This article highlights the problem of the connection between thought and scientific language. The hypothesis of nonidentity of thought-forms in different cultures, expressed in language, and the reflection of the spatial thinking in scientific terminology is tested. Author researches Mandarin language as having a phonetic system and principles of the expression of meaning a lot different from IndoEuropean languages. The research is concentrated primarily on the terms included in the semantic field of “elementary particle physics” (mainly the names of the particles) as it is a relatively recent field of science which had not had any roots in Chinese culture and did not have indigenous scientific vocabulary. First the author describes the peculiarities of Mandarin phonetic system and syllable structure which hardly let using transcription or transliteration in producing of scientific terms, and also gives the examples of translation and transcription of some western terms and names into Chinese. The author shows different forms of the assimilation of European scientific terminology and also different methods of forming scientific terms in Mandarin language. It is shown, that the terms were translated into Chinese either by loan translation (which sometimes leads to inaccurate reflection of meaning), transcription (only for the terms derived from the names such as “boson” or “fermion”) or the descriptional expression of meaning (such as tachyon, bradyon, luxon). The last one lets produce the terms which reflect the essence of the phenomena more accurately. Also the author shows the connection between scientific terminology and the traditional world view and native Chinese concepts (like “yin” and “yang”). It is concluded that Chinese scientific language tends to be visual and descriptive as much as possible, which in a certain sense indicates the reflection of the spatial thinking in linguistic phenomena.

Images of the universe, society and creatures as machines are already to be found in the Early Patristics, and then appear with increasing frequency in an increasing number of contexts during the Middle Ages. The emergence and evolution of such images is caused by the radical transformation of the model of the universe from a self-sufficient cosmos moving and changing its state on its own in antiquity to that of God’s creation with no independent status, put another way, a machine, in medieval culture.The foundation of Descartes’ philosophy seems to be nicely consistent with the medieval model. Reason likens man to God; hence, it is indeed reason that we should rely on in seeking the true basis for understanding reality. The universe is a set of machines; put another way, the purport of its existence and changes to its state are carried out by its Creator. The human mind can comprehend this purport because it is of the same substance as God. Thus, introspection and deduction are the basic principles of Descartes’ research programme.Bacon’s research programme is based on radically different underpinnings. An important feature of the hermetic corpus is the idea of the universe as an animated being. Importantly, this is not an exception from Renaissance thought. By addressing Ancient Greek culture, the culture of the Renaissance revives its view of the universe as a living entity performing on its own.The two paradigms described – medieval (universe as a machine) and Ancient Greek (universe as a self-sufficient entity) – could be seen as originating in two branches in the culture of early Modernity. The former is connected with the treatises of Galileo and Hobbes, and then influences the culture of the Enlightenment; the latter – with the treatises of Spinoza, Copernicus and Bruno, then being later the cause of some important traits of the culture of Romanticism.

The Modern Age development of biology studies was closely connected with the General progress of scientific knowledge. Epistemological optimism was based on the results of liquid and solid mechanics researches and the development of wide-applied experimental and inductive methods in physics. Finding the universal law of the nature and the final explanation for the being became the main research reason. The major philosophers focused their attention on the problem of scientific methods.The process of breaking new intellectual grounds on the domain of physical world explanation was successful and the primary goal seemed to be near.The rise of so-called “biological reality” during the XVII–XVIII centuries supported the development of theoretical concepts, specific research methods and accumulation of factual material. A range of biological disciplines was founded: systematic and comparative anatomy, embryology, anthropology, physiology of plants and animals, were among them. Number of important discoveries demonstrated the possibilities of experimental methods in biology. However, the scope of its use was limited. Comparative description remained the main research method. The development of the classification of living organisms contributed to the understanding of the unity of organic world. At the same time some scientific schools, which programs were based on the other ontological and epistemological purposes, were founded. Their supporters believed that the idea of “organisms as machines” leads to a loss of specificity of biological research object. Due to these discussions the problem of the nature science foundations was formulated.

