
Simply put, science relies on certain beliefs that are unprovable logically and are taken on faith. One of the clearest examples of this is mathematics. We have known from school a number of axioms that cannot be proved and at the same time are indispensable in solving any, even the simplest, problem.
Scientific knowledge itself presupposes a number of attitudes, axioms, which will be accepted by us unconditionally. Therefore, many lessons, for example, in mathematical analysis, begin with the words "take on trust", then the axiom is declared, and various constructions are derived from it.
The process of cognition itself also presupposes a number of conditions
First, cognition is possible only when the material world exists in principle (which is denied, for example, by Hinduism, within which science did not develop).
Secondly, cognition is possible if the material world is cognizable in principle. For this, it is necessary that it be, firstly, uniform, and secondly, stable over time. That is, we need to accept the principles of isomorphism and isochronism as an axiom.
Thirdly, cognition of the world is possible when the world is not a shrine, an object of veneration. That is why Antiquity could not give an answer to many questions: the ancient Greeks are pantheists, for them the world is animate and divine, and "dissecting" it is sacrilege. The science of the classical period developed under the conditions of the monotheistic and objectivist Christianity of Western Europe, making a difference between the world and its Creator. Man is the master of the world and has the right to understand it.
The role of science in human life
The role of science in the life of a modern person is determined by the functions that it performs.
First of all, this is a cognitive function: science creates and reproduces knowledge, systematizes the available information. It helps a person navigate natural and social processes, opening doors to the unknown and simplifying reality. Moreover, the methods of cognition of science are very different from the methods of cognition of art or religion. Unlike the first, science does not use feeling, unlike the second, it does not use faith, or rather, it should not. Science demythologizes, “disenchants” reality. Art and religion do not pursue such goals.
The worldview function is the next one performed by science. And here it is important to understand that science itself cannot be a worldview, it just fills our life with objective knowledge, affects perception. The view, widespread in the era of "militant atheism," according to which science can replace religion, is fundamentally wrong - this is all just an ideological move. Religiousness also belongs to the sphere of knowledge, but, relying on faith, it just forms a worldview. Science, based on facts, only helps to separate the wheat from the chaff and to streamline our ideas about the world.
Science plays an important role in education: it forms teaching methods, systematizes knowledge for their subsequent transfer, etc.
The most prominent function of science is practical. The development of science is the key to any technical progress. Agree, it is difficult to imagine today without electricity, gas, television, the Internet … Absolutely everything, from the construction of houses to cooking, today is associated with scientific and technological progress.
At the same time, one should not forget about the humanities and social sciences: history, philology, sociology, etc. They play a big role in shaping the correct moral vector, assessing progress from the point of view of humanity. It is widely known that the Nazis during the Second World War conducted many experiments on people and obtained "interesting" results, but can such a disregard for the main value - human life - be considered an adequate basis for the development of knowledge? What will the world around us be like if curiosity and cognitive interest are not based on morality?
As a result
Science is both social and personal. On the one hand, science is a large stratum of culture, on the other, the desire for scientific knowledge is born in us by the strongest instinct - curiosity …
Science is as natural as religion, art, but it plays a completely different role: it tells about the objective world, asserts the foundations that help us "grow" into reality more tightly.
The undoubted goal of science is human comfort. Mathematicians often joke that science moves by laziness, that is, we strive to make a discovery that will allow us not to spend so much time and energy on simple everyday questions. This means, ultimately, the goal of science is to make a person happy, to help him in solving everyday and other material problems, to prevent him from falling into despair and despondency.
As the great Russian scientist Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev said: "Science is beneficial only when we accept it not only with our mind, but also with our heart." https://lesoteka.livejournal.com/16121.html Deprived of feelings, endowed only with method and objectivity, science belongs to a person in whom a living heart beats and who has an eternal soul. Using all this amount of human resources opens the door to truly great discoveries.
2. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCES
Cognitive interest is one of the integral parts of the human being. The first attempts to form a scientific approach appeared in ancient civilizations. Traditionally, it is customary to distinguish several stages in the development of science, each of which had its own prerequisites.
Early period: pre-science
Pre-science originated in the civilizations of the Ancient East: numerology, astrology, pre-Euclidean geometry, and literacy are its main disciplines. In this era, the consciousness of mankind remained predominantly syncretic, and only the first timid attempts were made to analyze reality and systematize knowledge about the world.
According to the historian I. S. Berezina, progress was most of all tangible in these civilizations - Sumer, Ancient Egypt - due to the need to survive in difficult conditions. First of all, the economic conditions were difficult: they had to use irrigation systems (irrigation systems) in order to get the harvest. Indeed, if we turn to Ancient India, we find that a favorable climate and fertile soil played a good role in the development of art based on sensory perception, but did not contribute to the development of sciences. Why think about how big to make a furrow when planting and how best to distribute water when it is enough to stick a stick into the ground to get a crop in three months?
But for Egypt, now suffering from the flood of the Nile, then from drought, the issue of food is a priority, and a lot of knowledge and skills are required to solve it. Why then are we talking about pre-science? In the conditions of the Ancient World, objectivity - the basic principle of science - could not be fully achieved: knowledge was accumulated and systematized, but was evaluated exclusively empirically: “My grandfather says that you need to dig like this, so I also dig like this, and my children will dig same . It was not possible to question the knowledge of the ancestors due to their indisputable authority, and there was no need for this - everything works out with the housework - and it is good that it turns out.
