Ideas and Ideals

The article is devoted to the assessment of the relevance of conducted scientifi c research using the indicators proposed by the author and their characterisation based on assigning appropriate weighting coeffi cients to each indicator. Terms and their new defi nitions characterising the relevance of the conducted research are proposed, while their essence and content are disclosed.

The object of the study is the result of research work (regardless of the subject area and research focus), the subject is the relevance of the obtained research results.

The research methodology is based on the method of analyzing the existing approaches to assessing the relevance of research results, as well as the experience of practical activities of the organisation in reviewing the results of research and development work.

In the course of the conducted research it was found that the issues of relevance of the results of research work are given much less importance than the relevance of the topic, purpose and objectives of research at the stage of development of tactical and technical (technical) task of research work. At the same time, in the course of reviewing the results of completed R&D work, the reviewer lacks methodological approaches to their adequate assessment.

According to the results of the conducted research, the criteria and conditions are defi ned, when fulfi lled, it is considered appropriate to recognise the results of the conducted research as relevant. Practical recommendations on the use of the obtained research results as a basis for the methodology of assessing the relevance of the obtained results of research and development work are given.

The participants of the round table discussed the problems of transformation of the information space and the place of the human being in this process. This includes the issues of introducing artifi cial intelligence in the learning process, and the nature of human changes in the new conditions dictated by the need to respond to the relevant challenges of ever-changing technologies. The question of the changing relationship between knowledge and information in connection with the habit of using smartphones, when there is a serious degradation of the value of knowledge. Also we observe a paradigm shift in the education system and the need to respond to it as adequately as possible. The problem of adapting to fundamentally changing communication technologies that change social relations and ways of identifi cation and even self-identifi cation. The question arises about the suffi ciency of the level of human adaptability in relations with the environment formed by these technologies and  more broadly – about the validity of the ideas of transhumanism. The phenomenon of imitation of thinking is discussed, when the tasks requiring solution are reduced to the process of ‘stimulus – reaction’, as well as the problem of creativity control by bureaucratic structures in the conditions of changes in the relations between scientifi c and technological progress and social progress.

One of the objections to the Pythagorean argument is the reference to the authority of modern physicists, most of whom call themselves atheists or agnostics. Even if there had not been any atheists among the founding fathers of physics, something is wrong with the argument of the intelligent design of the Universe, since so many physicists of the last half-century do not believe in God, the critique goes. To answer this sort of objections, we discuss here the views of Richard Feynman, Steven Weinberg, and Stephen Hawking, each of whom called himself an “atheist”. We attempt  to show in what sense they indeed were atheists and in what sense they were not. Roger Penrose, the eminent physicist and thinker, called himself “rather agnostic”, but he was convinced of the universe’s purpose, and explained what this conviction was based on: not blind faith but the very special character of the physical laws and the initial conditions of the Big Bang. Penrose illustrated his metaphysical views by means of graphic images, one of which we discuss in a dedicated chapter.

Our review of contemporary physicist-philosophers would be very incomplete without the “practicing but unbelieving Christian” Freeman Dyson, with his concept of “the most interesting of all possible worlds”, and so we talk about him too.

We also consider Max Tegmark’s mathematical multiverse hypothesis and show that it does not stand up to criticism in light of the cognitive self-consistency of the universe.

Is it rational to reject the hypothesis of intelligent design when all other hypotheses about the cause of the highly refi ned nature of physical laws fail? The chapter “Absurdity and Skepticism” is devoted to this question.

At the end of this essay and the whole series, we familiarize the reader with the view of the mass man in science and the nature of his “atheism” that was expressed by Jose Ortega y Gasset, supported by Erwin Schrödinger, and commented on by Steven Weinberg.

The article is devoted to rethinking the content of the category ‘synthetic’ in the conditions of modern natural science (fi rst of all, synthetic biology) and its epistemological value. In this paper the category ‘synthetic’ is explored as a product of the epistemological method. The authors carried out an exposition of ‘the synthetic’ category based on the most modern materials of scientifi c and philosophical research. The article attempts to determine the content of the category ‘synthetic’, its place and scope in modern science, by taking into account options for defi ning ‘synthetic’, its advantages and disadvantages.

The works of J. Schummer, in which he develops an ontology of biochemical interactions and the epistemic possibilities arising in this connection, were taken as a basis for the classifi cation and epistemological evaluation of specifi c manifestations of ‘the synthetic’ in the scientifi c fi eld. The concept of F. Bianchini defi nes any ‘synthetic’ as ‘artifi cial’.

The article shows that the category ‘synthetic’ is considered as a theoretical construct that allows for the comprehension of phenomena which epistemological status cannot be unambiguously defi ned as ‘natural’. In the process of convergence of technosciences, there is a tendency towards the emergence of the ‘synthetic’ phenomenon as the main resource through which scientifi c knowledge is obtained. Due to the achievements of synthetic biology in modern science, the problem of the relationship between ‘natural’ and ‘artifi cial’ is reshaped. This happens due to the qualitative and quantitative expansion of the phenomenon of ‘artifi cial’ / ‘synthetic’ and rethinking the differences between them.

