The Explicit and Implicit Foundations of the Natural, Social, and Humanitarian Sciences

Abstract

A comparative analysis of the explicit and implicit foundations of the natural, social, and humanitarian sciences explores the genesis of the foundations of science and their relationship to common sense, everyday consciousness, real-life experience, and human intuition. The analysis takes into account the conventional division of the sciences into theoretical (fundamental) and practical (applied). The main examples selected are physics from the natural sciences and psychology from the social and humanitarian sciences. The article considers the connection between the conformity of the foundations of theory to scientific standards and its survival. It shows that the natural sciences developed by means of the supplantation of initial postulates and paradigms, while the principal external criterion vis-à-vis social-science theories is their survivability. This assertion is juxtaposed with the fact that in the natural sciences applied technologies that change the world are a direct result of fundamental-research results, whereas in the social and humanitarian sciences, this connection is much weaker.