What about astrology, you ask? Yes, it was also of an applied nature: with the help of the stars, it was possible to predict the same floods of rivers, based on atmospheric phenomena, they made the first primitive conclusions about the weather in the future.
It is impossible to deny that the Ancient East gave us both the first calendars and the first applied geometry, but all this knowledge was not supported by something objective and was strongly associated with the mythological ideas of that time, which did not make it possible to move forward in full force.
Ancient Greece: the beginning
The next milestone in the development of science was Antiquity, which gave us the first philosophers, doctors, historians. In ancient Greece, astrology based on myth became the more serious astronomy of Ptolemy, Theophrastus made the first observations in the field of botany, and Euclid told the world that parallel lines do not intersect.
Why Greece? First, the need for trade and the development of navigation required the strengthening of developments in physics and mathematics. Secondly, Ancient Greece is not the same polytheistic civilization as Ancient Egypt: the political system of the latter is authoritarianism, while Greece is famous, to this day, for the introduction of the principles of democracy. What does this mean for science? Everything is very simple: differences in mythological ideas and the permissibility of talking about them give rise to the freedom to doubt. And doubt is precisely what gives rise to the need for proof, therefore, leads to the search for truth. Thus, the Greeks managed to get away from strictly mythological thinking to rational.
Moreover, you and I know very well that already in the era of Socrates, polytheism was not the only possible form of religiosity, and Plato and Aristotle very definitely fixed the first forerunners of monotheism in their writings. Belief in the One God, no matter how strange it may seem, affects the development of science, since it ensures compliance with the principles of isomorphism and isochronism - the unity of time and uniformity of form and content. We must understand that if an object immersed in water pushes it out in a certain volume in Athens, then in Babylon it will push out water according to the same principle. Simply put, monotheism ensures the uniformity of the laws of nature, which cannot guarantee the presence of many gods, and, accordingly, different world order.
Middle Ages: Obscurantism or a Path to Experiment?
The Middle Ages, contrary to the widespread notion of obscurantism flourishing in this era, allowed the accumulation of extremely important experience - the experience of experiment. During the period of militant atheism, the ideas that the domination of Christianity throughout Europe led to stagnation, widespread censorship and stagnation of scientific progress were long propagated. Will turn to history in enough detail to understand that everything was completely different.
Firstly, science, before the invention of printing, developed mainly within the walls of monasteries, because books are not a cheap pleasure now, and then even more so.
Secondly, the very philosophy of Christianity made possible the transition to a new stage of scientific thought:
- Christianity is essentially an anthropocentric religion, and if a person is the master of the world, then an experiment on the elements of the surrounding world is quite permissible. This distinguishes the ideas of a Christian from the ideas of an ancient pantheist man, for whom the whole world is a shrine, it is only permissible to contemplate it.
- Christianity is a monotheistic religion, and, as we have already found out above, isochronism and isomorphism are necessary for the development of scientific thought, which in the conditions of monotheism are provided better than ever.
- At the heart of Christian thought is the conviction that the world is knowable for man, since the center of Christianity is the incarnate Word. The Word became flesh, the Savior opened for us the way of knowing God through himself, which means that the knowledge of His creation is possible.
We know many scientists from the Middle Ages:
- Lev the Mathematician, the founder of the Magnavr Higher School in Constantinople, he succeeded not only in the transfer of knowledge, but also in mathematics - he significantly simplified algebra, bringing it closer to the principles of the Arab calculus, as well as in mechanics - it is known that the residence of the Byzantine emperors was decorated with his inventions.
- Thomas Aquinas, Catholic monk of the Dominican order, the progenitor of all modern philosophy. He was able to rework the ideas of Aristotle and try it on with Christian teachings, in particular, Augustine the Blessed. This made it possible for an incredible leap forward for the subsequent development of philosophical thought in Europe. In addition, Thomas Aquinas is the ancestor of scholasticism - rational theology.
- The British monk Bede the Venerable in his work "On the calculation of time" asserts the sphericity of the Earth.
- John Duns Scotus, a Franciscan, according to the Russian philosopher V. S. Soloviev, one of the brightest representatives of scholasticism of the High Middle Ages. He made a significant contribution to the development of philosophical thought.
Not only philosophical thought developed in the Middle Ages. So, already in the XI century, the first striking watches appeared, and two centuries later - pocket watches. Compass, ship steering, typography - all these are achievements of the Middle Ages.
Do not forget about the Arab world, within which medicine, mathematics and astronomy developed. We use many inventions of the Middle Ages to this day. For example, the instruments for performing surgical intervention in phlebology, used by the Arabs of the Muslim East at that time, are still used by modern surgeons.
Classic period
The classical period of the development of science begins in the 16th century and ends in the 18th century. Science, as we are used to seeing it, was born just then.
Why not Renaissance?
But we'll start a little earlier - with the Renaissance.
It is believed that the Renaissance became a breath of fresh air after the period of the dark and gloomy Middle Ages, allowed a person to turn back to his own being, and all this contributed to scientific progress.
We have already seen that the Middle Ages are not as scary as they are portrayed, and as for the connection between the return to ancient models and the development of science, everything is not so simple here either.
