Home – Home – Jornals – "Philosophy of Education" 2015 number 4

The goal of the article is to discuss the causes of appearance of science and education as areas of social existence and touch upon the issue of the time of their appearance in history. In this case, the causes of appearance of science and education are understood as the condition and realization causes, that is, only the necessary social and economic conditions leading to the appearance of these phenomena in a given historical period. The article deliberately ignores the logical and methodological factors of their genesis. In the analysis of these socio-economic reasons, we introduce the concepts of science and education in the broad sense of the word and the concept of science and education in the modern, narrow sense. The conclusion is that science arises because of acute social and economic needs of the corresponding society and only one of the alternatives («replies») to the «challenge» situation. The modern system of education is a consequence of the needs of the society in a large number of specialists, able to create something principally new. Education in the broadest sense is a consequence of the need of the relevant social groups in the confirmation of elite status and maintenance of complex social technologies. Modern science and modern education emerged as a mass phenomenon around the same time, about XVI-XVII centuries. And the reason for this was, in fact, one and the same factor: the urgent need to change the societies themselves (in the social and technological aspects). Science and education in the broad sense, historically appeared much earlier, do not have such organic connection, because they were caused not by the same reasons and could exist in relative isolation from each other. The above is one of the arguments in favor of the externalist point of view, that is, that science and education arise and change rather due to the external socio-economic factors than to the factors immanent to them.