Socio-Humanistic Support for Technological Development: What Should It Be Like?

Abstract

Prospects for the humanities and social sciences under the conditions of the so-called technoscientific stage of the development of science, characterized by closely entwined scientific research and scientific design and highlighting the objectives of creating new equipment and technologies and not obtaining basic knowledge, are discussed. The author analyzes the historical peculiarities of technoscience as a specific form, on the one hand, of organization of scientific cognition and, on the other, of interaction between science and society, separating processes that increase the social responsibility of science and the effects of orientation toward solving pragmatic problems on scientific process, in particular, the transformation of methodological norms. The concepts of social and humanistic technologies are considered critically; several problems that arise owing to the technologization of socio-humanistic knowledge are investigated. It is justified that technological development requires not only a complex approach, implying the use of socio-humanistic technologies, but also socio-humanistic support, which cannot be understood technologically. The disciplinary status of such support is discussed; in particular, the recent widely used concept of transdisciplinarity is analyzed, and the conclusion is made that socio-humanistic support goes beyond professional scientific activity into the sphere of broad social practice. Foresight is considered as an example of such a transformation.