Of course, the Great Geographical Discoveries, the heliocentric system of the world of Nicolaus Copernicus, the research of Paracelsus and Vesalius in the field of medicine took place.
As for Nicolaus Copernicus, a Catholic priest, for many years he was much more condemned by fellow astronomers than by the Church. The fact is that Copernicus, as an exceptionally religious person, decided that the orbits of the planets must necessarily be round, because a circle is an ideal figure, and God only has everything perfect. Of course, it is simply impossible to make a good calculation based on round orbits.
For quite a long time, about 20 plus years, Copernicus wrote his works and expressed the ideas of heliocentrism quite freely. He died at the age of 70 from a stroke. Any persecution of his theory began much later, and was associated with the support of the hypothesis of heliocentrism by adherents of the occult and magic. By the way, this is exactly what Giordano Bruno was accused of - not at all in supporting other ideas of the world order.
As His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia rightly put it, "There is no dispute between religion and science and cannot be by definition, just as there can be no dispute between science and music, science and painting - all these are different spheres of human existence."
The Church has never been interested in science, only in ideology, which they tried to build on a scientific platform.
Science, in turn, cannot argue with the Church in anything: a scientific approach presupposes an experiment, and faith is inaccessible to experiment.
The classical period itself
Returning to the question of the classical period in the development of science, it is worth turning to dates.
The later Renaissance became the starting point of scientific progress. Why? And again - dispel delusions. No, not because the gaze of humanity has turned to man. Quite the opposite: a person was able to look at the world again after a couple of centuries of self-admiration.
The same notorious theory of heliocentrism could not have arisen in the heyday of the Renaissance, when the center of the world is man and nothing else. Heliocentrism is an attempt to understand that maybe the center is not in us? Is there something else in the world?
It is not for nothing that the spiritual life of Europe is experiencing an explosion of ideas: the 16th century is the time of the Reformation, and not only it: it is also the time of the revival of pagan cults and magical practices, with which the science of that time was so actively fighting (again, because it collaborated with dominant religion).
Strict Protestantism, practically devoid of ritual, a scientific approach that seeks to prove the absence of a miracle - all these are links in one chain, which in its essence is a reverse reaction to the Renaissance, and not its consequence.
Postclassical (nonclassical) period
This period of development is characterized by the transition from a mechanical approach to science, from the classical principles of the rational to the relativistic (relative) perception of the world.
First of all, this is Albert Einstein and his theory of relativity; The Big Bang Theory; Darwin's theory of evolution, etc.
What about today?
A number of scientists believe that we are now witnessing a post-non-classical period in the development of science. Its main feature is interdisciplinarity, a kind of "scientific eclecticism".
Technological capabilities are increasing, and today we can afford what our ancestors could not even dream of: organ transplant, space flights, human life extension …
Everything has a downside, and today, more than ever, science needs to rely on morality and ethics. After all, as the Apostle Paul said, "Everything is permissible for me, but not everything is beneficial."
Where is the border that the human mind should not cross? Will we be able to develop further, and will we remain human? These questions are no longer just rhetoric, this is the present day for science.
3. MODERN SCIENTIFIC CRITERIA
In a modern world filled with instability, replete with political and social rhetoric, when every influential person strives to use facts for his own purposes, it is extremely important for a person to rely on something reliable. Many people choose science for these purposes, and there are reasons for this.
For a long time Russia lived in the space of Marxist-Leninist ideology, which made science a semblance of religion. It is difficult to argue with the fact that such an approach brought some positive results: science was well funded, discoveries were encouraged and supported, scientists were truly respected. However, it is impossible not to admit that science is not a religion, but a completely different, different from others, layer of culture, with its own goals and objectives.
But not only in the post-Soviet space there is a tendency to search for truth within scientific theories - this is a general trend of the times. First, the scientific approach involves precisely trying to find the only truth. Secondly, the goal of science is the development of objective knowledge, and the need for objectivity is most vividly felt now, in the age of flourishing relativism, when even the most valuable and seemingly indisputable - family, love, childhood …
The main question is, can science actually open the door to objectivity for us? Can a scientific approach to life become for us a real support, protection from the world of relativity?
In order to answer these questions, it is necessary to understand what actually can be considered a science and how the scientific community itself views its role.
Scientific criteria
For the first time, neo-positivists started talking about the criteria of scientific character: https://allrefs.net/c2/3wvcq/p4/ according to their ideas, true scientific knowledge should be confirmed empirically. And it is not so important whether the experimental development of a scientific hypothesis will take place now, or later - the experiment should be able to take place.
This criterion is called verification, and if we formulate it briefly, it will sound like this: "such and only such knowledge can be considered scientific, which can be proved empirically now or ever."
The opposite criterion of scientific character was proposed by K. Popper, who said: “You can confirm almost any theory if you look for confirmation. The true test of a theory is an attempt to refute it. https://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/ruwiki/1106838 So, in contrast to the verification criterion, the falsification criterion was born, asserting that if the conclusions are hypothetically irrefutable, then they are not scientific. Indisputable theories are usually true as long as their creators and adherents can skillfully manipulate the available arguments. This is easy to achieve - it is enough to be imprecise in definitions and developed in sophistry.
