Institute of Sociology
of the Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology
of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Barash R.E., Antonovskiy A.Yu. Sociological and philosophical foundations of science from the point of view of a system-communicative approach. Tomsk State University Journal Of Philosophy Sociology And Political Science, 2018, Issue 44, pp. 44-60.



Barash R.E., Antonovskiy A.Yu. Sociological and philosophical foundations of science from the point of view of a system-communicative approach. Tomsk State University Journal Of Philosophy Sociology And Political Science, 2018, Issue 44, pp. 44-60.
ISSN 1998-863X
DOI 10.17223/1998863Х/44/5
РИНЦ: https://elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=35552717

Posted on site: 12.12.18

Текст статьи на сайте журнала URL: http://journals.tsu.ru/philosophy/&journal_page=archive&id=1738&article_id=38672 (дата обращения 12.12.2018)


Abstract

The authors analyse the universal problem of scientific theorising: they study the definition of the principles of scientific communication. The authors find out whether scientific communication is an arbitrary option or it is the subject of the research that determines the sequence of steps that should be done to reconstruct theoretical description. The authors also pay attention to the concepts and terms that are necessary to begin scientific research. In order to implement this task, the authors turn to the ideas of the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, who developed a contemporary system-communicative approach. The authors use Luhmann's ideas to study not only society, but also the social system of science. From the point of view of Luhmann and from the point of view of the con-structivist methodology, distinctions should be used as a starting point of research. It is noted in the article that such distinctions should have a preference embedded. The authors justify that the sum of these differences can be reduced to a sequence of bases of scientific research or, which is the same, of scientific communication. The authors analyse the sequence of some concepts: complexity, difference, concept, limitation, theories, methods, scientific explanation, scientific problem, scientific project, scientific publication and scientific discipline. In order to determine the correctness of such foundations of scientific research and for the definition of scientific truth, the authors refuse to apply the traditional criteria of correspondence and adequacy of a theory. They summarise that the best theory is the theory that uses concepts that provide a larger observational survey. The authors recognise concepts that determine their own context and limit the conditions for the possibility of truth, thus becoming the conditions of limitation, to be the conditions of truth. The principle of limitation creates a general framework of the possibility of truth judgements, separating the complexity of the system and the uncertain complexity of the world. The authors note that limitation determines the correlation of theories and methods, external and internal references. The authors consider the interest of comparison to be another basis of scientific communication. It is noted that the interest of comparison as a search mechanism of scientific knowledge counterbalances the different conditions of the system. With the increase of empirical data that are used for comparison the limitations of possibilities to compare also increase. Thus, limitation of comparison contributes to the clarification of the scientific problem. The communicative function of the scientific method, as the authors argue, is to eliminate the epistemolog-ical risks of the excessively bold theories. The method organises a medial substrate, imposes the rules of its verification and measurement. So these rules then should be used to confirm or disprove the values of truth and falsity of qualitative judgements, ascribing the importance of the problem to some judgements. The authors point out that the conjugation of methods and theories determines the game space of science where the game represents itself as a testing of various explanations that are understood as the instant coherence of a concrete theory with a specific method. The meaning of the explanation is in the current verification of the validity of a given coherence of theory and method.