Technoscience, education and philosophy

Abstract

The third article from the cycle devoted to the interaction of technoscience and philosophy discusses modern problems of technical education. It is noted that education does not meet the needs of technoscience. This is due to the contradictory requirements of the professional environment and the peculiarities of the educational environment. It is important that engineering activity in the twentieth century has been interpreted as an applied s cience that has no values other than its own scientific values. This understanding is outdated today, as is the reduction of science to scientific knowledge. The peculiarities of the existence of technoscience and education in Russia include their statism, i. e. the need to set up relations with the state and take them into account in understanding one’s activities. All global decisions are made by the state, it also determines the structure, content and goals of education. Being ubiquitous, the state also spreads its methods of planning and management, its model of “doubling” the world with documents. In particular, technoscience education is understood as teaching the rules of “normal” (in T. Kuhn’s terminology) science with its strict rules enshrined in government regulations and plans. This approach is reflected in the structure and content of textbooks, training courses for undergraduates and graduate students. The philosophical and methodological education of humanities teachers does not give them any idea of modern technoscience, and their training courses do not allow them to professionally discuss the pressing problems of science. On the one hand, technoscientists are seriously concerned about the “philosophical” and “social” problems of science: what is their science, how it works, how it changes, why its unity is lost, how it “fits” into society and how it interacts with it. On the other hand, young university graduates entering technoscience have no idea about such problems, because they were educated in an outdated paradigm. A special problem is the activity of the mass media and social networks, which are increasingly influencing the system of science, the processes of obtaining knowledge and its application. Most of the young technoscientists are not ready to use these indicators of public sentiment and tools of influence. Technoscience today is not able to understand itself, be taught, control and develop itself. Radical innovative approaches are needed.The author thanks S. А. Vorobev and A. А. Vorobyev for the seminal discussion of the problems mentioned in the paper and in the whole series of papers dedicated to interactions of technoscience and philosophy of science.