The constant rational assertion of one's innocence and the birth of more and more new hypotheses is wonderful, but not always applicable due to the limited approach. T. Kuhn formulated a paradigmatic criterion for separating science from non-science. Kuhn believed that at a certain period of time the scientific society forms one or several paradigms that are supported by the entire community and at a certain moment serve as a criterion for separating the scientific from the unscientific
There are many disadvantages to this approach to the demarcation of scientific knowledge. First, the paradigm approach initially presupposes relativity, because the opinion of the majority, albeit an educated one, does not guarantee truth at all: we all know how the majority decided the fate of the world in a bad way.
Secondly, within the framework of the paradigm approach, a scientific discussion cannot be born: everything that does not fit into the framework of the dominant concept is simply swept aside as extra-scientific. But, from the point of view, for example, of mechanistic Newtonian physics, quantum theory cannot exist in principle, although we all know that experimentally the veracity of both is confirmed. Does this mean that Newton and his followers are outside of science, or Einstein is not a wealthy scientist? Not at all. Rather, it means that we do not yet have sufficient information about the world and sufficient ability to comprehend what we already know.
Thirdly, you need to understand that scientists are dependent people, any serious research requires money and is funded by governments and corporations. In the natural sciences, independent research is now practically impossible, they require funding, a scientific base and are clearly guarded by interested structures. On the other hand, any independent research that disrupts the current commercial schemes of the largest corporations will likely fail to gain recognition, which requires departments, academies, Nobel prizes, and an enthusiastic acceptance of an academic environment dependent on big business and government.
As an example, here you can cite the same Einstein with his theory of relativity - only from the other side. More than a hundred years ago, Nikola Tesla invented a fuelless generator that extracts any amount of energy anywhere in space from the ether. This technology gave any amount of free energy to mankind, sharply weakened people's dependence on oil and made it possible to abandon the technological order of two centuries ago, tied to an internal combustion engine. However, a hundred years have passed - and nothing has changed. The concept of ether was declared not scientific, and the theory of relativity sacredly observes the closedness of our subspace, although physicists have already recognized the presence of dark matter, which makes up 90% of its total mass (see the article on Wikipedia "dark matter"). A portrait of Einstein himself was hung in every school class and was specially given a Nobel Prize (not for theory, but for the discovery of the properties of photocells) only so that the petrodollar would continue to remain a fuel tax for all of humanity.
Thus, this, perhaps, the most weighty paradigm criterion of scientific character due to its prevalence proves its inferiority, but continues to dominate the world. In general, any attempts to define clear boundaries of the scientific-unscientific stumble upon a logical inconsistency inherent in the approach itself: we need to set boundaries in a place that we cannot know about the existence without the existence of boundaries. In other words, in order to accept the criteria for separating the scientific from the unscientific, which are closest to the true ones, one must have the original objective knowledge, and the knowledge confirmed, not paid by advertisers. Science, on the other hand, relies on statements - axioms, which it is unable to prove while inside itself (Gödel's theorem on the incompleteness of formal systems).
Along with the potential of experimental verification and refutation, the more general criteria of scientific character include systematization, formal consistency of information, openness to criticism and the desire for intersubjectivity, independence from the scientist.
Conclusions: how to separate the scientific from the unscientific
After carefully thinking about each criterion, we will quickly come to the conclusion that they are applicable not only to science. The cookbook "On Tasty and Healthy Food" is also systematized, formally consistent within itself and as much as possible does not depend on the opinion of the author.
Strictly speaking, each of the criteria for the demarcation of science itself can be criticized. The reason for all this is the limited human experience. Not only each individually, but all of humanity is not able to contain all the knowledge about the world around it. Each time, lighting up with the ambitions of absolute knowledge, science now and then stumbles over the stone of its own humanity. Science is a tool for solving practical issues; it is not the key to happiness and, unfortunately, not a support in the world of seeming relativity. Everything that is created by man, including scientific knowledge, is limited. In search of certainty, one thing remains - to turn to the supersystemic, to that which goes beyond the boundaries of ourselves. By and large, science now does not meet the criteria of being scientific. Due to systemic limitations, she herself cannot work out them,and turning to higher essences is hindered by the presence of an imaginary conflict and opposition with religion.
4. PSEUDOSCIENCES
In the previous section, we talked about how to draw the line between scientific and non-scientific, which can be a full-fledged criterion for demarcation. Despite the fact that it is quite difficult to determine the boundaries of scientificity, it is not difficult to determine what pseudoscience is for both scientists and religion.
"Pseudoscience is a statement that contradicts well-established scientific evidence," according to Nobel Prize winner in physics Vitaly Ginzburg. https://alterall.ru/index.php?id=90&Itemid=84&option=com_content&task=view The scientist emphasizes that such a definition of pseudoscience in no way limits the emergence of new scientific hypotheses that have simply not yet been confirmed.
There are several criteria for pseudoscience:
- The idea of the existence of a supernatural world, that is, supranaturalism. It should be noted separately that religious beliefs cannot be considered pseudoscientific, for the reason that they do not pretend to be scientific in principle. Pseudoscience is characterized by the desire to "prove" the existence of the incredible and the miraculous, using scientific terminology and elements of scientific methodology. Ufology, astrology, parapsychology are examples of such extra-scientific deceptive teachings.
