Methodological optics of types of scientific rationality: attributes, parameters, approaches

Abstract

The disclosed results of this fundamental interdisciplinary study are centred around the main super-task – to create improved, more detailed and enriched by attributive features, versions of the four fundamental types of scientific rationality – classical, postclassical, non-classical and post-nonclassical, as well as in this target context to argue their emergence as a result of a particular scientific revolution, the optimal set of attributes-characteristics, the complexity of the content and formulations of the topic, objective, object and subject as fundamental methodological parameters of the search and a certain connection of each type with the most influential scientific and philosophical views/approaches today. The object of the reflexive study is quite logically the types of rationality in the evolution of New European science in their quaternary development-transformation from relatively simple forms and organisations (classical and postclassical) to increasingly complex, synergistic and human-dimensional (non-classical and postnonclassical) and in their synchronous cultural and historical dependence on the content and consequences of the four universally recognised scientific revolutions, and its subject is the methodological optics of classical, postclassical, non-classical and postnonclassical types of rationality in their four-stage evolutionary synthesis and metasystemic complementarity, which finds epistemological confirmation both in the complication of the main parameters of professionally carried out research (first of all, its topic, objective, object, subject) and in the methodological justification of the otherness of scientific and philosophical approaches. At the same time, the application of the author’s meta-optics to solving a number of methodological problems of the current study made it possible to consistently constructively address four t a s k s that fully specify its reflected objective. To begin with, it is proved on the basis of different analytical and epistemic material that the consequences of each of the four scientific revolutions since the seventeenth century were the establishment of a significantly renewed t y p e of rationality, each time resulting in changes in ideals and norms, methods and means, methodological optics and scientific pictures of the world. In this research perspective, it is argued that the integral outcome of the Second Scientific Revolution (from about the middle of the nineteenth century) was the emergence of a modernised type of rationality, which we call postclassical; in fact, by most attributive features, it no longer belongs to the classical one and at the same time does not yet constitute a non-classical science. Furthermore, it is comprehensively reasoned and demonstrated that the second author’s versions of methodological optics of classical, non-classical and post-nonclassical types of rationality, in addition to the original version of the post-classical science methodology, model and semiotically contain the optimal minimum of attributive features (12, 14, 16, and 18, respectively), which capaciously and logically reflect in each of the four invariants a relatively complete holistic picture of a certain relevant ontological reality, which is manifested by cultural means as an increasing complexity of verified intelligence in the evolutionary and revolutionary stages of development of New European science; it is significant that only in the newest (post-nonclassical) type of rationality the researcher’s personality and their thought-reflective activity are involved in the very process of constructing/creating a highly complex object as its key self-development factor, which makes it possible to obtain reliable rational-humanistic knowledge. Thirdly, the author reveals the multi-causal influence of the complication of the architectonics of methodological optics of the main types of rationality on the change of the fundamental parameters of scientific research, primarily on the choice of topic, the definition of its purpose and especially the object and subject, which have not so much a theoretical load as an original methodological purpose; in this problematic context, it is established that there is a clear tendency and even a pattern of complication of these most important features of cognitive search in terms of volume, structure, content and conceptual and categorical qualities. first of all, it is convincingly shown that classical science studies isolated simple objects and their mono-subject definitions, creating a mechanistic picture of the world, post-classical science studies more complex natural and technical objects as separate systems and their subject structures, developing a natural-scientific picture of the world, non-classical science studies theoretically constructed objects as complex self-regulating model-systems and invariant subject schemes, that constitute the centre and organise research thought activity, and together produce a single multidisciplinary picture of the world; postnonclassical – exclusively supercomplex (human-dimensional) objects as self-developing, open and synergistic, mega-systems, which include the researcher himself, and various subject fields of creation of such objects, which makes it possible to build an appropriate – anthropological, synergistic, vita-cultural – integral picture of the world. Finally, from a super-reflexive position, the author argues for a methodological map of the study of the alternative scientific approach and the philosophical approach as the most fundamental ways of human/conscious vision of the world in terms of a number of essential features, principles, thought patterns, category garlands, definitions in their multivariate embodiment in contemporary intellectual life; it is emphasised that the acquisition by each of them of the status of methodological requires a radical change in the perspective of consideration of the sphere of reality of cognitive creativity, namely, existentially complete elaboration of methods and means, norms and procedures for the implementation of thought activity on any subject of the object or problematic and worldview plan, and in the dialectical interpenetration of the resources of the world of methodology and the instrumental capabilities of the field of methodology; finally, against the background of characterising a number of the most obvious aspects of this opposition, it is generalised that each of the three general approaches – scientific, philosophical, methodological – always has one of two ways of historical development: top-down, i.e., degeneration into a disciplinary subject of study, or bottom-up, i.e., development into a fundamental metatheory.

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