Ideas and Ideals

The article discusses what the technology is and how one can build a humanitarian technology. It is shown that the technology is introduced as a new reality, which describes the industrial activities in the language of operations, their conditions, division of labor and management; at the same time, technology is characterized by the quality of installation, cost savings, standardization, rational description of the production processes, optimizing them for the training of new professionals – technologists. The author characterizes the features of the humanitarian approach and cognition. Though it is impossible to introduce a unique personality, which is characteristic of the humanitarian approach, into the technology, it is quite possible to provide a functional place for it. And it is better to consider not "a unique personality", the behavior of which, is difficult to foretell, but “a common personality", which is characterized by certain behaviors, because such a person always acts in the way, defined by the set rules predetermined by social conditions. In order to construct a realistic, humanitarian technology with a practical application, it is necessary to organize two activities: training and institutional support as well as the organizational one. The author illustrates these statements with the example of constructing a humanitarian technology and discusses the conditions for its implementation.

The article is devoted to the role of the initial empirical data in the process of scientific knowledge and scientific prognostication, autonomy of these data to a certain extent in relation to theory. The author gives a scheme of the relationship of the initial data, creative intuition, scientific theories, reduction rules and the empirical consequences of the theory in the process of scientific knowledge. This scheme is valid to a certain extent and for a process development research prognosis and for making decision on the basis of this prognosis.The author of the article systematically analyses Popper's scheme of growth of scientific knowledge and shows that this scheme is broken, if we accept Popper's assertion that the so-called data and facts are theoretical interpretations. Specific examples proved that our senses and their testimony are to a certain extent autonomous in relation to the theories and myths. With the help of a concrete example it is shown that the perceptual component must be present in every empirical fact and that factual language is a complex phenomenon: its concepts are developed under the influence of this theory, other theories, practical activities, sensory experience and everyday experience.

The existence of the fictitious and hidden competences in the structure of educational standards is the problem of the Higher Education Reform implementation. The object of research is reconstruction of a number of the competences which are absent in the regulating documents, but they are important for subjects in professional socialization and they are really incorporated into it. During methodological study of the project of reconstruction of the young specialist model we assumed that the existence of the hidden competences is not a secret for students; and also – that many competences, declared in educational programs, have a fictitious character for them. This assumption became a basic hypothesis for the empirical research "Professional Socialization in the Conditions of Competence-Based Reconstruction". Readiness to use official position for personal enrichment, ability to join false conventions, to manipulate interlocutors, to strike up useful acquaintances and to derive benefit from them (in P. Bourdieu's terminology – to create and use social capital), ability and readiness to use gaps and contradictions in the legislation are referred to the hidden competences. The research has revealed that these competences are real and pressing for all levels and social subjects comprising the system of higher education.

This article examines the dynamics of the process of geographical perception of Siberia, in the aspect of the forming of the idea of Siberia as geographical and cultural unity. There are presented, in particular, quite legendary testimonies of foreign travelers who almost up to the end of the 17th century were getting pretty random information from Russian merchants; some data from the proper Siberian Chronicles is also given. Taking into account the idea of empire as a political structure that prevailed in the last 2,500 years of human history, author deals with the cultural and political factors which has determined the integrity of the idea of Siberia as a specific megaregion. Particularly the question of the nature of the development of Siberia in terms of the corresponding type of colonization is examined. It is concluded that the population of Siberia, despite the fact that it was used and even became in the first place famous as a region of exile, the consciousness of Siberians is not typical for colonial territory. Since the end of the 18th century the representation of a Siberian as a special group of the Russian population is firmly established.

In the interview Prof. Shadrikov speaks about the recent educational reform in the Russian Federation. Its shortcomings are discussed, and the problem how it should be organized. The modern pre-school, school and higher education should be tailored to age and take into account the uncertainty of the cultural characteristics of different social groups and individuals. The difficulties of developing the contents of education and training are also under analysis, which is a very serious challenge in the new informational environment. The need is emphasized to get away from the fiscal targets and not setting the task to save, but rather to achieve high quality education. The situation with the standards is also touched, especially in the area of higher education, and the important conclusion is given that the standard is proposed in the terms of competencies yet the results are checked in terms of knowledge, and this situation determines the discrepancy between the opportunities provided by well-developed standards, and the real possibility to implement them. The situation in higher education connected with the realization of Bologna process, from which in recent time only two-level educational system is borrowed, yet everything else, basically the spirit of the Bologna process, is thrown away and forgotten, including the good financing and development of national education systems.

