Development of modern science

The intensive development of modern science, which by its brilliance has tended to eclipse other forms of intellectual activity, the process of its differentiation and integration, gives rise to a vast number of new problems involving world-view and methodology. For example, do any extra terrestrial civilisations exist and is there life in other galaxies? How did the universe arise in its given qualitative determinacy? What is meant by the infinity of space and time? Certain fields of knowledge constantly run into difficulties of a methodological nature. How can one judge the degree to which physical or chemical methods are applicable to the investigation of animate nature without oversimplifying it? In modern science not only has there been an unusually rapid accumulation of new knowledge; the techniques, methods and style of thinking have also substantially changed and continue to change. The very methods of research attract the scientist's growing interest, as discussion at national and international symposiums and congresses shows. Hence the higher demands on philosophy, on theoretical thought in general. The further scientific knowledge in various fields develops, the stronger is the tendency to study the logical system by which we obtain knowledge, the nature of theory and how it is constructed, to analyse the empirical and theoretical levels of cognition, the initial concepts of science and methods of arriving at the truth. In short, the sciences show an increasing desire to know themselves, the mind is becoming more and more reflective.

Not only are the subject-matter of this or that science and the methods of studying it being verified. We are trying to define the exact social and moral role that this or that science plays or may play in the life of society, what it implies or may imply for the future of mankind—benefit or destruction? This trend towards self-knowledge, of which much is said both by scientists and philosophers, is bound to show itself and should show itself in the relationship between philosophy and science.

Date: 2014-12-21; view: 1251