Towards a Social Philosophy of Science: Russian Prospects

Abstract

Philosophy of science as a scholarly discipline exists today side by side with other disciplines within an interdisciplinary framework of the history and philosophy of science or science and technology studies. The rationale for this “joint venture” is commonly seen in the division of labor. The history of science focuses on the rise and development of scientific theories in the past; the sociology of science deals with science as a social institution; the psychology of science investigates the mechanisms of creativity and one’s personal impact upon scientific discoveries; and finally, the philosophy of science is responsible for the logical and methodological analysis of the structure and growth of the scientific knowledge, mostly within the context of justification. This allegedly fruitful division of labor presumes an independent existence of social, personal and cognitive domains, and the desired interdisciplinary communication between the correspondent disciplines aims to account for the complementary understanding of science. But in fact no sufficient exchange of meanings takes place for every discipline insists upon its independence and prior significance. Under these conditions, neither a consistent picture of science appears to be possible nor might science policy be construed and justified basing on this disintegrated conglomerate of knowledge. A way out of the situation is as follows: (a) to acknowledge non-independent character of the philosophy of science; (b) to learn more from social philosophy; (c) to revisit the epistemological status of the natural sciences as the only cognitive ideal; (d) to focus on the social and the human sciences in search of a new methodological experience; (e) to cease considering concrete case studies as a new version of the “neutral language of observation”, which gives a “crucial justification” of a theory, and to view new philosophical interpretations a necessary feature of any case study.