From Inquiry to Theory: There – And Back Again

Abstract

Question runs as follows: is an inquiry a preliminary step to a theory, or does a theory (evidently, found by chance, or by luck) give rise to an inquiry? This is a logical circle, or maybe an ellipsis. Or maybe this circle/ellipsis is a hermeneutical one. In this case it is hard to distinguish between a source of scientific thought and its aim, or the fruits of it. Be it a logical or hermeneutical circle of the current of human thought and activity, in both cases it is an important problem for science and for a philosophy of science reflecting it. I argue that, among all sciences, social sciences and humanities, making use of interpretation rather than of demonstration, have better chance to have the circle/ellipsis torn in order to solve the problem of passing from theory/inquiry to practice. It is decades-long positivistic tradition to think of a scientific theory as of a physical theory considered as an etalon for all scientific knowledge. Even epistemology, social it itself, tends to be constructed as a physical theory. The same could be said about philosophy of science. Recently, however, in Russian philosophy of science there appeared a philosophy of post-theoretical thinking. Its author is V.I. Przhilenskiy. It can well be treated as an inquiry following and negating a modern theory of knowledge (i.e., epistemology and analytical philosophy as its branch) – which in its turn had its origin in general gnoseology as an inquiry. Following and negating general gnoseology as something non-theoretical in the positivistic view, theory of knowledge is now being replaced in philosophy of social sciences by an inquiry in a form of post-theoretical thinking. This, indeed, is not merely a circle, but a spiral – a Hegelian emblem of development.