Home – Home – Jornals – Philosophy of Sciences 2025 number 2

The article deals with the heuristics of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology and the phenomenological method of constitution in relation to modern philosophy, methodology and history of science. Recognizing the ambiguous fate of phenomenology as a conception of the transcendental foundations of positive sciences, the author attempts to define the sphere in which the phenomenological eidetics of intentional, temporal, genetic and intersubjective constitution would have an effect as a demanded part of scientific knowledge. The personal dimension of scientific creativity is chosen as such a sphere. This is justified by the priority consideration of intersubjective constitution, which carries out the temporal and eidetic correlation of various consciousnesses, including in the mode of their mutual intellectual empathy and modernization. The proposed approach is aimed at transforming fragmentary and purely informative knowledge on the history of science into its temporal-eidetic continuum, in which the personal destinies and ideas of great scientists would be perceived and experienced as modern and necessary for scientific creativity, cognitive psychology and philosophy of education.,

The article considers the general research discourse of works dealing with the philosophical and methodological problems of geological knowledge and cognition. It is shown that the philosophy of geology as one of the areas of philosophical and methodological research has been developing for a long time and until recently outside the general philosophical discourse and outside the community of philosophers. In the social and institutional sense, works on the philosophy of geology were and to a large extent now remain not so much another branch of the philosophy of science, but a certain meta-level of geologists’ understanding of their practical and theoretical experience. Today, there are already a significant number of works on the philosophy of geology, but it is highly conditional to talk about any traditions, trends, or directions with regard to this field. Works on the philosophy of geology were and for the most part remain single and conceptually poorly connected with each other. Nevertheless, the author of the article identified five key thematic areas dealing with the philosophical and methodological problems of geological knowledge and cognition; three of them relate to the Western segment of the philosophy of geology, and two to the Soviet one. The author believes that the areas considered in the article have every reason to develop into separate and full-fledged research traditions in the future. In addition, the article problematizes the subject of the philosophy of geology and examines several meanings of the concept of “geology”. As a solution to the problem of the polysemy of the concept of “geology”, the author proposes that not geology itself should be considered as the primary subject of the philosophy of geology, but geological cognition, within which all geological subdisciplines can be actualized.,

The question of the modality of “permitted” plays a key role in deontic logic and the philosophy of law, but it has long taken a second place compared to the more extensively developed categories of “obligatory” and “prohibited”. This lack of attention is partly due to the traditional definition of permission as an absence of prohibition, which allows legal systems to be treated as logically closed: if an action is not prohibited, it is permitted. However, this view gives rise to a number of theoretical problems and limits the possibilities of formal analysis of normative systems. First, real legal systems cannot always be considered as complete and consistent, in which each action is either prohibited or permitted. They may contain gaps, uncertainties and conflicts of legal norms due to their dynamic development, as well as the presence of multiple levels of norm creation. Second, equating permission with the absence of prohibition fails to account for the distinction between weak and strong permissions. Weak permission merely indicates the absence of prohibition, whereas strong permission presupposes the existence of a special norm that explicitly sanctions an action. In open normative systems, these two types of permission do not always coincide, which calls into question the principle of “everything that is not prohibited is permitted.” Thus, the study of the modality of “permitted,” especially in open normative systems, requires a more sophisticated logical framework than traditional deontic logic focused on the interdefinability of “permitted” and “prohibited,” that is, on understanding permission as the absence of prohibition.,

The article considers the thesis that the claim of ignorance plays an important role in external scientific communication and constitutes a key element of normative epistemic dilemmas. As a starting point, T. Williamson’s problem of the mathematician’s dilemma is examined, which suggests that epistemic dilemmas arise from conflicts between norms of knowledge. While critics of this problem argue that such conflicts rarely occur in real science, the article shows that they do arise, but not within science itself, rather in the sphere of its external communication. Williamson’s original dilemma can be resolved by making a claim of ignorance. However, examples related to the COVID-19 pandemic illustrate that the role of such claims in science differs from how they are perceived in politics. In the context of contradictions between science and the political sphere, external social and political factors make it difficult to openly acknowledge scientific uncertainty, forcing scientists to make unambiguous statements even when certainty is unattainable. This not only undermines public trust in science, but also turns scientific uncertainty into a tool for political struggle.,

The article deals with the analysis of the problems of classification and systematization of knowledge in the context of current epistemological problems related to the growing phenomenon of online encyclopedism. The purpose of the article is to identify the main epistemic parameters of the online encyclopedia, which distinguish it from the traditional format. It is substantiated that the concept of a digital encyclopedic interface captures the changes that have occurred, both in terms of presentation and in terms of obtaining information by users. The main parameters of the Internet encyclopedia are outlined, reflecting both positive and negative trends in the use of digital technologies. The openness and fundamental incompleteness of knowledge, pluralism and coexistence of opposing positions on the issues under consideration, the inclusion of unverified and sometimes false information in the content are highlighted as the main parameters of the online encyclopedia. The example of modern online encyclopedias reveals the transformation of the encyclopedia reader’s function as a consumer of information into the function of an expert reader. It is shown that following the passive reader model can result in negative consequences related to receiving unreliable information or a disorderly set of data, which undermines trust in science as a whole.,

