The problem of loss of integrity of modern philosophical and scientific knowledge

Gribkov Andrei Armovich ORCID: 0000-0002-9734-105X Doctor of Technical Science Principal Scientist, Scientific and Production Complex "Technological Center" 124498, Russia, Moscow, Zelenograd, Shokin Square, 1, building 7 andarmo@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction

A significant problem of social development, the development of sciences and, in general, the development of human civilization in recent decades has been a gradual departure from reliance on a system of established generally accepted ideas about the world, about moral and immoral, about good and evil, etc. The quintessence of this spreading negative phenomenon has become the well-known expression "And who knows what is right?".

Indeed, who knows what is right? On the other hand, how can a civilization exist, science develop, if there are no landmarks, no coordinate system in which to move, determine one's position and attitude to what is happening, argue (because there is something to argue with – with established ideas)?

The answer to the formulated answers is one, but it is formed from two components. Firstly, it is absurd to neglect the experience of human civilization in terms of the formation of a system of knowledge about nature, society and the economy, moral, ethical, aesthetic and other ideas. Are these representations the ultimate truth? Absolutely not. And the development of human civilization depends to a great extent on whether it will be possible to challenge and correct these ideas. Hence, the second component of the answer to the questions posed follows: the acceptance of knowledge and ideas achieved by human civilization should not become dogmatic, freedom to doubt, criticize and offer alternative answers to "long-resolved questions" is necessary.

But in order to be able to argue and offer something new, there must be something old, generally accepted, time-tested. It is usually not something antagonistic to human nature and does not contradict the structure of nature, is not unnatural. However, it should not be free from criticism. If, of course, we want development to continue.

Philosophy is the foundation of the knowledge system

For most of the history of mankind, philosophy has been the foundation of the development of sciences and the knowledge system as a whole.  Philosophy sought to unambiguously and clearly explain the structure of the world and solve the problems of cognition: truth, cognizability of the world, the relationship of the subject and object of cognition, the definition of methods of cognition. It didn't always work out, but in every historical period there was some dominant philosophical concept that scientists, public figures and thinkers consulted.

For example, Aristotle's philosophical ideas have been an important part of the human knowledge system for much more than two thousand years (in 2016 humanity celebrated 2,400 years since the birth of the Philosopher), of which only the last 400 years Aristotle's philosophy has ceased to be the basis of ideas about the physical world. Many of Aristotle's creations (for example, formal logic) are relevant to the present.  

Aristotle's ideas were interpreted (often with significant distortions), interpreted, adjusted to their own opinion by various scientists from the field of philosophy, science or theology ^[1]. At the same time, it is impossible to deny the fact of the enormous stimulating influence of Aristotle's philosophy, which, on the one hand, had obvious advantages and was of great interest to study, and, on the other hand, occupied the position of generally accepted, approved by both scientists and the church. She set the frame of reference in the philosophical research of many dozens of generations of scientists around the world.

During the Enlightenment in France of the XVIII century, the philosophical worldview of the educated part of society acquired its complete form in the Encyclopedia and the works of encyclopedists, including P. Holbach, the author of the fundamental work "The System of Nature, or on the laws of the physical world and the spiritual world" ^[2], which contemporaries called the "Bible of Materialism". The Enlightenment era became the period of the most active development of culture, science and social thought, which captured not only France, but also the whole of Europe. I. Kant considered the Enlightenment as a new philosophical paradigm ^{[3, pp. 29-37]}, based on the freedom to openly use one's mind. The core of the philosophical worldview of the Enlightenment was the awareness of the need to move from a religious worldview to a scientific one based on reason and rationality. At the same time, it should be noted that the philosophical and other views of encyclopedists and other significant figures of the Enlightenment era differed significantly. And this was not an obstacle to development.

What do we have now? As an example, consider the physical representations where the problems are most obvious. Modern philosophy, unlike the times of Aristotle or Newton, does not have an unambiguous opinion about what matter is, what properties it possesses and how it interacts, what time and space are, etc. Aristotelian physics and metaphysics ^[4] gave answers (even if not quite correct), Newton's mechanics allowed to form a consistent a picture of the physical world.

The twentieth century opened a Pandora's box of mutually contradictory observable facts, some of which are explicable within the framework of classical mechanics, the description of others can be accurately quantified by means of special or general relativity or quantum mechanics, etc. The system of knowledge about the physical world has completely lost its integrity. New theories should no longer be consistent with the entire knowledge system, the analysis methods used do not necessarily have to be mathematically correct (renormalization in quantum field theory is an illustrative example ^[5]). Trust and respect for philosophical knowledge is steadily declining, a large number of apologists find various positivist philosophical concepts that question the necessity of philosophy.

