Science: Conceptualization and demarcation in relation to philosophy and Humanitarianism

Rozin Vadim Markovich Doctor of Philosophy Chief Scientific Associate, Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences  109240, Russia, Moskovskaya oblast', g. Moscow, ul. Goncharnaya, 12 str.1, kab. 310 rozinvm@gmail.com Other publications by this author

Nowadays, it is difficult to draw a line between science and non-science. Not only philosophy is often called a science, one can find the statement that, for example, Kabbalah is a science or the teachings of Rudolf Steiner. The head of perhaps one of the largest modern schools of Kabbalah, Mikhail Laitman, believes that Kabbalah is also a science, "only about the higher spiritual world." "Many people doubt," he writes, "whether Kabbalah is really a science. Is Kabbalah science considered natural, about the nature of the surrounding world, like physics, chemistry and others, or humanitarian, like philosophy, psychology? Or is it a special science, because it requires from its researcher not just knowledge, but the possession of a special property that is not given from birth to man... the Kabbalist studies the upper world, from which everything descends into our world... the science of Kabbalah is no less, and even more real science than the rest, because it initially takes into account that the fact that a person's comprehension is completely determined by his organs of perception" ^{[8, p. 9]}. "Increasing the value of being a human person," writes R. Steiner in 1891 in his doctoral dissertation on philosophy, "is the goal of all science.…The result of these studies is that truth does not represent, as is commonly accepted, an ideal reflection of something real, but is a free product of the human spirit, a product that would not exist anywhere at all if we did not produce it ourselves. The task of cognition is not to repeat in the form of concepts something that already exists in another place, but to create a completely new area that gives complete reality only together with the sensory world.…Cognition thus rests on the fact that the content of the world is given to us initially in a form that is imperfect, does not fully contain it, but which, in addition to what it offers directly, has a second essential side. This second side of the world's content, which was not originally given, is revealed through cognition. Thus, what appears to us as separate in thought is not empty forms, but the sum of definitions (categories), which, however, are forms for the rest of the content of the world. Only an image of the content of the world obtained through cognition, in which both sides of it are connected, can be called reality" ^{[16, pp. 7, 8, 37]}.

The spiritual teachings of Emmanuel Swedenborg, the greatest Swedish scientist and engineer of the early 18th century, are also, oddly enough, similar to science. Although Swedenborg tells how people, heaven and hell are arranged, how he communicated with angels and observed the Lord, nevertheless, according to the Swedish scientist and visionary, the spiritual world described in his teaching determines the natural world, and the latter is characterized by the usual laws of natural science. "Let us say in advance," writes Swedenborg, "what correspondence is: the whole natural world corresponds to the spiritual not only in generality, but even in every particular; therefore, everything that exists in the natural world as a result of the spiritual world is called correspondence.…The angels are amazed when they learn that there are people who attribute everything to nature and attribute nothing to the Divine principle... Meanwhile, they would only have to raise their minds to see that these miracles come from the Divine, and not from nature; that nature was created only to clothe the spiritual and Accordingly, it should be depicted in the last degree of order" ^{[13, pp. 48, 52-53, 8, 37]}.

It is strange why I. Kant, who set one of his goals in the Critique of Pure Reason to make room for the Creator ("I had to limit (aufheben) knowledge in order to make way for faith" ^[17]), turned against Swedenborg in such a way. "Therefore, I will not condemn the reader in the least," he writes, "if, instead of considering visionaries as half belonging to another world, he immediately writes them down as candidates for hospital treatment and thus saves himself from any further research... in Swedenborg's work I find the most bizarre play of imagination that many Other lovers found it in the play of nature, when they painted the holy family in the outlines of spotted marble or monks, baptismal fonts and church organs in stalactite formations.…I am tired of quoting the wild ravings of the worst of all science fiction writers or continuing them until they describe the state after death... it would be in vain to try to hide the fruitlessness of all this work – it catches everyone's eye" ^{[7, pp. 327, 340, 347]}.

Perhaps because Kant suggested taking mathematics and natural science as examples of correct philosophizing? And Hegel followed him, saying that "The true form in which truth exists can only be its scientific system. My intention was to contribute to bringing philosophy closer to the form of science, to its goal, having achieved which it could give up its name of love of knowledge and be truly knowledge" ^{[6, p. 3]}.