Recent advances in the synthesis of organisms and their structural parts, such as the extended genome, allows for ontologists and epistemologists signifi cantly expand the possibilities of categorizing ‘the synthetic’ and build an ontology of ‘the synthetic’.

An important role belongs to the humanistic potential formed by creative abilities, moral and intellectual qualities of a person in the development of modern innovative processes. The article deals with the question of the innovative nature of man and the temporal foundations of his existence in the context of modern temporal issues. Conducting a comparative analysis of the interpretations of the categories of temporal issues helped to identify those meanings that lead to an awareness of the value of human innovation orientation. The most important role belongs to the spiritual potential in creativity, and its development directly depends on a person’s attitude to the temporality of his/her existence. In this regard, modern thinkers pay attention to the study of the antithesis of the trivial and unique in the temporal existence of man and the nature of repetition as a dilemma of the past and the future. Emphasizing the key importance of the moment in a person’s determination to follow a moral path, they answer the question of his/her belonging to the past, present or future. The conditions of innovation, which become obvious when a person orients himself/herself to the spiritual foundations of his/her being, are contained in each of the time modes. The author concluded that the nature of the temporal existence of an innovation-oriented person is distinguished by the uniqueness of its moments as the beginning of the production of new ideas, the unpredictability of the future and the variability of understanding of the past as a condition for free creative choice in the present moment. All these qualities are important in the development of modern innovations, as they ensure innovative continuity and the production of innovative ideas.

The ideas and results that are in the background of the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics had an immense impact on our understanding of reality. Therefore, it is crucial that these implications reach also the general public, not only the scientists in the related fi elds of quantum mechanics. The purpose of this review is to attempt to elucidate these revolutionary changes in our worldview that were eventually acknowledged also by the Nobel’s committee, and to do it with very few references to mathematical details (which could be even ignored without undermining the take-away essence of the text).

We fi rst look into the foundational disputes between Einstein and Bohr about the nature of quantum mechanics, which culminated in the so-called EPR paradox – the main impetus for all the research that would ensue in this context. Next, we try to explain the statement of the famous Bell’s theorem – the theorem that relocated the Einstein-Bohr discussions from the realm of philosophy and metaphysics to hard-core physics verifi able by experiments (we also give a brief derivation of the theorem’s proof). Then we overview the experimental work of 2022 year’s Nobel laureates, which had the fi nal say about who was right in the debate. The outcome of these experiments forced us to profoundly revise our understanding of the universe.

There are two points of view on the systemic approach and its use: according to the fi rst, this approach is conceived as universal, suitable for any disciplines and practices, according to the second, it includes a specifi c objectivity, should grasp the features of a certain fi eld of knowledge. In order to choose one of them, the author analyzes on the basis of two cases (“The Critique of Pure Reason” by I. Kant and the works of G.P. Shchedrovitsky) the formation and features of the systemic approach, showing that it is the design of an object of study in a special epistemic situation. Its feature is, on the one hand, the presence of several objects that describe the proposed object, on the other hand, the belief in the existence of an ontology and laws in accordance with which this object can be designed. The systemic approach in this version (as the confi guration of various objects and the design of an object based on this process) is compared with humanitarian and socio-humanitarian research and development (A.S. Pushkin’s personality research and the successful Donor project), which make it possible to do without systemic ideas and thinking. They are replaced by methodology and research in the subject. The author draws attention to the fact that the ideas of identifying and searching for the integrity, nature and boundaries of the phenomenon under consideration, taking into account connections and infl uences, the correlation of synthesis and analysis, and a number of others that are today referred to as a systemic approach, were developed meaningfully (in other non-systemic concepts and languages) throughout the entire history of the development of philosophy, methodology and science. As a result, it turns out that it is necessary to distinguish between the methodology of a systemic approach and other methodologies that allow systemic problems and tasks to be solved, so to speak, non-systemically.