Modern philosophy is making desperate efforts to maintain its relevance, to comply with new scientific knowledge. Philosophy tries to substantiate confusing, contradictory and often unreliable scientific knowledge, to discover some philosophical meaning where there is none. An illustrative example is an attempt to bring a philosophical basis to the phenomenon of quantum entanglement ^[6], which arises as a result of the interpretation of the states of a pair of born particles as a superposition accepted in quantum mechanics, i.e., it is not a physical effect, but a cognitive one, due to the lack of understanding by modern physical science of the nature of quantum phenomena.  The efforts of philosophy to substantiate science are futile if scientific knowledge is unreliable and are phantoms generated by operating with unsupported generalized concepts and speculative theoretical hypotheses that have never been verified with reality.

The vector of interaction between philosophy and science should be the opposite: it is not science that sets the directions of knowledge and formulates questions, but philosophy. The task of science is to find answers to the questions of philosophy, which are then further verified by philosophy from the standpoint of the logic of the integrity of the world.

"Closed" and "open" models

The question of "closed" and "open" models is of significant interest. By "closed" we will understand models formed on the basis of empirical knowledge in a limited area of cognition (for example, a certain range of changes in the parameter under study), and inconsistent with reality outside this area. Under "open" – models that turn out to be applicable outside the field of cognition, based on the data on which the models were created.

At the same time, both "closed" and "open" models are correct. Every model, as well as the knowledge system as a whole, never corresponds to being (reality) in its content (elements and connections). The task of the model is to correspond to reality according to a given number of parameters within the specified limits of changes in these parameters. Both types of models meet this requirement.

Summarizing the understanding of "closed" and "open" models, it can be argued that for each model based on empirical knowledge from a certain (initial) field of knowledge, there is an area of applicability greater than or equal to this initial area.

What is the fundamental internal difference between "open" and "closed" models?

The history of science knows a large number of theoretical models that eventually turned out to be erroneous, but made a great contribution to the formation of the scientific picture of the world: phlogiston ^{[7, p. 414]} (theory of the late XVII – early XVIII centuries, which allowed to generalize a lot of chemical reactions), caloric ^{[8, p. 95]} (theory of the late XVIII – at the beginning of the XIX century, which explained many thermal phenomena known at that time), the luminiferous ether (the rejected, but still not definitively refuted theory, first put forward by R. Descartes in the XVII century, laid the basis for wave optics and Maxwell's electromagnetic theory), etc.

Why have these models proved useful for understanding the world? What distinguishes them from others? According to the author of this article, a prerequisite (but not a guarantee) of the usefulness of the model is its internal consistency and consistency with other models from related fields of knowledge. In other words, the model should fit into a holistic picture of the world. This allows you to extrapolate the logic of the model to a wider area than the area on the basis of knowledge about which the model was formed.

An important example of the productivity of the model of representation of the universe, which does not meet the requirement of provability ^[9], but has internal logic and consistency, is faith in God. Religious worldview in many areas of a person's spiritual life turns out to be productive ^[10]. Ethical problems, problems of good and evil, the goal–setting of human activity and the definition of its meanings are questions to which (unlike science) there are unambiguous answers within the framework of the religious worldview. Faith in God gives a person certainty, allows him to orient himself in life and make decisions that are harmonized with the existence of a holistic world. The power of faith lies in the acquisition of emotional and spiritual support by a person. At the same time, it is not so important that religion is useless for explaining physical or biological phenomena, or cannot help in solving technical problems.

Along with the case of acceptance of a religious worldview, it can serve to develop knowledge in the case of rejection. A significant part of scientific discoveries, breakthroughs in the philosophical understanding of the universe were achieved in opposition to religion and in its denial, in the fight against the dogmatism of the church ^[11].

Is dogmatism a positive phenomenon? Of course not, but the destruction of the integrity of the knowledge system, its fragmentation into many contradictory pieces of knowledge is even worse. And, most importantly, fragmentation, permissiveness, disordering are significantly more effective ways to slow down cognition than dogmatism. The latter causes persistent intellectual rejection and is inevitably overcome: the sooner, the narrower its limitations.  In addition, not all manifestations of dogmatism are an obstacle to development. In particular, the interpretation of dogmatism in the form of dogmatic knowledge, which can be productively used as a basis of knowledge, is of interest ^[12].

Potential possibilities of the general theory of systems

Is there a philosophical concept that will allow achieving unity in the representation of the universe and its authenticity at the same time? We'll even make it easier. We will talk about a philosophical concept that allows for a gradual approach to a reliable representation of the universe without making radical changes to its logic and content.

It is obvious that positivist ideas, according to which knowledge is formed exclusively empirically or as a generalization of empirical knowledge, does not imply unity in the representation of the universe. Of course, the possession of vast, detailed and comprehensive empirical knowledge could allow us to form a coherent, internally consistent picture of the world. However, empirical experience is limited and on its basis it is possible, at best, to generalize knowledge in a limited area. The correlation of this knowledge with knowledge from other fields is not always possible, and the correlation of all fields of knowledge with each other is practically unattainable.

