Authority and Scientific Paradigms

Abstract

The state of European science at the end of the sixteenth century resembles a kind of epistemological chaos in which there are no clear landmarks and boundaries of the world. Not surprisingly, as some order took shape within it, the revival of science began. It should not be forgotten, moreover, that the word "order" itself is etymologized as cosmos, and the discipline that studies it is cosmology. That is why the first fundamental works on astronomy – Copernicus's “On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres” and Galileo's “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems: Ptolemaic and Copernican” – bear such pretentious titles, because they aim to put the whole "world system" in order. The concepts of scientific determination and the objects of cognition must be present in the problem field of the cognitive process, and the problems of knowledge translation and communicability between the subjects of cognition, as well as the extremely complicated interdependencies between the agency of the scientist and his cultural-historical context, should directly and unconcernedly raise the question of defining the range of epistemic values in which the value of truth a priori could not be put in contradiction to the value of one’s outer for the phenomenon heuristic potential or to the consistency of the relevant scientific noosphere.