Ideas and Ideals

The subject of this article is the role of philosophy in the history from Antiquity till nowadays. Namely in Ancient Greece the idea of the omnipotence of speculative knowledge appears, which has found its particularly strong expression in Pythagorean doctrine. The idea of omnipotence belongs is common to great researchers who are prone to unjustified extension of the scope of their methods. In particular the harm caused to the scientific knowledge of Plato is analyzed. The success of science has brought to life the fantastic philosophy of rationalism, and this science was undoubtedly the Greek geometry. Under the influence of Plato and of Euclidean geometry theology arises in the Middle ages. Only in the eighteenth century science in our sense has become the catalyst of progress. The crucial role was played by Newton, who, by establishing differential and integral calculus, had substantiated the philosophy of empiricism, and had secure its historic victory. Communism as well as fascism grew out of the so-called "German classical philosophy", which was the continuation of the medieval philosophy of rationalism. Yet scientists, unlike priests of the past, do not undertake the attempt to build the unified worldview. The appearance of the objective science was a rejection of important types of previous knowledge. At the same time the humanistic weltanschauung of the New age stands in accordance with science and ready to take her new discoveries. It opens up the creative freedom to shape the future of humankind.

In the proposed article a comparatively novel concept of megaregion has been offered in modern analytical discourse, i.e. by economic, socio-cultural and geopolitical dimensions. The megaregion has been interpreted as the combination or constellation of the regions, close to each other by territory and history, i.e. Space and Time. Different concepts of the megaregion have been observed, i.e. a) geographical and geopolitical determination b) megaurban actual trends c) socio-cultural diversification, consolidated in the “frame” of the megaregion. First of all, and mostly, the work is correlated with the exact enormous by its space and resources the megaregion Siberia, which, according to the world classification spreads from the Urals up to the Pacific Ocean. Conceptual analysis of any megaregion suggests it to be carried put by the temporal (historical) and special (geographical) squares and along three axes — economic, socio-cultural and geopolitical ones. Without doubt, it’s important to investigate organizational, governing and legal institutions in the context of the megaregion, but this ought to be the subject of the next article.

This article investigates the parameters which allow to consider Siberia in the capacity of a megaregion. From the historical point of view the relationships are analyzed between the state and spontaneous mastering of Siberian territories from the geopolitical and managerial aspect. The role and place of the center of gravity of the Siberian territories is examined, and it is shown that none of the major cities has become such a centre, either economically or culturally. This question is considered also from the point of view of the concept of provinciality. It is shown that the most interesting developmental projects of the Siberian megaregion take it as a whole territory, stretching from the Urals to the Pacific and northward to the Arctic, and only such an approach (not dividing it to particular clusters) can fully reveal its geopolitical significance. Culturally, the difficulty of life in Siberia, as well as the usual diverse contacts of different ethnic and religious groups predetermined the original tolerance of the Siberian population.

“Scientific communism” was introduced into educational programs of all soviet higher education institutions in 1963/64. It is important to study the history of this discipline for it effectively displays transformation of social sciences into a coherent system of disciplines during “The Thaw”. This discipline emerged in the period of destalinization as a result of mass request for renovation and rationalization of social knowledge. During the period of its institutionalization, “scientific communism” was perceived by many specialists as a new, truthful Soviet sociology. In the 2nd part of the article the author shows how the discipline was influenced by the changes in the World socialist movement, in which the Communist Party of China challenged ideological leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This article shows that the discipline emerged as the result of changes in the official ideology, institutional changes in the Soviet higher education and in the global ideological rivalry.

The article is dedicated to the discussion of controversial issues of modern noospherology. Global deformation of the biosphere under the influence of human activities has led to the fact that Humanity has no alternatives to the transition to the noosphere. The article also justifies the need for the following items: a) to interpret the noosphere from the perspective of co-evolution of society and nature; b) to replace the orientation towards sustainable development into the orientation towards the co-evolutionary development.