- It is common for pseudosciences to neglect basic methodological principles - Occam's blade and fallibilism. The first principle - Occam's razors (aka "Occam's blade" or "principle of economy") - states that you should not attract new entities unnecessarily. If it is possible to prove a certain theory in two ways, differing only in the number of factors involved, and the result is the same, then it is more correct to consider a proof using the minimum number of terms, transformations, etc. This principle is widely used in mathematics, even at elementary levels: who at school and university did not have a lower grade for the use of long, “irrational” proofs?
The second principle that we mentioned - fallibilism - is the direction of post-positivism and methodologically ascends to it, directly echoing Popper's criterion. This principle states that any knowledge cannot be final and indisputable. All that we have is just an interpretation of the truth available to us today. https://society.polbu.ru/shishkov_newrationality/ch10_all.html Any direction of science, any self-respecting scientific community will never claim that they are announcing the undeniable ultimate truth. Unfortunately, the latter is now ubiquitous. Every day we are given maxims as the ultimate truth, beginning with the words "American scientists came to the conclusion …" Why and how they got there is not clear, but the conclusion itself is immediately written into common truth.
Pseudosciences recognize feelings and sensations as the criterion of truth, place special emphasis on the presence of witnesses, their subjective experience, etc. This is especially noticeable in the example of ufology, which, for the most part, relies precisely on the testimony of "witnesses" "abducted by aliens."
The last significant and striking difference between pseudoscience and science is the non-falsification of hypotheses, that is, there is no Popper's criterion, which we talked about above. Pseudoscientific hypotheses cannot be subject to any experimental refutation, even mental. This is achieved by the vagueness of terminology, constant "maneuvering" between the basic scientific concepts, which pseudoscience operates, as a rule, for the purpose of manipulation. However, quite scientific disciplines also sin with vague terminology and manipulations; this criterion is not fulfilled not only by various occultists, but also by very authoritative academicians.
5. TRUE HAPPINESS - IS IT?
The question of happiness is one of the main questions for every person. And this is not surprising, because the very concept of happiness is so strongly connected with our deep, inner and intuitive understanding of ourselves and the world that it is impossible not to think about it.
The world today poses the problem of happiness to us more acutely than ever before. We happened to live in a time when almost everything is available: we can devote ourselves to a career or family, God or science, we can try to apply ourselves in different fields of activity … Today each of us has a task: to determine the "axiom of true happiness", life in compliance with which is truly complete.
The history of the search for happiness
All the great philosophers of the world have wondered about happiness since the very beginning of philosophical thought. However, it was at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries that a philosophical trend called existentialism emerged, within which the question of happiness was raised simultaneously with the question of the meaning of existence. https://www.filosofio.ru/postklassicheskaya-zapadnaya-filosofiya/ekzistentsializm.html We will return to the connection between meaning and happiness just below.
The existentialists observed a reality oversaturated with benefits and devoid of the need to work day and night in the sweat of the brow - we all remember that it was at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that industry receives incentives to develop, and the need for such an amount of manual labor that was previously required is lost. It is this relatively well-fed and stable situation that, according to the existentialists (including K. Jaspers, M. Heideger, J.-P. Sartre, and others), generates a large amount of time - on the one hand, and the uncertainty of the situation generated by maximized stability - with another.
In this situation, it is logical to ask the question - why is this kind of stability a cause for concern? After all, at first glance, stability, expressed in financial well-being and material success, and even with a lot of time for oneself - this is happiness.
Happiness Finding Meaning
The famous psychiatrist and psychologist of the second half of the 20th century, Viktor Frankl, became the founder of a whole direction - logotherapy, that is, treatment by searching for meaning. He, like many others, noticed a total loss of a sense of the meaning of life by his patients, and as a result - their gaining a sense of doom, depression, and, in general, feeling unhappy. The experience gained over the years Frankl spent in concentration camps during the Second World War showed the scientist that people are able to survive and preserve themselves only if there is some meaning that significantly exceeds the scope of their momentary state. He described in detail how the concentration camp prisoners were shattered not only by the thought of the impossibility of ever getting out of prison, but also of the senselessness of suffering and death. The incentive to live in spite of everything was created solely by the idea of the existence of Eternity, from the point of view of which life, love, and death itself have a different meaning.
As a believing Jew, Viktor Frankl could hardly have come to a different conclusion about finding meaning, his opponents say. On the other hand, his theory received such distribution and approval by the scientific community precisely because it confirmed its validity in practice even within psychotherapeutic groups in the death camps: elementary, only those survived who found the strength to believe in the existence of something greater than humiliation, rotting and filth, to which prisoners were doomed.
Happiness in religion
All world religions include the concept of eternity, in the light of which happiness is found and outside of which human joy and existence are simply unimaginable. God is eternal, which means that both the world and the human soul are eternal, as the representative of each religious trend sees it.
Christianity does not stand "alone" in the ranks of world religions, and happiness for every Christian and for the Church as a whole is viewed not as something that exists only here and now, but as present in eternity, with the positions of which a Christian is called to measure his every act. every decision, every striving.
Does this mean that people who are far from faith perceive good and evil somehow differently? We know that natural law originated far before the appearance of the first monotheistic religions, which have become world religions today. The source of natural law, from the point of view of jurisprudence, is the very nature of man. That is, legislators and scientists are aware that 5,000 years ago “Thou shalt not kill,” “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” “Thou shalt not steal,” was a natural norm inherent in man.
