Home – Home – Jornals – Philosophy of Sciences 2026 number 3

The article advances a philosophical reconstruction of the concept of distortnost’ as an epistemological operator that reorients the cognitive task from correspondence-based verification toward the calibration of systematic discrepancy in nonlinear systems. It is shown that in the zone of limit states, classical experiment loses its function as a neutral arbiter between model and reality, since the very act of measurement constitutively alters the object. An analysis of the theory’s mathematical apparatus - a system of reduced coordinates and a counterfactual basis in the form of the diagonal of the “reduced square” - demonstrates how distortnost’ embodies the calibration principle, transforming experiment into a procedure for quantifying deviation. A distinction is introduced between distortnost’ as a quantitative parameter (Distortnost’-P) and as an epistemological principle (Distortnost’-O). The original contribution of this work lies in demarcating between Distortnost’-O and I. Hacking’s interventionist concept of experiment, J. Woodward’s causal explanation, J. Worrall’s programs of scientific structuralism, and S. Funtowicz and J. Ravetz’s concept of post-normal science. The proposed concept fits in contemporary international debates on the epistemology of measurement and calibration (M. Massimi, H. Chang, S. Schindler, E. Tal). The methodological boundaries of the operator are discussed in relation to the problem of basis conventionality, the risk of hermeneutic closure, and alternative approaches - Bayesian model updating and realist positions. Interpreting the “extra-spatiotemporal invariant” as a methodically constructed standard (analogous to the ideal gas in thermodynamics) makes it possible to avoid hypostatization and preserve the operational nature of the concept.