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...For many decades, and perhaps even centuries, a stable stereotype has
developed, according to which being a scientist means having an academic degree
awarded for a certain procedure for the preparation of a written document
known in the depths of ages as dissertatio (research, report). Its main difference
from other things is in the argumentation outlined by bibliographic references
and, if it is a question of empirical experiments, then a description of their results
with the method of obtaining is given. The name "invective" in the title of this
section is not chosen by chance. Indeed, why not put the scientific standard not
as a thesis but as an invective – for today, for a very numerous scientific brethren,
to say a new word in science (and thus satisfy one of the "sacred" dissertational
demands of scientific novelty) means to refute someone's previous ideas, calling
them false or erroneous, offering something of their own, alienated from
something alien.
I deliberately do not consider here the division in Russia existing for the
dissertations of a doctor and the so-called "candidate of science" – a
phenomenon that has developed in the Soviet industrial society, and other
misunderstood concepts.
It is also believed that defended the thesis and received the so-called academic
degree thus demonstrated a certain level of intellectual development compared
with the level of other fellow citizens, as well as a higher competence in
comparison with them, and therefore has the right to greater social benefits
relative to them and a higher place in the social hierarchy.
Today, however, the possibilities of satisfying the requirements for a dissertation
on the level of consideration and the volume of sources differ significantly from
the satisfaction of the requirements of the medieval epoch in which the thesis
itself became a cultural and economic value. In addition, the economic conditions
that conditioned the thesis as a factor of social success in the period of the so-
called scientific and technical progress that determined scientific norms within
the framework of the "growth" paradigm have changed. Owing to the satiety of
the markets at the world level and the limits of economic, demographic and other
types of growth that are increasingly evident on the historical horizon, it becomes
evident that science is exhausted in its well-known form, with simultaneous
degradation of its institutionalized forms, one of which is a "scientific thesis" its
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execution. It becomes more and more obvious that science is a kind of
specialized, a kind of art of cognition, and in it, as in any art, the greatest
perfection is achieved when the ratio (the dominant of today's science) is
balanced by the virtus of the creative impulse. In connection with this, being
considered as the art of cognition, scientific activity has corresponding criteria of
excellence, independent of the forms and rituals of presenting results. That is, if
in a certain area of interests or activity a language is formed that provides a
maximum of descriptions of the observed phenomena within the framework of
which stable explanatory constructions are formed on the basis of which justified
expectations and prognostication are based (which is most systematically set
forth within the framework of Lakatos' sophisticated falsificationism) there is the
realization of scientific value as such. It is worth noting that, in the course of its
development, the institute of science, existing within the framework of growth
paradigms and scientific and technical progress, almost completely threw out the
forecast as the main scientific value from consideration. Moreover, the author of
these lines personally watched as representatives of academic science with foam
at the mouth argued that the forecast is not the main scientific value. And still
there is an important suspicion: the very historicity of science (of course, here the
science of the "classical era", which began with the so-called "long XVI century") is
implied, indicates the similarity of the processes occurring in it, both in the social
institution and sphere of creative activity, processes , occurred in religion in the
same "long XVI century." Of course, this is a topic of a separate, detailed and very
interesting research, but this suspicion becomes more and more evident as the
increasingly accelerated process of degradation of the "classical" world order and
the associated process of transforming cultural foundations that for many of the
scientist dogmas remain unshakable.
Today's precariousness of these circumstances reveals the fact that the level of
personal, intellectual and cultural development, as well as professional
competence, can not be reduced and defined solely by scientific status, is not (or
rather less all the less) a criterion of success, adequacy to public inquiries and top
of adaptability in the environment.
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Let us consider the circumstances noted in the order. So, we have the following
objects of criticism of the thesis work as such:
level of substantive consideration;
the amount of sources covered;
the general crisis of the paradigm of scientific and technological progress;
emasculation of the creative component of science;
emasculation from the scientific rationality of prognostication;
the similarity of social processes in the science of the beginning of the XXI
century to similar processes in the Christian religion of the "long XVI century".
Level of Consideration
This level today is extremely low, and most scientific degrees are awarded to
people whose achievements often turn out to be laboratory or production details.
This is not to mention the fact that R&D centers and laboratories in the bulk of its
focus specifically on production. The phenomenon is a consequence of
"overspecialization", and was considered in detail by the inventor and
philosopher R.B.Fuller in his books (in particular, "The Instruction for the
Management of the Spacecraft Earth" and "The Grin of the Giants"). In general,
he is talking about the fact that re-specialization is unnatural and does not lead to
an increase in the adaptive skills of the individual, but when it reaches some
degree of its own, and the community (a discourse about the division of labor is
immediately recalled). On the other hand, the numerous data of historical
sciencemetry (let me here be "inconsistent" and relieve myself of the reduction of
concrete data) indicate that the degree of fundamentality of scientific discoveries
in the total mass of outgoing world publications over the past 100-150 years has
drastically decreased in the direction of particulars. In the meantime, the marked
production-market, or rather the market ones, in those cases where they
remained productive rather than redistributive, particular tasks require such a
degree of efficiency of the expert and developer reaction associated with the
analysis of products and trends, with which the long-term thesis compatible;
accordingly, completely different formats of survey and analytical documentation
are required that require special skills in combining the art of recording (the basic
procedure for scientific documentation) with a generalization of the data
obtained, which immediately turn out to be related to procedures for limiting
subject fields and concepts, oriented to the realities of market niches,
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