Usually the impact of the science in the civilization development is identified as scientifictechnical progress. Impact of the science in the moral and culture is important never the less. It is determined by peculiarities of the scientific argumentation, experiences. All of these obvious facts, however, relate only to the first round of correlation ethical themes with modern science. We are talking about the sociocultural context of perception of science and its results of the society, that is, the ethical factors acting on the outside with respect to the position of science, is not inherent in science itself.The second round of the ethical issues in relation to science related to the problem of rationality. Post positivism demonstrated the role and importance of the normative, regulatory and valuable moment in the content of theoretical knowledge. In this regard, even the question arose about the different types of scientific rationality and normatively. In this case we are talking about statutory regulators built into the very content of scientific knowledge, internally inherent therein. There is another circle in which there are ethics and science. It is a question of ethics, regulations, acting in the scientific community, to be exact – communities.There is impossible to get adequate understanding of the genesis of the liberalism, multiculturalism without take into account this role of science.

In the History of historical science, efforts were made to connect the past with the future in one and the same “sense construct”, like it is the case in Christian historiography. Christian historiography has its own forward-looking statements which are proven in the biblical story, because every future is based on a “historical way”. This logic was also followed by K. Marx and N. Fedorov, whose models of future are principally based on historical arguments. In the course of human history,the two philosophers discovered a kind of “intrigue”, which reason is due to the humans past and its solution in human future. In the concepts of both philosophers, intrigue has caused “alienation” of man from his own nature. It also gives meaning and purpose to human history. The purpose of human history exists for both – K. Marx and N. Fedorov – in human emancipation.

This paper is devoted to the analysis of indeterministic models of causation in the analytic philosophy of action. At the beginning of this article, I deal with the most common in contemporary debates indeterministic theories authored by Robert Kane, Daniel Dennett, Alfred Mele and Laura Ekstrom. After critical examination of given theories and finding what in my opinion is their main difficulty I provide an alternative account of action. The approach seeks to integrate rationality inside the action itself and not on the specific causal chain preceding it as it became common since famous article of Donald Davidson “Actions, reasons and causes”. I propose to consider action as onotological entity consisting of three parts: 1) goal; 2) mean(s) to achieve goal; 3) teleological relation “for” between 1 and 2. Therefore, “Jim moved his arm to take a cup of tea” has 3 parts 1) taking a cup of teal; 2) Moving Jim’s arm; 3) “for” between 1 and 2. This account of rational action as I expect would escape some long-living paradoxes of causal theory of action. Finally I provide the concept of non-phenomenal will trying to explain some further properties of agency such as its “active” character and to close an explanatory gap between merely thinking about doing something and actually doing. This non-phenomenal will nevertheless is not meant as something necessarily transcendent and extra-natural, on the contrary it could match naturalistic point of view provided by neuroscience.

The author considers the influence of non-epistemic factors on development of experimental research in Big Science and megascience taking high-energy physics as an example. Stratification of the scientific community to theorists, experimentalists, and instrumentalists in megascience is further analyzed. Examples of competition between experimentalists for limited resources (beam time, buildings) when they strived for re-using their old detectors, thus considerably limiting their epistemic scopes is discussed. I argue that one of the reasons of such competition is the rise of boundary objects in the structure of a scientific experiment as well as related epistemic privileges of certain scientific communities. A role model of the scientific community grounded on the epistemic unity and involving the interactional expertise is suggested.

The social nature of modern science is observable, measurable phenomenon and is manifested in the ability of science and society to provide a powerful impact on each other. This phenomenon cannot be reduced to the close relationship of science and technology, but one should seek its essence in the changing functions of scientific laboratory. The latter becomes a social spacetime machine, in which the ontological and epistemological transitions between the natural and the artificial, the living and the nonliving, the external and the internal, theory and fact, discovery and justification, proof and persuasion, fundamental research and its practical application are analyzed and modeled. Modern science appears as holistic natural process that requires new methodological approaches for its analysis. On this way, the shortcomings of the standard model of science should be overcome. However, this image of science and philosophical quest for a new view of science remains in contrast to the economic dimension of the scientific and technical system, which depreciate fundamental research and absolutizes the role of instrumental product of science. This raises the question of the possibility and need for a new «social philosophy of science», which has to respond to topical challenges: of the time, firstly, by restructuring Russian tradition in the philosophy of science of the 20-21 centuries combining the ideas of Gustav Shpet, Boris Hessen, Vladimir Vernadsky, Mikhail Bakhtin, Mikhail Petrov, with the achievements of Western philosophy of science within the framework of interdisciplinary synthesis of the philosophy of science and the broadly taken cognitive sciences; and secondly, by justifying the strategy for the development of science and technology in the framework of the sixth economictechnological trend («uklad»), developing a balanced interaction of social-engineering technology and global philosophical vision for long-term planning and forecasting according to the socio-cultural and civilizational prospects.

