Институциональная эрозия науки и образования: гримасы постмодерна

Abstract

The article is a reaction to the article written by P.A. Orekhovsky and V.I. Razumov ‘Carnival Time: Russian Higher School and Science in the Postmodern Era’. The author agrees with the analytical diagnosis of the state and situation in the Russian science and higher education, shares the concern expressed by colleagues about the fate of the most important social institutions for our civilization. The author proposes a number of considerations that develop the topics raised in the reference article. The author draws attention to the historical inversion of the positivist social project, which appears to be at the forefront of the emerging social architecture of a new scientific-technocratic elite; another thing is that its social configuration does not coincide with institutional boundaries of academic and University science. The author speculates upon the analogy of science with prostitution, which is currently undergoing a noticeable institutionalization. The author considers its phasing to be universal. It is suggested that prostitution can be extrapolated to other social institutions, including science and education. The potential of their resistance and survival is determined by how effectively passionarity accumulates in the structure of these social institutions. This indicator is directly proportional to the efficiency of the formation of human capital in the system. According to the author, problems, voiced by P.A. Orekhovsky and V.I. Razumov, are explained by the passion drift, the overcoming of which is not an automatic macro-social act, but the craft of each scientific and pedagogical worker.