Moreover, it is widely believed that a religious norm is based precisely on natural law. But which came before - the chicken or the egg? What is primary - the striving of the human soul for divine eternity or its "formulation" of this desire? Natural law is normal for everyone, because it underlies our psychological, spiritual and social balance, maybe the religious feeling is natural for us in the same way and for the same reason - simply because we are the creations of the Creator?
Eternity: what is it?
When we talk about happiness, we cannot but dwell on one of the most important questions - the question of the objectivity or relativity of truth in the key of the eternity of the world.
For example, for a Christian, such a question does not arise: there is one God, Creator, Creator and Father, who first gave us the Law, and then brought us in the Sacrifice of the Son to atone for the sins of the whole world, opening everyone the opportunity for eternal life. The Lord “is” and “is Jehovah,” talking about the relativity of truth is simply inappropriate.
From the point of view of Christianity, we exist in a once created world, the only time were born in this world in order to find eternal happiness in the Lord - the Kingdom of Heaven - the gates into which were opened to us by the atoning sacrifice of the Savior. The impossibility of repeating at least one process anew, for example, the creation of the world or the birth and death of an individual person, confirms the objectivity of everything that happens - we cannot comment on historical reality other than "yes, this is so" or "no, this is not so."
In addition, Christianity, of course, postulates the objectivity of good and evil. The Bible is absolutely clear about what to do and what not to do, what is good and what is bad. There has never been a moment in the history of Christianity when the Church, guided by Scripture and Tradition, would say, for example, that the issue of abortion or same-sex marriage could be reconsidered.
From the point of view of other religious concepts that imply reincarnation, eternity is decomposed into an infinite number of transformations and incarnations of our soul in different worlds and times. In this regard, the obvious injustice in relation to the death or suffering of innocent children is justified by the sins of previous incarnations, which can be worked out in the current or next incarnations.
Good and evil: where to look for happiness?
Why are we talking about good and evil when the problem of happiness and the meaning of life was originally posed?
If we look at life outside of faith in God, then it becomes clear to us why it is so important to have a clear position about the objectivity of truth.
Today it is customary to talk a lot about freedom and human rights, and often these lofty and inherently noble concepts are used for the purpose of political manipulation. We see day after day how euthanasia is legalized in another European country, and now - and child euthanasia and incest, how homosexual "marriages" become normal, and pedophilia is being spoken of as "a variant of sexual diversity." And this is the way things are not only in the field of traditional morality, but also in matters of a scientific approach: issues of bioethics are more acute than ever in times of open opportunities, social and economic priorities are constantly revised from the point of view of the "rights and freedoms" of our new world. The relativity of truth will legalize cannibalism tomorrow: if one agrees to be eaten, and the other wants to eat his own kind,then what's wrong with that? They will eat each other, but can such a society be happy?
Is there a truth about good and evil outside of religion?
The feeling of happiness in a world teeming with "freedom of choice" with open "human rights" is easy to lose. Still: a person can have as many sexual partners as he wants, because this is “his right”. It can kill a child in the womb, or it can save his life - "after all, this is the right of every woman to dispose of the body." The prospect of suicide in the event of a serious illness is open before a person - this is his "right" not to endure torment, but "to quietly leave this life." Everything is permitted and possible - take it and use it.
But is it so easy for an unbeliever to take an opportunity? Do people find true happiness in this, regardless of religion and belief?
In a world of dominant relativism and permissiveness, children escape sex education in hysterics, whether or not they were raised in a religious family. Why? Because there is a certain norm of naturalness that cannot be crossed, and such cases are nothing more than proof of the existence of this objective norm.
This is the intuitive feeling of eternity, it is this that gives rise to the understanding that a crime committed against oneself will not disappear without a trace, leaving a scar in the soul, even if formally none of us thinks about the soul.
Many jurisdictions allow euthanasia on the basis of the "right to life and death." This is one of the extreme forms of permissiveness of our time - the opinion that a person himself has the right to decide whether to live or die. Slightly less striking against the background of such a “right” seems to be the ability to choose your gender, or rather “gender”, that is, “social gender”. This division is not accidental. After all, it is quite obvious that the overwhelming majority of people are biologically definite either men or women (exclude the unfortunate ones suffering from developmental pathologies, but there are no more than a few hundredths of a percent for each disease). Accordingly, having chosen the gender, the next step is to choose the sexual orientation. It should be especially noted that for many years such an attitude towards oneself as a representative of a different sex or a manifestation of an active desire to engage in homosexual contacts,considered a mental illness. More recently, "homosexuality" was removed from the ICD-10 list of diseases, and this argument has become the main argument for "defenders of the rights of sexual minorities." In contrast, suffice it to say that homosexuality is the only disease excluded from the lists of the international classifier of diseases by voting. Voting is a method hitherto unknown to medicine, and without any sarcasm it is not scientific.and without any sarcasm he is not learned.and without any sarcasm he is not learned.
Where do the legs grow from such phenomena? All from the same principle of modernity, which says that everyone has the right to dispose of himself completely and completely, because there is only here and now, nothing else. This is an assessment of life from the standpoint of its finiteness, and such an approach ultimately ends with disappointment, loss of meaning and deep depression, which you and I observe in the statistics of suicides, divorces, etc.