Let us step back in history even further, reaching Aristotle, who, along with Plato, is considered the initiator of the discursivity of philosophy, but also of science. As an example of the latter, they point to his "Physics" ("Physics", we read on the Internet, is "the fundamental treatise of Aristotle, which laid the foundations of physics as a science" ^[15]). But is this so, can Aristotle's "Physics" be attributed to science, even if it is ancient, and not natural?

Common and different characterisationscience and philosophy

It is unlikely that Aristotle considered "Physics" as a science, for him it is a philosophy applied to the understanding of motion. In this work, Stagirit discusses how movement can be consistently conceived (for this it is necessary to present it categorically, introduce an idea of nature, change the concept of time); how to reduce "changes" to movements, remove Zeno's aporias, and explain the main types of movements observed in nature. This type of work (removing contradictions, setting correct ways of thinking, new concepts and reality) traditionally belongs to philosophy; moreover, "Physics" for Aristotle was not a science (such a concept did not exist yet), but obtaining correct knowledge ("epistemology") about natural movements (what happens "according to nature").

The introduction of this important concept ("by nature") was required by Stagirith, on the one hand, in order to take into account the observed phenomena, "things" when obtaining knowledge (therefore, following Parmenides, it was necessary to admit that they exist), on the other hand, to explain how obtaining correct knowledge is related to effective practical action (the latter as "artificial"the movement should proceed as if on the wave of a "natural" movement taking place by nature). Aristotle associated the knowledge of epistems with the knowledge of the causes and essence of the phenomenon under study, for this, in turn, it was necessary to think correctly, relying on Aristotelian rules and categories. So, there are three foundations for correct cognition: first, confidence in the existence of a cognizable phenomenon presented in empirical knowledge, second, following Aristotelian logic, which allowed us to build "ideal objects" (for example, fixed in the definitions and concepts of "motion" and "time"), and third, obtaining knowledge that deduces for effective practical actions.

Ideal objects had to be created in order to remove contradictions and solve the problems facing the ancient personality. For example, in The Feast, Plato defines love as an ideal object, attributing fixed characteristics to it as an idea (love is the search for one's half and the pursuit of wholeness, as well as bearing "spiritual fruits" ‒ beauty, goodness and immortality). Love as an idea is created in this case in order to remove contradictions and create conditions for the independent choice of the beloved. In Phaedra, Plato explains: "This is what we did just now when talking about Eros: first we determined what it was, and then, for better or worse, we began to reason; therefore, our reasoning came out clear and did not contradict itself" ^{[9, p. 176]}.

Ancient science (the "Beginnings" of Euclid, the works of Archimedes and some other ancient authors) developed after Aristotle in the Hellenistic period, when the work of constructing ideal objects and obtaining epistems was separated from philosophical activity. While philosophers have focused on removing contradictions, criticizing, defining the right ways of thinking, new concepts, and reality, scientists have taken on the task of obtaining epistems about a certain class of existing phenomena. For example, like Archimedes regarding floating bodies and ships, although in the organization of knowledge and the logic of obtaining it (definitions, proofs of epistems, construction of ideal objects, etc.) He completely follows Aristotle ^{[10, pp. 239-255]}. Indeed, his work "On Floating Bodies" is constructed strictly according to the Stagyrite: an axiom is formulated, based on which, following the "Analysts" of Aristotle, theorems are proved. At the same time, Archimedes uses complex geometric drawings depicting a liquid and floating bodies immersed in it (both of which Archimedes defines as ideal objects). Outside of theory, these bodies were considered as models of ship sections. The fact is that, in practical terms, this work was aimed at clarifying the laws of ship stability (the variable parameter in this case is the shape of their section) ^{[10, pp. 247-250]}.

