The metaphor of the scientific revolution in scientists’ reflexion

Natalia G. Baranetz
Ulyanovsk State Uni­ver­si­ty
Andrey B. Verevkin
Ulyanovsk State Uni­ver­si­ty

The metaphor of the sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tion in sci­en­tists’ reflex­ion

Abstract. This paper points to the change of Russ­ian epis­te­mol­o­gists’ atti­tude to Thomas Kuhn’s con­cept of sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tions since the 1970s and pos­es the ques­tions con­cern­ing the recog­ni­tion of Kuhn’s the­o­ry by nat­ur­al sci­en­tists in Rus­sia, as well as the impact of philo­soph­i­cal the­o­ries of sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge on stim­u­lat­ing the reflex­ion upon the devel­op­ment of sci­ence. The authors describe the image of the philo­soph­i­cal con­cepts of sci­ence in the view­points of the well-known physi­cists Vitaly L. Ginzburg and Yuri N. Efre­mov. Ginzburg believed that Kuhn’s basic con­cepts (“par­a­digm”, “nor­mal sci­ence” and “anom­aly”) are mean­ing­ful­ly unde­fined. He denied the nov­el­ty of the main idea of the book about the change of the slow, evo­lu­tion­ary devel­op­ment of sci­ence for the peri­ods of cri­sis and the sharp tran­si­tion to new ideas. Advo­cat­ing the ide­al of a sci­ence puri­fied from any dis­tor­tions, the astronomer-observ­er Efre­mov rejects the idea of sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tions and the entire Kuhn’s the­o­ry in his own inter­pre­ta­tion.
The paper demon­strates the rea­sons for the rejec­tion of sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tions in the his­to­ry of math­e­mat­ics among spe­cial­ists. The authors con­trast the views of Russ­ian and Anglo-Amer­i­can math­e­mati­cians (Yuri I. Manin, Michael J. Crowe, Her­bert Mehrtens) con­cern­ing the applic­a­bil­i­ty of the metaphor of the “sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tion” to the his­to­ry of math­e­mat­ics. It is not­ed that while in the Anglo-Amer­i­can sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty there have been attempts to “try on” the idea of sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tions to math­e­mat­ics, Russ­ian math­e­mati­cians, when con­sid­er­ing the his­to­ry of sci­ence, do not build their recon­struc­tions on the metaphor of the “sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tion” and the idea of “com­pe­ti­tion between research pro­grams”. To them, these con­cepts are inap­plic­a­ble in describ­ing the his­to­ry of math­e­mat­i­cal ideas. The authors con­clude that the heuris­tic poten­tial of the impact made by the above-men­tioned con­cepts on the sci­en­tists’ view­points depends on the dis­ci­pline they belong to, and every­day sci­en­tif­ic prac­tices form their atti­tude to the image of sci­ence.

Key­words: sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tion, phi­los­o­phy of sci­ence, sci­en­tists’ reflex­ion, pic­ture of the devel­op­ment of a dis­ci­pline, math­e­mat­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty.

DOI: 10.5840/dspl20181223

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