This paper addresses the notion of a “theory of knowledge” from the perspective of sociological reflexivity. What becomes of the meaning of epistemology once the ontological status of knowledge is taken seriously, and its political dimensions impossible to ignore? If the knower is no longer an impersonal, universal subject, but always a situated and purposeful actor, what kind of epistemology do we need, and what social functions can we expect it to play? Sociological reflexivity embraces the historicity and situatedness of knowledge understood as a cultural product and a social practice. It therefore enables us to cope with the collapse of our absolute and universal epistemic foundations and frames of reference, and to redefine the existential and practical meanings of knowledge for social life. In so doing, it also gives political meaning to epistemology itself, understood as a sociological theory of knowledge, not a normative one. Reflexivity can be envisaged as both a “bending back” and a “bending forward” of knowledge as praxis. As a bending back of knowledge on itself, it entails a rigorous understanding of the social conditions of possibility of our thought and our values, and hence a critical assessment of what our worldviews and notions of truth owe to the social order in which we are inscribed. As a bending forward, it turns this objective understanding into an instrument of existential and social emancipation, by delineating the structural spaces of freedom and agency that allow for a meaningful and responsible scholarly practice.

There are two possible contexts of discussions of personal identity: philosophical and psychological. Philosophical context implies ontology. What a philosopher thinks about the criteria of personal identity depends on what she thinks about the ontological status of consciousness. I analyze Derek Parfit’s famous thought experiment concerning brain division and subsequent transplantation of two hemispheres in two different bodies. This experiment is intended to show that a category ‘person’ doesn’t refer to anything ontologically real. However, I present a different interpretation of this thought experiment and argue that the experiment can not be considered as a proof that criteria of diachronical identity of persons differ from the criteria of diachronical identity of other objects.

The overview of publications and discussions of the journal “Sociology of science and technologies” undertaken in the article shows how the scientific community considers the role and position of science in the contemporary society as well as its problems, specific features and the prospects for its development in Russia. Along with the acknowledgement of the sphere of science as important factor and as the priority of the development for the contemporary society, the state of science and formation at Russian society is evaluated as crisis. An public appeal to innovative development in Russia is regarded by many authors as a purely formal stance. With the existing portion of science in Russian GDP (Gross Domestic Product) the passage of the country to the innovation way is viewed as possible. As the indices of the crisis of science, the number of the organizations, which carry out scientific research and its applications, ceases dramatically as well as their staff. The number of domestically created advanced production technologies in Russia increases poorly, the significant exceeding of the export of technologies over the export takes place, while leading world countries obtain essential profit from the export of technologies. A quantity of the developed and mastered competitive technologies is low and continues to cease, that contradicts world-wide economic tendencies. As the basic reasons for this degradation, one notes the following reasons: the insufficiency of financing, the loss of a large quantity of qualified technical cadres and the absence of necessary interaction of science and production. The progress in the technological effectiveness of science and its influence on modernization of Russian economy requires a new scientific and technical policy in the context of formation and realization of general strategy of the social and economic development of the country.

This paper is a review of articles published in the journal “Science, technology and human values” for 2010-2014. This journal publishes the results of interdisciplinary research on the development of science and technology and the influence of social, cultural and political factors on this development.The author discusses four major aspects of the relationship between science and the context in STS: the role of non-scientific values in science, the influence of funding on the process and the results of scientific research, new trends in contemporary science and criticism of STS.