Общественный договор о науке: конвенция достоинства

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The main subject of the article is “dignity” as a category of scientific ethics in the aspect of its attributive qualities in relation to the concepts of knowledge, sci­ence, man. The author offers a justification for the consistency and plausibility of the hypothesis about the relationship between the categories of dignity of science and dignity of man. The need for the justification is due besides all to the results of a pilot scientometric study paradoxical at first glance: they show that the in­crease in the number of publications on the topics of Integrity in Research and Research responsibility is accompanied by a decline of academic interest in the topic of dignity in Russian-language literature in the period 2016–2021. Observa­tions have also shown that society and science turn to the concept of dignity as a concept of moral good in the most difficult moments of history. The author ar­gues that science as an independent “integral” institutional unit can be formed only if it is based on human dignity. At the same time, the revealed blurring of meanings and the separation of attributes of the category “dignity” across various semantic fields in the context of the divisions of the corpus of science itself has become one of the reasons for raising the question of whether science is capable of “being” and “meeting [the gods] face to face”. Structural differentiation, in re­lation to the concept of dignity (abstraction, illusion, universal imaginary) became possible on the basis of understanding the differences between the spaces of ac­ces­sibility and perceptibility. The tools of the theory of conventions are used to obtain a hypothetical set of qualities of Homo Dignus, a decision-making subject acting within the framework of the Dignity convention – a structure proposed by the author. This structure, as the as the author claims, has a potential to become the key element of a new social contract for science.