The article discusses the prospects of philosophical understanding of the problem situations that have arisen in modern science due to its thorough involvement in the socio-economic dynamics of technogenic civilization. The natural sciences are under the powerful influence of social demands, which significantly affect the forms, directions, and intensity of the realization of the cognitive potential of natural science. The problems that arise in this case are thoroughly investigated today in specific socio-economic perspectives, as well as through various options for social epistemology. But, the author believes, a full understanding of the relevant problems also involves its discussion in the conceptual field of the philosophical, in its essence, issue of the cultural, and by no means only the socio-pragmatic sense of the phenomenon of scientific knowledge. Moreover, the need of scientists themselves for this kind of philosophical understanding of science is due, according to the author of the article, primarily to the widespread dissemination of scientific collaboration in interdisciplinary research programs. In the course of joint scientific research, acute problems of mutual understanding arise among collaborating scientists of various specialties. Their philosophical understanding and the search for ways to solve them effectively is becoming today the central task of the philosophy of natural sciences. However, to effectively solve these problems, the author insists, both philosophers and scientists need to disclose and analyze the specific sources of relevant philosophical topics that mature in the interdisciplinary practices of science itself. According to the author, first of all, the philosophy of the natural sciences is called upon to solve this problem today.

The article provides a brief overview of the philosophical and methodological problems of modern collaborative research. Collaborations – distributed organizations with variable membership, consisting of a large number (sometimes several thousand) of participants – are common in experimental high-energy physics studying microcosm objects, elementary particles arising in collisions of beams of accelerated particles and nuclei at collider accelerators, as well as in biomedicine and climatology. The central issues are authorship, epistemic ownership and dependence in collaborations, the division of epistemic labor in interdisciplinary research, as well as related issues of scientific organization – peer review and distribution of credit in a team. Formally, the author, conceived as a list of persons appearing as authors of a collaborative scientific work, seems to be defined by the specific participants of the collaboration core, i.e., is a construct. However, the question can also be understood as “What does it mean to be the author of a scientific work?”, and then the answer becomes much less certain. Authorship of thousand-people articles is justified psychologically as the desire for regular performance of a ritual, which allows demonstrating joint belonging to a certain tradition, such as a long experiment, affiliation with the “workshop” of scientists studying phenomena of the microworld, which allows scientists, despite of their daily preoccupation with technical routines, to distinguish themselves from non-epistemic communities (engineers, technicians). However, specific rules that determine exactly who and why are worthy of being included as co-authors have been undergoing changes in recent years. In addition to theoretical significance, many of the problems discussed are related to actual practical issues of scientometry and the organization of scientific research, and therefore approaches to their solution can be directly embodied in scientific policy.

The main characteristic of the modern environment is the negative change by its people – destruction and pollution. Man is part of the biosphere and the technogenic transformations of the biosphere inevitably affect him. Under the influence of technogenic civilization, all spheres of human activity undergo changes, and science above all. Ecology is especially keenly aware of the challenges of technogenic civilization. It focuses on anthropogenic factors, works with the human environment. At the same time, its problem field is expanding due to interdisciplinary research and the allocation of knowledge of new environmental disciplines into an independent industry. The interdisciplinarity of modern ecology is most clearly visible on the example of such a direction as informational ecology. The presence of the digital environment in human life has grown so much that it requires the separation of the digital information environment into a separate subsystem. Information ecology studies the laws of the influence of information on the formation and functioning of man. In turn, interdisciplinarity, assuming the use of knowledge from various branches of science, brings us to the problems of the collective agent of cognition and distributed knowledge. In ecology, the problems of the collective agent of cognition are implemented through crowd-sourcing technology. Ecology is a science that requires massive collection of observation data (samples of water, air, soil pollution in various, sometimes hard-to-reach corners of the planet, observation of fluctuations in the number of species of animals and plants). The popularity of crowdsourcing projects in the field of ecology is explained by the fact that the challenges and threats of anthropogenic civilization have generated such a trend of our time as environmental orientation or environmentalism. Ecological crowdsourcing projects, inspired by the philosophy of environmentalism, can serve as an answer to the challenges of technogenic civilization.