The construction of a knowledge system based on metaphysics, as, for example, was the case in natural philosophy, is an approach whose possibilities in forming a holistic picture of the world are disproportionately greater than those of positivism. The problem of cognition in natural philosophy lies in the need for a reliable definition of superexperienced principles and laws of being, which is not always possible to do on the basis of a priori knowledge and through generalization of experience. The experience of the development of sciences shows that natural philosophy allows us to achieve a holistic view of the universe, but the reliability of this knowledge is not ensured.

The reason for this is that the deductive method of thinking, the main one for natural philosophy, even supplemented by the inductive method of thinking (for verifying knowledge and generalizing it to form metaphysical knowledge) is insufficient to build a picture of the world. They are limited by the one-dimensionality of logical constructions: deductive or inductive thinking is always arranged in logical chains. This method can prove or explain the knowledge already found, but in most cases (with the exception of the most elementary) it is not possible to find fundamentally new knowledge.

An indispensable tool of cognition is intuition, which, if we understand its genesis, is an unconscious use of analogy or, what is the same thing, the implementation of a traditional method of thinking – thinking in which the premises and conclusion are judgments of the same degree of generality. To understand the structure of the universe, we not only form logical constructions linking existing knowledge, but also look for analogues, assuming that the laws and forms of the universe are repeated in different subject areas, at different levels of the organization of the universe, that is, that there is an isomorphism of forms and laws.

In the arsenal of the means of the theory of knowledge there is a scientific and methodological concept built around the statement of the existence of isomorphism of forms and laws. This is a general theory of systems that exists in many variants: the textual theory of A.A. Bogdanov ^[13], the theories of L. von Bertalanfi ^[14], E. Quaid ^[15], D. Giga ^[16], M. Mesarovich ^[17], A.I. Uemov ^[18], Yu.A. Urmantsev ^[19], E.G. Vinograya ^[20], V.V. Leshchenko ^[21], etc.

Most scientists involved in the General Theory of Systems, it is assigned an exclusively applied function. Moreover, some of the founders of the General Theory of Systems, for example, A.A. Bogdanov, did not even consider the general theory of systems (tectology) to be a part of philosophy, which should have an "explanatory" tendency: "For tectology, if it "explains" how the most heterogeneous elements in nature, in work, in thinking are combined, then it is a matter of practical mastery of all possible ways of such a combination; it all lies in practice; and even cognition itself for it is a special case of organizational practice, coordination of a special type of complexes" ^{[11, book 1, p. 57]}.

It is clear that in the modern, "applied" form, the General Theory of Systems cannot be the concept that will unite knowledge, form an integral system of knowledge. To do this, the General theory of systems should be expanded by defining the methodology of formation and describing particular manifestations of isomorphism, as well as supplemented with an ontological part containing an explanation of the genesis of isomorphism.

The statement of the isomorphism of the forms and laws of the universe as the basis for the formation of a holistic picture of the world involves the use of analogies, i.e. the implementation of the traditional method of thinking. An important feature of the tradition is the limited possibilities of obtaining accurate and definitive answers to questions of cognition: an analogue is only an indication of the direction of further cognition, during which knowledge is deepened and detailed (if possible). The general theory of systems, even expanded and supplemented by the ontological part, is constrained by the limitations of traditional thinking and therefore cannot serve as a tool for forming a detailed picture of the world. However, to achieve the integrity of the system of knowledge about the world, the capabilities of the General Theory of Systems (expanded and supplemented) may be sufficient. Of course, this will require a huge amount of research aimed at: developing the General Theory of Systems, deepening and expanding scientific knowledge (where gaps in knowledge will be found in the process of forming holistic ideas), verifying philosophical knowledge with existing scientific knowledge, and scientific knowledge from the standpoint of the logic of the integrity of the world.

Conclusions

Based on the reflections given in this article , the following main conclusions can be drawn:

1. The problem of social development, the development of sciences and, in general, the development of human civilization in recent decades has been a gradual departure from reliance on a system of established generally accepted ideas.

2. The vector of interaction between philosophy and science must be expanded: it is not science that should set the directions of cognition and formulate questions, but philosophy.

3. For each model based on empirical knowledge from a certain (initial) field of knowledge, there is an area of applicability greater than or equal to this initial area.

4. A condition (but not a guarantee) of the usefulness of the model is its internal consistency and consistency with other models from related fields of knowledge. In other words, the model should fit into a holistic picture of the world.

5. In the arsenal of the means of the theory of knowledge there is a scientific and methodological concept built around the statement of the existence of isomorphism of forms and laws, which is a consequence of the integrity of the world. This is the General Theory of Systems.

6. In order for the General Theory of Systems to become a tool for forming a holistic picture of the world, it should be expanded by defining the methodology of formation and describing particular manifestations of isomorphism, as well as supplemented with an ontological part containing an explanation of the genesis of isomorphism.

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