But where to look for meaning in a life in which everything is relative? In a world in which everyone has their own truth, and truth does not exist by definition? Where to find happiness in today's controversial world?
The experience of many people with different religious beliefs, including atheists, unequivocally shows: there is no "truth for everyone", there is a truth that is inside everyone and inevitably makes itself felt when it is trampled upon.
The sum of the search for happiness
Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh wrote: “This was the feeling of Christians in antiquity: they perceived death as a decisive moment when the time for doing on earth ended, and, therefore, we must hurry, we must hurry to accomplish everything in our power on earth. And the purpose of life, especially in the understanding of spiritual mentors, was - to become the true person that we were intended by God, to the extent of our strength to approach what the Apostle Paul calls the fullness of Christ's growth (Eph 4:13), to become - possibly more perfect - undistorted in the image of God."
That is, the first Christians had the idea that earthly life is only the path to Eternity, and this is a colossal opportunity to do as much as possible, but also a colossal risk of missing the most important thing.
Together with faith comes a deep understanding of the fact that meaning is in the eternity of the life of the soul, and the truth is objective and "written" in us, created in the image of God.
The awareness of their lives in the context of eternity is what helped people survive in the death camps, what allows soldiers to sacrifice their lives on the battlefield. Awareness of themselves in eternity makes wives not leave their husbands in a difficult situation, and husbands - not to abandon their wives when they start to grow old and lose attractiveness, because their eternal soul, which they once loved, remains the same. Comprehension of the eternity of our existence helps us to make the right choice every minute, even in the smallest actions: not to let friends down, not to be angry with our neighbors, not to envy or reproach, to forgive … A person whose understanding of life goes beyond what was released to him on earth has every chance to be happy, no matter how difficult his life may seem, because from the point of view of eternity, life is a value in itself, an opportunity to have time to feel,think, do. Outside of eternal life, we are just some kind of garbage in the Universe, but deeply realizing our eternal nature, we illuminate our existence with light, fill it.
Through the knowledge of the Savior, God, we become free. We are able to walk, we are able to live only in the light of the eternity prepared for us by the Lord.
And God forbid each of us to know true freedom and true happiness.
6. THE TRUE PURPOSE OF SCIENCE
Science - for what?
Science is one of the ways of knowing the world. Ultimately, in addition to satisfying the need for knowledge, science opens the door for humanity to a simpler and more joyful existence, allows you to solve many issues of everyday importance, master new peaks of production, etc.
The pragmatic place of science in the human world is more and its goal, respectively, is to make human life more comfortable, which is determined by the very content of science and its properties. And one of the main properties of a scientific theory, which is interesting to us in this context, is its imperfection. Yes, this is exactly what it sounds like.
For a long time in Russia and in the West, for various reasons, science was ideologized, and diligent propagandists have reached such a point that in the minds of the average person “scientific” and “true” began to be perceived as one and the same. It is not difficult to prove that this is not the case at all. There are many statements and statements that in their essence cannot be recognized as scientific in any way, but, nevertheless, are true. “I love to watch sunsets”, “my friend is a kind person”, etc. - all this is pure truth, absolutely not claiming to be scientific. At the same time, DNA was discovered in 1869, but until 1953 it was considered not carrying any functions, except for the auxiliary in relation to the protein, in which all information about the body was encrypted according to scientists of that time. For nearly a hundred years this view was scientific by all criteria, but it turned out to be not true.
Science or speculation: how to separate the wheat from the chaff?
The property of science to be delusional, to be temporary is one of the most valuable, because it allows it to develop, receive new information and achieve the maximum approximation to the truth.
Karl Popper singled out the falsifiability of the theory - the possibility of being refuted now or at any time in time - as the main criterion for scientific character, and this approach remains in demand among most of the scientific community to this day. For a person far from the theoretical field, such a criterion of scientific character may seem strange, although in fact, it is extremely simple and clear. Let's imagine any mathematical model: it can always be refuted, because, at least, we can change the initial axiomatic positions. Then, perhaps, our entire system will lose its meaning, but this is not scary - this is just a movement towards the truth.
The impossibility of refuting a theory makes it not scientific, that is, elevates it to the category of faith or worldview, and these areas are not within the framework of scientific competence.
We can observe exactly the same picture with you in a number of modern scientific trends. The case was widely reported by journalists when a school student was kicked out of class a few years ago for not going to "believe" in the synthetic theory of evolution. This is really very strange - why would he believe in a scientific theory? After all, evolutionism is nothing more than a collection of biased arguments from which the model was constructed. And even if empirically it is possible to prove one of its provisions, it will only prove that this is possible now, but will not show that such a thing took place in the past.
In this sense, it must be said that evolutionism acted quite cunningly, saying that empirical proofs of the theory cannot be given due to the impossibility of reproducing the initial conditions within the framework of an experiment. Thus, the synthetic theory of evolution, together with all its predecessors, becomes unfalsifiable in a certain sense.
Although, even if we omit the question of the evidence base in the theory of evolution, leaving it to the conscience and consideration of biologists, one cannot fail to note the incredible persistence with which this theory is promoted to the masses as the only true one. Evolutionism is gradually becoming not just one theory out of a dozen actually existing today, it is becoming a worldview, an ideology.