In both philosophy and science, ideal objects are constructed and cognition is carried out, but with different goals and in different ways. The philosopher establishes the right ways of obtaining knowledge and creates models of ideal objects for the scientist, allowing him to reason without contradictions and solve the problems facing him (and not only for the scientist, but also for himself). Based on these samples and the correct methods, a scientist obtains knowledge about existing phenomena. The latter either exist by themselves, for example, as natural elements (planets, sky, earth, water, movements, etc.) or are created by man (tools, buildings, armies, but also platonic love, etc.). Already in antiquity, the problem arose of understanding the phenomena studied, since they were replaced by ideal objects in cognition. If Plato contrasts them by their properties, connecting them through "communion" (things exist by communion with ideas), then Aristotle, on the contrary, unites them on the basis of the "first essence", which coincides with individual things (hence the need to take into account the observed properties of things when constructing ideal objects).

Archimedes guessed and demonstrated on several occasions that in order to obtain scientific knowledge that ensures effective practical action, ideal objects must be borrowed from mathematics, but it was not until the 13th century that Roger Bacon wrote about this directly. However, it was only at the beginning of Modern Times that Galileo showed that a necessary condition for using mathematics in science was not only mathematical modeling of the phenomenon under study, but also the simultaneous experimental adaptation of this phenomenon to a mathematical model ^{[10, pp. 302-307]}. In other words, it turned out that in order to build a mathematical model of the phenomenon under study, which made it possible to build an effective (predictable and calculated) practical action, it was necessary to transform the studied natural phenomenon into an artificial one. "As for the content," writes Francis Bacon, "we are making up the History not only of nature free and left to itself (when it spontaneously flows and does its work), such as the history of celestial bodies, meteorites, earth and sea, minerals, plants, animals; but, to a much greater extent, of nature connected and She is constrained when the art and service of a person takes her out of her usual state, influences her and shapes her... the nature of Things is reflected more in constraint through art than in one's own freedom" ^{[3, pp. 95, 96]} (emphasis added by V.R.; in this case, the Galilean experiment can be summed up under human art). So, in the natural sciences, knowledge is obtained not about natural elements (phenomena), but about artificial ones, "written in the language of mathematics" and transformed in experiment.

Not all the phenomena studied have been modeled in natural science. The problem of the existence of objects of humanitarian science

The impossibility of mathematization and the Galilean experiment in relation to a number of phenomena (history, culture, man, society) became obvious by the end of the 19th century, which was realized in the distinction and opposition of "natural sciences" and "spiritual sciences." But the first bell rang back in medieval philosophy, when St. Augustine, wanting to understand what God is, tried to interpret him in the Aristotelian scientific spirit as a special nature. "I looked back," Augustine writes, "at the created world and saw that it owes its existence to You and is contained in You, but in a different way, not as if in space; You, the Almighty, hold it in Your hand, in Your truth, for everything that exists is true because it exists. <…> I was looking for a way to gain the strength I needed to enjoy You, and I didn't find it until I grasped "the Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus," who is "God above all things, blessed forever." <...> I did not know then that God is a Spirit Who has no members extending in length and breadth, and no magnitude: every magnitude is in part smaller than itself, the whole, and if it is infinite, then in some part of it, limited by a certain space, it is less than infinity and is not everywhere whole, like a Spirit, like a God. And what is it about us that makes us like God, and why is it correctly said about us in the Scriptures?: "in the image of God," it was completely unknown to me." ^{[1, pp. 94, 95, 35]} (emphasis ours. – V.R.).

Augustine did not try to prove that God exists. For him, the appeal to his own consciousness did not act as a scientific argument, as, for example, for Swedenborg. "Now," writes the Swedish scientist, "let's turn to experience. That angels have a human form, that is, that they are the same kind of people, I have seen this up to a thousand times: I have talked to them as man to man, sometimes with one, sometimes with many together, and I have never seen their external image differ in any way from human; sometimes I marveled at this but so that this would not be attributed to deception of the senses or imagination, I was given to see them in reality, with full consciousness of feelings and in a state of clear comprehension" ^{[13, p. 42]}. Although after many years of reflection, the existence of God as a spirit became obvious to Augustine, he did not believe that Aristotelian logic could help in proving his existence (we will call such objects "posited"). In fact, the Kantian "thing-in-itself" can also be attributed to such objects: one has to think about it, but it is impossible to verify its existence (therefore, many of Kant's followers denied things-in-themselves).