Scientifi c natural science, which had been established in European culture since the mid-17th century, began to transmit samples of scientifi c knowledge into the fi eld of studying social reality. Until the 19th century, the only mental form of refl ecting this reality was “primary history,” as Hegel defi ned it, i.e. tradition of historiography coming from Herodotus. This tradition received its design, oriented towards the fi eld of scientifi c rationality, from the German historian Leopold von Ranke: to show “how it really was” (wie es eigentlich gewesen). Its social function is the formation of national historical memory. But methodological refl ection at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries revealed, as it seemed to it, two radical differences between “primary history” and other “sciences of culture” from natural science. In this regard, the categories of “values” and “understanding” were emphasized. The presence of these categories in the foundations of any science determines its specifi cation as a humanitarian science. The fi rst attempts to transfer certain aspects of the disciplinary matrices of natural science to the sphere of social science are associated with the names of Kant and Marx. Both attempts were unsuccessful. But, unlike Kant’s, the “materialist understanding of history” found its supporters and successors. Its main error is the unlawful direct transfer of the semantic content of the category “matter”, as it developed in natural science (the relationships of things), to the relationships between people endowed with consciousness. The addressee of social sciences are cultural forms, the existence of which has an objective status of existence, but relative to the individual consciousness of acting people. These are, for example, social institutions. The humanities deal with meanings, the existence of which is determined by systems of social communications.

The author of the article considers the problem of actual infi nity to be the meta-basis of the genesis of New European science. The author shows the advantages of this approach to identify the internal logic of the genesis of science of the XVII century, as well as to clarify the prospects of modern science, experiencing a crisis of its foundations. The author shows that Nikolai Kuzansky’s ontological project reveals the conditions necessary for the mathematization of nature for the transformation of the fi nite into the actually infi nite, which overcomes the hopelessness of Zeno’s similar attempts. Zeno showed that there is no transition from the fi nite to the actually infi nite. To transform the fi nite into the actually infi nite, the latter must already be given. This kind of presence is revealed by Kuzansky in the apophatic idea of the divine minimum coinciding with the maximum. But at the same time, Kuzansky speaks only about the imaginary, and not the real possibility of transforming nature on the basis of actual infi nity. And in order to turn ‘scientifi c ignorance’ into ‘scientifi c knowledge’, it was necessary to present, outside the theological context, the possibility of transforming nature on the basis of actual infi nity, discovered by Kuzansky. This task was set by the founders of the New European science. The author of the article analyzes and compares the attempts of Galileo and Descartes to ‘tame’ the actual infi nity. The author shows that the difference in their positions on the question of the achievability of reliable knowledge, which laid important milestones in the history of the genesis of New European science (the transition from the scholastic tradition to probabilistic epistemology), is due to the awareness of the complexity of the problem of actual infi nity. As a result, the author shows that neither the theoretical speculations of the founders of science, nor the attraction of modern additional resources unknown to antiquity or the Middle Ages (experiment, pinhole camera) were unable to change anything in the ratio of the fi nite and the infi nite.

In this, the penultimate article of our Pythagorean cycle, we turn to the metaphysical or natural-philosophical heritage of those great men who are referred to as founders or pioneers of physics. The choice of specifi c fi gures in this kind of research is surely arguable to some extent. Our choice is limited by the length of the paper, the availability of relevant texts, and yes, a certain subjectivity of our evaluations.

After a brief Introduction, we give an overview of the tension between the paradigm of physical reductionism and the intuition of free will. We show how the author of the fi rst universal physical theory, Isaac Newton, resolved this contradiction, and how he held the belief in the authenticity of free will while sacrifi cing not only mechanistic reductionism but also belief in the omniscience of God. These philosophical problems are then discussed in the light of the modifi cations to physical conceptions of the universe that twentieth-century physics has made.

Turning to James Clerk Maxwell, the author of the equations of electrodynamics, we note his philosophical primacy in pointing out the important feature of physical laws that ensures their discoverability: the correlation of their mathematical complexity with the diffi culty of observing the corresponding layer of reality.

Speaking of Albert Einstein’s philosophical views, we note in them a combination of a deep understanding of the mystical basis of physics with the naivety of moral philosophy. Like Einstein, Max Planck was a deistic idealist who did not believe in a “personal God,” but, aware of the enormous moral signifi cance of Christianity, only shortly before his death he publicly declared this unbelief as a long-held conviction.

Refl ections on Niels Bohr lead us to conclude that he was an apophatic mystic, combining the complementary qualities of a passionate desire for theoretical clarity and an anticipation of its impossibility.

Erwin Schrödinger, to whose views we next draw attention, expressed them in terms of Vedanta idealism. It seems to us that the same views can be expressed within a European context, albeit unorthodox.

Turning to Werner Heisenberg, who in his youth read Plato in the original, we show not only his Platonism, but also his understanding that the connection with God is the moral foundation, the loss of which is ruinous. The drama of being, according to the author of the uncertainty relation, has to do with the fact that the divine will is essentially embodied through human freedom, through the indeterminacy of conscious choice.

In the section on Wolfgang Pauli, we note his amazement at the profound harmony of the mental and the material spheres, which reveals itself with particular power in the mathematical discoverability of the material world. Hence began his search for a possible reason for this agreement, the search accompanied by many years of conversations with Carl Gustav Jung.

The concluding section of the article is devoted to Paul Dirac, who, unique among the great physicists, went from Marxist atheism to preaching about Godmathematics, and then to regular prayers in church.