But this theory is not just about the fact that man descended from a monkey, and moreover, it is mostly not about that. In the “religious” form in which this theory is presented today, it allows movement towards the consideration of the evolution of morality, which takes morality out of the domain of the spirit, translating it into the domain of instinct, and this, you see, is another story. This is how you and I come to a world in which Pepsi's flavor enhancers are tested on kidney tissue of human embryos. “What? These tissues multiply rapidly and are very suitable for research,”advocates of such methods will tell you. And the fact that these are human tissues, moreover, the tissues of the body of an unborn baby - this does not interest anyone.
Gradually, the fine line of what is permissible and ethical in science began to fade. The reason for this, of course, is not the unhappy synthetic theory of evolution, “worn out” by everyone (including even people who poorly understand it), and not its modest predecessors, the Darwinists. The reason is that science is put in a place that is not intended for it.
Why is this happening?
For centuries, tradition and faith had the first positions for humanity. And not necessarily Christianity, any religion imposes some restrictions on scientific activity, and to be more precise, it simply helps science to remain within its competence. Study, experiment, enjoy learning and share your best practices, but don't touch the saint - that's what religion tells us.
No one would argue that the world was never perfect. The salt of the problem lies in the fact that earlier one had to be ashamed and blush for an ugly act, or even completely leave the boundaries of a decent society, but now such a problem of "hypersensitivity" of public conscience does not exist, it does not exist in the scientific community either. Now virtually all the prohibitions in scientific research have been lifted, and we have nothing "sacred" left. You can do anything: hack the human genome, experiment with embryos, cross a person and an animal, introduce foreign genes into any plants and animals, without having the slightest idea of how this will affect people who later consume derived products.
Raising scientific knowledge to the level of knowing the ultimate truth and the most righteous faith is not an exclusively Russian problem and the work of not Soviet atheistic propaganda, but rather Western ones. In the Soviet period, it was necessary to convince the population not of the righteousness and truth of any convenient scientific discovery (or presented as scientific), but of the fidelity of the ideas of communism and socialism. The Soviet Union was already diligently promoting the ideology it had created; it did not need to add anything to this. But the Western world, which was moving by leaps and bounds towards increasing and rationalizing capital, very quickly began to lose its moral and moral guidelines. Because moral norms impose a restriction on the sphere of consumption, make it impossible to manipulate, etc. Modern science is very often served under the sauce of "the ultimate truth" precisely in order to use false arguments in favor of making a profit in one way or another in practice. Modern science often does not compare its actions with any ethical ideas traditional for our society, on the contrary, it suggests that these ideas are not true, proving this with the same "scientific" research. It turns out in a kind of vicious circle: the truthfulness of the worldview is proved on the basis of scientific knowledge, which is achieved within the framework of belief in the truth of the worldview. Maybe it makes sense to wonder if the system is capable of proving anything without going beyond its own three pines?Modern science often does not compare its actions with any ethical ideas traditional for our society, on the contrary, it suggests that these ideas are not true, proving this with the same "scientific" research. It turns out in a kind of vicious circle: the truthfulness of the worldview is proved on the basis of scientific knowledge, which is achieved within the framework of belief in the truth of the worldview. Maybe it makes sense to wonder if the system is capable of proving anything without going beyond its own three pines?Modern science often does not compare its actions with any ethical ideas traditional for our society, on the contrary, it suggests that these ideas are not true, proving this with the same "scientific" research. It turns out in a kind of vicious circle: the truthfulness of the worldview is proved on the basis of scientific knowledge, which is achieved within the framework of belief in the truth of the worldview. Maybe it makes sense to wonder if the system is capable of proving anything without going beyond its own three pines?which are achieved within the framework of belief in the truth of the worldview. Maybe it makes sense to wonder if the system is capable of proving anything without going beyond its own three pines?which are achieved within the framework of belief in the truth of the worldview. Maybe it makes sense to wonder if the system is capable of proving anything without going beyond its own three pines?
What should be done?
His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia often pays attention to the issues of morality and ethics in the scientific community and beyond, the same is done by many other representatives of both the Russian Orthodox Church and other confessions. For this, they are often attacked by the press and some part of society. They are accused of obscurantism and obstruction of progress.
But has science made any progress in areas criticized by the church?
What can be considered progress? A terrible demographic situation in Europe, provoked by a complete disorientation in the field of bioethics? Broken fates of people thrown by the “mighty hand of the market” to the sidelines of life? The dominance of relativistic concepts that assert the right of every person to choose their sex, because there are supposedly "scientific" confirmations for such a possibility? Secondary illiteracy of adults in Europe and America? Childish licentiousness and permissiveness, covered by juvenile justice? All of these are “apocalyptic symptoms,” and such a certainty should not seem overly harsh - this is the position of the Church, defended for centuries.
Society must remember what is the true purpose of science, what goals it should pursue. Science can help us achieve happiness, but true human happiness is not possible in a world of unbridled consumption and permissiveness. Real happiness is palpable only on the scale of eternity, and those who speculate with scientific knowledge in their own interests, open their way into nothingness and lead other people.
The path of scientific knowledge without limitation is the path of destruction for all mankind. Any faith has always stood guard over the sacred, whose heart is the eternal soul of a Man, whose earthly path is only a part of that great Path, which everyone is called to pass. Only a science that adheres to the idea of the sanctity of Life, responsibility to the future and to Eternity can make a person happy.
Author: Poluichik Igor