In the article the author analyzes the key semantic aspect of the concept “event” in the philosophy of Mikhail Bakhtin. This aspect is related to the understanding of the being as self-transcendence. The author shows that Bakhtin defines a person’s position as his productive participation in the existence of being as a whole. Such a determination presupposes an understanding of the being as an open, closed, noninteger whole. In this perspective, the idea of equal to itself existence of being is fantastic and unrelated to reality. A truly relevant is the idea of being on the whole that comes true. The being on the whole never is, but always occurs due to participation of a responsible subject.

The article is devoted to the prospects of further development of the conceptualization of the notion of heredity in a wide range of biological and socio-humanitarian aspects in synthesis of them. The transition from one stage of knowledge to another, deeper one, is carried out in just such a way. The new aspects of reality that are displayed in terms in the process of cognition are fixed in terms. The notion of inheritance is a fundamental notion of genetics. Therefore, the scientific language is a kind of science's basic information code. This notion is in unity with the notions of variation and selection, and indicates the phenomenon of transmission to offspring of the material factors that determine the development of the characteristics of the organism in specific environmental conditions. The analysis of historically developing ideas about heredity is an important philosophical and methodological problem of genetics. A scientific language is an open system of concepts, which is constantly growing due to the inclusion of new knowledge about aspects of reality and is deepening due to the detection of new properties, structural elements, etc. This means that the history of science can be presented as the history of the development of its notions. The clarification of the historical path of development of science and its conceptual apparatus, of extent of its impact to solve practical problems, of its contribution to the development of knowledge and culture in general makes possible adequately assess its current state, identify its problems and points of growth, and contribute to the definition of its development prospects. The article analyzes the prospects for conceptualizing the concept "inheritance" and proposes a program of studies of these prospects; the program is based on the concepts of the outstanding modern geneticists.

The subject of this issue is a question on a substance of every being, its specific features and conditions of its cognition and existence. This is an attempt to systematize Aristotle's point of view about this problem, presented in different fragments of his treatises "Physics", "Metaphysics", "Categories", "On the Soul". Aristotle pointed out the fallacy of identifying the substance and any beings. He explained, that not any being can be considered as a substance, though sometimes it's rather difficult to distinguish them. Aristotle offered different classifications of kinds of substance and examined their main features and conditions of their being. Two approaches about comprehension of substances are compared in this article. Socrates and Plato’s position is based on the principle of the direct speculative comprehension. Aristotle offered the system of categories as the universal way for description and cognition of the essence of any substance. To be means to be as a definite "what" in a completeness of its "whatness". Everything can exist only as a definite something. Instead, a problem of possibility of changes and movement of substances is discussed in a comparison of positions of Aristotle and Plato. After all we can see the being of substances not to be a simple static presence of empty pure forms, no having any material substratum. They presented a unity of the intention to achieve its entelecheia and achievement of one, i.e. a unity of the goal, process and result.

"The book is dedicated to the memory of an outstanding Russian philosopher Aleksandr Pavlovich Ogurtsov (1936 - 2014); his friends, colleagues and students, with whom he felt free to live and think, contributed to this book. Philosophy for A. P. Ogurtsov was the ultimate method of the relationship between a man and the world, themes meanings of this attitude to the world, society, and culture, to himself and to the Other. He paid special attention to the Philosophy of Science, which, as his friends say, did not even slightly resemble the positivist universal taxonomy which has been rediscovered anew today and students, undergraduates and graduate students are forced to study it. The main idea was the sense of a "mainland layer", the historical position of any fundamental scientific knowledge, which manifests itself in logic, and it might be open to the philosopher and closed to the classifier. The way of A. P. Ogurtsov’s thoughts was the way of his life ─ it is not by chance that many of his articles are devoted to his being a philosopher. "

Representatives of the Russian Neo-Eurasianism, trying to root this intellectual tradition, turned to the identification and analysis of the Eurasian motives in the Russian classical literature of XIX century. This research assumes the presence of the structural components in literary texts that correspond to the Eurasian vision of Russia as the "Middle World" in the East-West dichotomy. The author of the article, using the method of structural analysis, reveals the presence of such components in Nikolai Chernyshevsky novel "What Is to Be Done?" One of them is represented in the structural core of the novel in the form of clear anthropological oppositions using two narrative functions: appearance and character (temperament) of the heroes. Another component is Rakhmetov, one of the main characters of the novel. The author comes to the conclusion that Rakhmetov is the first image of a Eurasian in Russian literature. At the same time, the ideology of this image, imposed to the reader by the author, appears to be inconsistent with the art material used for its construction.This is due to the fact that Chernyshevsky himself was not a Eurasian, he was a typical Westerner, who believed that oriental components in Russian culture hinder the development of Russia and they have to be suppressed.