The article criticizes the hypothesis currently accepted by default in most cognitive studies, which amounts to: All our states of consciousness are caused by lower-level neural processes in the brain and are themselves properties of the brain. The conclusion is made that the dualistic solution of the mind-body problem in the spirit of R. Descartes corresponds more to the modern level of knowledge than any other, specifically a person is a combination of two substances - corporeal and thinking.,

The article raises a problem related to the unclear content of such a metaphorical concept as a turn in philosophy. The author suggests considering the concept of a turn from different angles and using different materials. It is proposed to highlight different aspects of a turn in this concept - such as a change in the picture of the world, a change in the ontological attitude, a change in methods or ways of thinking (methodological turn), a change in a scientific topic or agenda. Alternatives of understanding a turn in philosophy are illustrated by different specific historical and philosophical material of various turns, particularly linguistic, pragmatic, and anthropological turns. It is shown that most of the bearers of those other turns in the 20th century actually proposed a change in the agenda and argued for the related need to search for new means and methods of research. At the same time, old ontologies and attitudes remained at the basis of these studies. The change of agenda occurred quite often throughout the century, and the list of turns is constantly growing. However, not every newly announced turn can be really called a turn, since it does not imply either a change in ontology, or a methodological shift, or a change in the picture of the world.,

The article presents an attempt to assess the impact of the arms race on scientific and technological progress (STP) during the Cold War in the second half of the 20th century. Several examples of scientific and technological achievements stimulated by the arms race are considered. The essence, reasons and circumstances of their emergence, application and further development are described. The study attempts to move from general descriptions of events and speculative conclusions to revealing an unambiguous logic of events and their characteristics, for which purpose clear definitions of the terms used are introduced. The phenomenon of the Cold War and its impact on social development and in particular on STP is also considered from the perspective of the concept of modern natural science. The conclusion is made that the impact of the arms race on scientific and technological progress in the sense introduced took place, however, this impact was not general, but was realized in a relatively small number of specific achievements. Despite the noticeable impact of the arms race, the main and deeper reason for scientific and technological progress is seen in commercial interest.,

The paper discusses the facts of the ideological campaign which took place in the USSR to suppress any free thinking in physics and in chemistry and establish a Leninist-Stalinist totalitarian world view. Philosophers, physicists and chemists participated in the campaign. By following A. Sonin’s books we indicate two ideological dominants of the campaigns: the struggle with “idealism in physics” and with cosmopolitanism. We emphasize that in contrast to Lysenkovism in biology, the ideological campaigns did not lead to considerable destruction of scientific research in physics and in chemistry. Nevertheless, they were harmful from a moral point of view; they carried conformism and limited the horizon of research. The philosophers Maximov and Deborin, the physicist Blokhintsev, the chemists Chelintsev, Shakhparonov and Tatevskii participated in the campaign, trying to establish their understanding of theoretical knowledge and their scientific priorities. At the end of the paper the metaphysical problem “knowledge and power” is outlined.,

The article deals with the history of the development of the anatomy of the digestive system. The materials used were publications in editions included in the Russian Science Citation Index and PubMed. The search depth for publications was 20 years. The results concerning the development of ideas about the anatomy of the digestive system were summarized. The first mentions of some organs of the digestive system date back to the ancient era. Physicians and anatomists described the organs based on the information they obtained when dissecting bodies (in those cultures where this was not prohibited). Over the next several centuries, doctors relied on the knowledge gained by ancient scientists. But in the 15th-16th centuries, there was a relaxation in concern of dissecting human bodies for scientific and medical purposes. This not only revived the interest in human anatomy, but also led to an increase of knowledge in this area, which continued into the Modern Age. Erroneous ideas of anatomists of the previous era were corrected. Technologies of the 20th century made it possible to study the digestive system at a deeper, specifically cellular level. The article shows the contribution of domestic scientists (N.I. Pirogov, N.K. Kulchitsky, L.A. Shangina, S.N. Kasatkin, F.F. Saks, M.G. Shubich, M.R. Sapin, A.A. Stadnikov, D.V. Bazhenov, L.L. Kolesnikov) to the development of this area. The history of the evolution of ideas about the digestive system anatomy can be considered when studying special issues within the framework of the university disciplines “Human Anatomy”, “History of Medicine” and “History of Biology”.,