Conjectures on Science and Rationality: Commentary on Fiedler, Salmen, & Prager (2022)

With their spotlight on Laplace’s inductive rule of succession, Fiedler et al. (2022) revisit important questions about what constitutes rationality and how rationality can be well tested in experimental research. In commentary on their article, I propose that Popper’s evolutionary epistemology can help address both questions.

Truth as a sociocultural phenomenon: modern interpretation

The history of science in any of its transformations and metamorphoses is, in fact, a search for and definition of the truth. As an example, I. Kant’s famous four questions start with the question «What can I know?». Thus, the search for truth as a subject of research has been a dominating force throughout human history. Of course, sociology as a social meta-science is also involved in this topic. A simple assertion of the existence of three concepts of truth, namely accordance, agreement and advantage, does not fully answer the prerequisites of contemporary discourse. The present article analyses a new discourse on the study of truth in contemporary science. We give a brief retrospective analysis of the main fields of truth interpretation. At the same time, these directions are not just listed but linked into the general outline of contemporary epistemology. Of course, a greater bias is made towards the sciences of the social and humanitarian profile. That, however, does not exclude the necessary portion of the data of natural science research. In the article these data are not used as demonstrations, but as independent meta-scientific research. We give various examples of the complementarity of different branches of science. In particular, we show the scope and relative limitation of such concepts as correspondence theory, evolutionary epistemology, socio-humanitarian cybernetics, adaptationism and neo-adaptationism. A significant place in the article is occupied by the problem of truth in artistic creation. We also give sustainable conclusions about the polyphonicity of truth and its flickering character.

Rhythms of the past, rhythms of the future

The subject of this research is rhythm as the cultural and fundamental philosophical principle of time organization of systems of various rank. The goal consists in the analysis of possibilities of creating the general theory of rhythm. The author set the following tasks: analyze ethnocultural traditions, which in the cognitive aspect lean on the maturity of rhythm-sensible  way of thinking; analyze the reflections of Ancient Greek natural philosophers on the meaning of rhythm; trace the theme of rhythm in art, science and practices of the XIX – XXI centuries.; problematize the question on the meaning of rhythmology in interpretation of the new vectors of cognitive evolution at the present time. Articulation of the problem of rhythm as the universal requires consideration of cosmic-nature, planetary, social, cultural, and personal realities (worlds). In examination of historical artifacts and ethnographic material, the author takes into account the principles of evolutionary epistemology. The analysis of natural philosophical and ancient Greek worldview is completed with analysis of the language. The novelty consists in articulation and analysis of the problem of rhythm as a cultural universality as the ultimate basis, covering natural, sociocultural and creatively-personal rhythms. The transformations of mentality and way of thinking in cognitive evolution stemmed from matured sensibility in the archaic towards the development of intellect. Rhythmically sensible way of thinking that empathically connects human with nature was developed until the Early Middle Ages. Culture and natural philosophical reflections on the concept of harmony are of essential for comprehension of sensible worldview. Beauty as a formative principle of the universe was conveyed through the set of concepts adopted in the language of modern science. Rhythm as an aesthetic category in natural sciences attracts the attention of researchers dealing with correlations of biosphere, social and cosmic processes. Reflections on the universality of rhythm in the complex evolutionary systems allow reassessing the discord of rhythms (desynchronosis) of the modern global crisis.

Karl Popper’s Theory of Cognition and Education Problems

The article deals with the peculiarities of K. Popper’s theory of scientific knowledge, and shows the influence of the epistemological principles which were substantiated by the scientist on the approaches to the improvement of education and upbringing. The fundamental differences between the evolutionary epistemology of the outstanding philosopher and the traditional empirical and sensualistic theory of cognition, according to which knowledge flows into us from the outside through the senses, have been clarified. K. Popper argues that man is extremely active in acquiring knowledge, and information does not flow into him from the environment, but, on the contrary, man explores the environment and actively “sucks” information from it. The emphasis is placed on the fact that a person is not only active but also critical towards the information he receives. The results of K. Popper’s critical analysis of education and the shortcomings of the educational process in schools (inconsistency with innate human qualities, passivity of students in the learning process) are presented and the ways of overcoming them are suggested. The position of the philosopher on the peculiarities of state control over education, his idea of the goals of educational activities, the necessity to involve students in the construction of learning content, the change in the nature of relations between participants in the educational process, generalizations about the transformation of learning into solving problems, development of students’ critical thinking have been revealed.

Technocracy and Interpretation

The Lippmann-Dewey debate might have gone better had Dewey appealed to his evolutionary epistemology, according to which human intelligence evolved in such a way as to allow it to predict the outcomes of our interactions with the natural environment. This would have allowed Lippmann to suggest that the modern social environment is less predictable than the natural environment, shifting attention to his tacit social ontology. Insofar as the social environment is determined by human action, action by interpretation, and interpretation by ideas; and insofar as ideas are heterogeneous, non-random, and inaccessible to observation, as Lippmann held; it follows that technocrats may be unable to predict behavior reliably. Consider, in comparison, intellectual historians’ interpretations of the behavior of well-documented individuals: such interpretations are much easier to get right then are predictions of the behavior of anonymous others in the future, predictions of the sort that technocrats must produce. Yet intellectual historians inevitably disagree among one another, entailing that some or all of their interpretations are wrong.