The situation is different in the sciences of the spirit (humanities). Here, the phenomenon is given to a person in the form of a text (work) that can be interpreted in different ways, and the method of interpretation is determined by the scientist himself. "The possibility of comprehending another," writes one of the first philosophers of the sciences of the spirit, V. Dilthey, "is one of the profound theoretical and cognitive problems... The condition of possibility is that in the manifestation of someone else's individuality there must be something that would not be in the cognizing subject" (quoted in ^{[5, pp. 247-248]}).

"If we understand the text broadly, like any connected sign complex," explains Mikhail Bakhtin, "then art criticism deals with texts. Thoughts about thoughts, experiences of experiences, words about words, texts about texts. This is the main difference between our (humanities) disciplines and the natural sciences (about nature).…The sciences of the spirit. The spirit cannot be given as a thing (a direct object of natural science), but only in symbolic expression, realization in texts.…Each text (as a statement) is something individual, unique and unrepeatable, and this is the whole point of it... it (in its free core) does not allow for either causal explanation or scientific foresight.…The question arises whether science can deal with such absolutely unique individuals... whether they go beyond the scope of generalizing scientific knowledge. Of course, it can" ^{[2, pp. 281, 283, 287]}.

Not only do the phenomena of the humanities act as "unique personalities", formed, among other things, by the position and interpretation of the humanities, but more often their existence cannot be proved. Here is one example, V. Plugin's humanitarian study "The Worldview of Andrei Rublev." Plugin shows that Rublev, creating the fresco "The Resurrection of Lazarus", for some reason violated the medieval artistic canon of depicting this subject. Rublev painted Christ raising Lazarus from the grave, not in front of the entrance to the cave where he was buried, but behind the apostles, who turned to the Lord. Plugin argues that Rublev was a hesychast and solved not so much an artistic problem as a spiritual (ideological) one. From Plugin's point of view, Rublev used the example of this work to illustrate the hesychast interpretation of the gospel story, which consists in the fact that Christ discusses with his disciples (the apostles) the miracle of the resurrection. "Then Jesus told them (the disciples) directly, Lazarus is dead. And I rejoice for you that I was not there, so that they would not believe; but let us go to him.” Plugin is sure that the Jews of Bethany, as a dark, uninspired people, are of little interest to Rublev. They have a third-rate role as extras, so they follow Christ. Rublev focuses his main attention on the apostles who follow the path of knowledge of God" ^{[11, p. 67]}.

It is clear that Rublev existed, but Plugin cannot prove that he was a hesychast and solved not an artistic task, but an ideological one. Nevertheless, the proposed version convinces me and many, because, firstly, Plugin still relies on facts (it was during this period that hesychasm came to Russia, and Rublev became a monk after 40 years), and secondly, Plugin's interpretation well explains both the violation of the pictorial canon and other features of the work. Rubleva ^[11]. In this case, is it possible to consider that a kind of proof of the existence of a phenomenon in the humanities is, on the one hand, the facts obtained during the analysis of the work created by the artist, on the other ‒ a convincing, natural for a certain audience, understanding (explanation) of this phenomenon? We will call such an object "possible". Interestingly, a possible object is a multiple object ("popularizable"), because any sufficiently complex work allows for not one convincing interpretation, but several, and therefore the assumption of several phenomena of one thing in itself, according to Kant.

The cycle of formation of objects of philosophy and humanities

We noted above that platonic love did not always exist, but was constituted by the efforts of Plato and his followers. Moreover, we can talk about the cycle of formation of such phenomena, which include many objects of philosophy and the humanities. Indeed, at first platonic love exists only in the form of a "virtual object" (assumed) in the text of the Feast. Then in the practice of lovers who liked this work and who decided to practice platonic love. At this second stage, a new kind of love develops (becomes). At the next stage, platonic love appears as a "real" social and psychological object. By the way, Plutakh in the dialogue "About Eros", on the one hand, accepts the basic characteristics of platonic love, but on the other hand, writes that it is better to love not a beautiful young man and on the side, but your own spouse in the family. The life and evolution of platonic love begins, undergoing transformations in the following cultures: in the medieval in the form of courtly love and in the New European romantic ^[12]. These forms of platonic love and evolution can already be studied, which I did. The following row of objects is obtained:

Virtual → becoming → real → possible

But back to Swedenborg. Kant, declaring his teaching to be a fantasy, obviously believed that the world described in this teaching did not exist. But clearly such a world reflected the consciousness and the life world of Swedenborg, which accepted both the spiritual world and the physical world. Interestingly, such instructions are often found in his scientific works.:

"1. Read the Word of God often and reflect on it.