The author considers problematical character of the relations of Christianity with different cultures as one of the bright features of European civilization. Attempts to understand it were made throughout the whole history of Christianity. It is necessary to examine continuous penetration of the most diverse cultures from other continents into Europe which faced the existential conflict with this religion. At the same time the author analyzes the problematic relations of Christianity with the European mental and cultural compositions. They naturally contradicted Christianity which had been created outside the continent. This conflict can be easily observed during the period of early Christianity when Christianity was more represented by a set of ideas, than by a sum of artifacts. Besides, Christianity was formed not due to the evolution of certain initial paradigm knowledge but as a result of synthesis of the elements of almost all known at that time cultures. The author considers the history of interaction between Christianity and the European cultural streams, and he also reviews some forms and methods of that opposition. Church played a special role in that opposition and Christianization can be presented as the movement of the Church to a greater extent, than a religion. At the same time Christianization is the information conquering of new space. Also the role of this religion in the preservation of the European information unity should be highlighted as well as its role in the struggle against cultural interventions from the outside.

In this article the problem of reflecting historical dynamics of a society in modern humanitarian knowledge is discussed. The author shows, that in the modern humanitarian knowledge the tendencies to imitation the cognitive activities are widely presented that is reflected in the reduction of real conceptual and logical complexity of theoretical descriptions of social phenomena. This reduction is generated, among other things, by actual ignoring the principle of historicism in characterizing the studied objects. First of all, with such an approach the qualitative variability of social phenomena is ignored. To reveal the qualitative variability of social phenomena is possible on the basis of special reflection of their historical dynamics. The paper proposes a method to overcome such imitative trends in the consistent implementation of sociocultural cognition on the basis of the principle of historicism. According to this principle any phenomenon should be described theoretically in the whole process of its own internal development. Any social object at every moment of its existence is the result of its own genesis. That is why the consistent categorical description of dynamics of its development as a quality formation through internally irreducible to one another stages would really implement the cognitive principles, declared in the sociocultural approach. The proposed solution is constructed on the basis of socio-philosophical reflection of the historical cognition characteristics of a society as a dynamic system.

The main thesis of the article is that the concept of economic reality cannot be interpreted from the point of view of such a category as “matter”, although in the Marxist tradition this is exactly the case. This was associated with characteristic intention of Marx to direct transfer of the scientific picture of the world created by the earlier scientific forms of natural science into the area of economic and general social knowledge. However, as it is shown in the article, the scientific picture of the economic world is represented by the forms of culture that are fundamentally different from natural phenomena. For example, according to F.A. Hayek it is linked to the concept of "subjectivity", according to K. Popper's – with the “Third world”.

At the round table the problem was discussed of using mathematical methods in the analysis of historical process, or methods of historical macrosociology. On the one hand, it is obvious that in the history different societies have certain regularity, which can be examined by statistical methods. This applies to demographic waves as well as to certain economic realities, etc. For instance, we can point to the Kondratieff’s waves. If we take it for granted, it appears that it is possible to speak about the corresponding laws. However two problems appear straight away – the quality of data on which to rely, and the ratio of the peculiarities of the history of some particular societies and the general laws which characterize any society. Economists, the most advanced in application of mathematics, are building system models, while historians are just approaching to this. There is inductive approach to these issues as well, when historians use statistics to analyze certain specific processes. Also such issues were discussed such as the transformation of professional history into applied political science, which is certainly counterproductive from the point of view of science as such, and the problem of the access to the archives. In addition, it was indicated that there is a deep connection between historical research and such complex discipline as adaptology. Participants also discussed the problems of interpretation of historical data and the status of social sciences in general.

The author has devoted his article to the consideration of the moral aspects of such an important phenomenon of human communication as a RESPONSE. In our responses we humans behave honestly / dishonestly, resolutely / hesitantly, directly / evasively, respectfully / impudently, responsibly / irresponsibly, humanely / ruthlessly, adequately / with servility. It happens not only on the atomic level of the relationship between two individuals, but also where there is a line connection between an individual and a group, between two groups, an individual and a community, a group and a community. And there is every reason to attribute the answers, given by the actors to each other, to the semantic field studied by the ethical science. The answer is not simply a reaction to the event that has caused it. It's an emotional experience, a thought, an evaluation, or an action of the subject caused by significant moral circumstances. In response, people actively express their attitude to the events, showing their moral culture. Consideration of the generalized situation structure where there is a morally significant answer (SUBJECT – ADDRESSEE – OBJECT – CONTEXT – MOTIVATION – PURPOSE – TOOLS – RESULT) extends the ethical philosophical possibilities in understanding human culture, identifying the moral resources of an individual, a group, and a human community.