The aggregate human knowledge lies both in the field of science and outside it. In order to manage progress, it is necessary to confidently determine the properties of the scientific component in aggregate knowledge.
At the same time, one should not underestimate the knowledge that lies outside of science.
What knowledge should be considered scientific?
Criteria of science in the world of modernResearch is not consistent. The number of author's concepts, sometimes opposite to each other, is very large. Therefore, in order to understand the signs of scientific knowledge, it is necessary to investigate those constructs that are the least contradictory.
Within the framework of this installation, this article discusses three attributes of scientific knowledge. It should be:
- true;
- intersubjective;
- system.
Truth and knowledge
All knowledge is knowledge about a certain subject.
If knowledge fits its subject matter, it is true.
However, knowledge outside science can also be true. It exists in pre-scientific, everyday and practical forms, as well as in the form of conjectures, opinions.
Truth and proper knowledge are not the same thing.
Truth is spoken about when knowledge corresponds to reality, its content is reliable regardless of the knowing subject and exists only insofar as it is objective.
Собственно знание подразумевает многообразие форм recognition of the truth. They vary depending on the sufficiency of the grounds for such recognition and can be faith, opinion, common-practical knowledge, the conclusions of science.
The latter not only report that some content is true, but also substantiate its truth. The justifications may be:
- logical conclusion;
- experimental result;
- proven theorem, etc.
For this reason, sufficient validity is a mandatory and basic requirement for scientific knowledge, as opposed to non-scientific.
Criteria of science put forward in place of the foundation of science formula of the principle, interpreting a sufficient basis.
Leibniz, who proclaimed this principle, showed that thought, as proof of its truth, must be substantiated by other thoughts, which, in turn, have already been proved in their truth.
Intersubjective knowledge
Science requires knowledge to be universal for humanity, universally binding and generally significant for any person.
For comparison: the opinion as extra-scientific knowledge is individual and not generally significant.
There is a boundary separating scientific knowledge in its truth and other modifications of knowledge.
Unscientific knowledge is personified. They certify the truth without good reason, recognizing it as the norm.
The truths of science are recognized only as objective and fairly reasonable. They are universal and impersonal.
Intersubjectivity of scientific knowledge makesits current reproducibility. This means that all researchers who studied the same object and put this study in the same conditions will have the same result.
If every (every, every) knowing subject does not confirm the invariance of his knowledge for all knowing subjects, it does not reveal reproducibility and is not scientific.
System knowledge
Systematic organizes and artistic, and everyday, and scientific knowledge.
However, the system criteria of science differ by a number of features.
They are based on rational knowledge, which is generated by coherent reasoning. The basis of this reasoning is experimental data.
The specificity of rational knowledge is a strict inductive-deductive structure. It gives knowledge such validity, which confirms that it is true.
Scientific and extra-scientific knowledge: some clarifications
Scientific forms of knowledge do not cancel, do not eliminate other forms, do not make them useless.
The distinction between rationally grounded scientific and rational knowledge of extra-scientific knowledge should lead to an understanding of the following important circumstances.
Вненаучное знание – не выдумка и не фикция.It has its own means and sources of knowledge. Its standards and norms are different from the framework of rationalism, they are produced by quite real intellectual communities.
Often extra-scientific knowledge isthe forerunner of the scientific, as astrological for astronomical, alchemical for chemical, and carries the rudiments of the emergence of scientific truths. Such types of knowledge that lie in historical retrospect in relation to the sciences are called esoteric. They can be called foreknowledge.
Novelty research
Criteria of scientific character, indicating in the study specific data, the content and meaning of transformations and additions, are called scientific novelty of the research.
Scientific novelty is recognized when:
- research is developing a problem that has not previously been raised in science;
- the object under study has not previously been studied in science;
- new knowledge has been gained about the object;
- The above conditions are met in any combination.
The treatment of knowledge as new arises when known data:
- changed radically as a result of research;
- expanded and supplemented;
- specified (specified).
Signs of reliable scientific criteria
Signs of scientific cease to be its criteria, if they are considered separately from each other.
So, truth is born not only within science.
Intersubjective can be not only science, but also, for example, a massive delusion.
The consistency, considered out of touch with other signs of science, lays the foundation for pseudoscientific reasoning.
And only the result of knowledge, in which the above signs are simultaneously realized, fully characterizes scientific knowledge.