2. Subjugate oneself in everything to the will of God's providence.

3. Observe true decency in all actions and always keep an impeccable conscience.

4. To fulfill honestly and truthfully the duties of one's rank and duty of service, and to try to make oneself a useful member of society in all respects" ^{[13, p. 4]}.

Swedenborg tried to think logically, so he rejected the Trinity as a contradiction, for him God is one. As a physicist, he could not conceive of creating a human out of "nothing", therefore, in his teaching, people as spirits are immortal. He considered Christ to be the ideal of personality, and it was no accident that Vladimir Solovyov wrote that "Swedenborg's moral teaching (according to, among other things, Metropolitan Filaret of Moscow) was theologically impeccable" ^{[14, p. 518]}.

The epistemological status of Swedenborg-type teachings

Although Kant is right in saying that, from the point of view of the canonical faith accepted in the Christian Church, the Swedenborgian world does not exist, it existed for Swedenborg and his followers, of whom there were quite a lot. "At the moment," writes H. Borges, there is a Swedenborgian church. I think they built a crystal cathedral somewhere in the United States. This church has several thousand followers in the United States, in England, especially in Manchester, in Sweden and Germany. The father of William and Henry James was a Swedenborgian. I've met with the Swedenborgians in the United States, they formed a community there and continue to publish Swedenborg's books, translating them into English" ^{[4, p. 529]}.

Since Swedenborg and the Swedenborgians lived and thought in accordance with his teachings, they could not help but have a consciousness and a life world that corresponded to this teaching. Consequently, a corresponding possible object was formed, in relation to which Swedenborg's teaching acted as a kind of semiotic model. In other words, Kant is right about Swedenborg's teaching, if we mean an adequate description of the Christian world in terms of how it was understood by the Christian Church and its parishioners. And he is wrong when it comes to consciousness and the Swedenborgian world of life. From the point of view of the proposed interpretation, Swedenborg's teaching is not much different from Plato's "Feast" or Michael Laitman's Kabbalah. But the question of the scientific status of such works and texts is quite complicated. On the one hand, they have many features in common with science: the creation of ideal objects and concepts, the attitude towards cognition, the assumption of the phenomenon being studied in thought, and discursive reasoning. But on the other hand, it is very difficult to localize the object under study and prove its existence, often simply impossible.

The problem is further compounded by the fact that science has had two starts. The first relates to ancient culture, when it was formed: the attitude towards the knowledge of real‒life phenomena and the practice of constructing ideal objects, involving, on the one hand, following Aristotelian rules and categories, on the other - the study of what happens by nature. We can talk about the second start, starting from Modern Times; we are talking about F.'s projects.Bacon and the Enlightenment. Here, cognition and nature were understood in a different way: cognition as modeling natural processes using mathematics, nature as "written in the language of mathematics" and experimentally adjusted to mathematical models. Since Bacon's project focused the study on mastering nature (calculation, forecasting, creation of engineering structures), the practical use of scientific knowledge gained in the study of nature is brought to the fore (in turn, this attitude significantly determined scientific knowledge). In addition, Bacon's project inclines other institutions of modern times (government, education, industry) to work for natural science.

In the humanities, attitudes towards cognition and the construction of ideal objects remain, but tasks are changing (not to master nature, but to understand man-made works and texts), as well as understanding the phenomena under study (not classes of phenomena, but individuals, "individual phenomena", in addition, as M.Bakhtin notes, texts in symbolic terms, "the interaction of spirits", reflexive knowledge, etc.).

The non‒differentiation of natural sciences and humanities and new hybrid types of research, for example, interdisciplinary or social, in which two methodologies are implemented simultaneously - natural sciences and humanities, have created a situation where it is difficult to establish the epistemological status of many disciplines claiming to be science and, consequently, to draw a line between science and non-science. To resolve this situation, it is probably necessary to take the next step in the development of the philosophy of science. Our research was aimed precisely at advancing in this direction.