Philosophical and methodological approaches to the processes of experimental measurement are discussed in the context of the modern natural sciences. “A collective experimenter” category is considered as conceptual foundation of modern experimentation in the scientific researches’ directions oriented to the people surviving in the modern world. Deepening of ecological crisis and its overcoming are connected to the process of noosphere’s elements formation. Howard Pattee’s approaches to the essence of the experiment are considered from the perspective of his ideas of dynamic and linguistic complementarity of levels of a complex system. Pattee insists on the fact that artificial complex system does not exist except as abstraction that leaves out the brain in which their description originated. Howard Pattee have made the distinction between rate-dependent dynamical processes and rate-independent linguistic descriptions as essential component of complex systems. According to Pattee, “a measuring device is a physical constraint that tacitly execute a rule that relate a system to an element of description of system. Any attempt to make the dynamics of this execution explicit or detail only obscures the measurements. That is the more you describe the measuring device, the less effectively it measures or describes system. A similar situation occurs when we generate speech. Either we can say what we mean, or we can analyze how we have said it, but trying to do both at the same time renders us incoherent. We cannot speak two languages at once, since the essence of any language is the unity, completeness and coherence of its syntactical rules”. Thus, Pattee’s approach could be used to explain how action with things produces numbers. It is also very important that a complex system must read and write its own messages. Therefore, no external observer is needed for self-describing of the complex system. Pattee’s approach seems to be very promising for Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory development.

The article is devoted to the problem of time in modern science, where in recent years there have been major changes related to the latest discoveries in the field of the foundations of quantum theory. The author refers to works of K.-F. von Weizsacker (which works are not well-known in Russian-speaking field). Weizsacker deploys a large-scale program of building modern physics, while starting (not only as a physicist, but also a professional philosopher) with questions of philosophical interpretation of postulates of modern physics, especially quantum mechanics. His key thesis is that time in physics is fundamentally distinct, which represents the whole physics as an integral scientific discipline. Weizsacker comes from physical and philosophical reflections, that give a special value to his work. Analyzing the conclusions of theoretical physics, namely the issues of substantiation of statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, and, above all, quantum mechanics, Weizsacker comes to the key idea of the structure of time in the substantiation of physical theory. The author in this conclusion disagrees with the opinion of most modern physicists that time has a subjective character, and the modus of the past, present and future reflects its essential character. The allocation of the time structure requires special logic. Such a logic is temporal and quantum. Starting from temporal logic, introducing the concept of possibility and probability, he comes to the substantiation of quantum mechanics. Being modal logic, it is based on the concept of possibility and probability. Key concept for Weizsacker is a binary alternative (Uralternative), closely related to the principle of superposition in quantum mechanics. By introducing the concept of certain alternatives, essentially actualized alternatives, Weizsacker shows how one can get the theory of relativity with its space-time structure. Further, he shows that based on its structure, you can get the theory of relativity. The space-time structure in this case is secondary, relational, as understood by Leibniz, Mach, and Einstein.

The article considers the process of expanding the subject and methods of research in modern environmental science. It is shown how, following the traditional biological science of ecology, new directions of ecological knowledge arise under the influence of research activities: social ecology, anthropoecology. Knowledge about a human being is achieved through the use of both natural and human sciences. A great step in expanding the subject of modern ecology was the intensive formation of human ecology in recent years, in which the need for the formation of a unity of natural science and socio-humanitarian research methods was reflected most clearly. In contrast to biological ecology, in which the main focus of research was the principles of natural science research, in social ecology, socio-humanitarian issues become dominant, and in human ecology-the synthesis of natural science and socio-humanitarian approaches. It's time to abandon the progressive illusions of the past and move on to the awareness of the specifics of sustainable civilizational development at the present stage. This sustainable development presupposes the co-evolution of society and nature, such a co-development of society and nature, in which both components of this single system do not oppose each other, do not conflict, but organically presuppose each other in their combined, harmonious development. Thus, now acting as a unified science that studies the interaction of the central coreof the system and its environment, ecology sets new guidelines for understanding the organization of scientific knowledge, the mood of the modern world picture is falling. A promising way for ecology is to grow into a modern universal organizational science. But this is a distant prospect. However, even now, such a renewed ecology can provide much for Russia’s search for its modern civilizational path, clarifying the organization of scientific knowledge, specifying the contours of the modern scientific picture of the world.

Debates about the role of science in policy making have highlighted the uneasy relationship between knowledge and decision making. Recent high-profile examples include climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic. On the one hand there is an intertwinement between facts and values. On the other hand, there is a tension between the acknowledgement of scientific uncertainty and the justification of political action. This sometimes finds political solutions that are perceived as unsound and unsatisfactory. Some perceive the policies as too weak, some as too strong. Both appeal to fundamental values such as health, wealth, security, freedom, equality, or solidarity. In this article I will argue that we need a more open debate about these issues and a deeper understanding of what is at issue in science policy debates. I shall do so by referring to a Neurathian framework. Neurath’s legacy survives mainly in the history and philosophy of science but is largely forgotten in policy studies and sociology. This needs rectifying, especially in light of the fact that he anticipated central insights that have been attributed to later authors such as Fleck and Kuhn.The paper has the following structure. I first provide some historical and intellectual context by looking at the Vienna Circle and some biographical background about Neurath’s views, and his political engagement. I then examine his epistemology, especially his view of science and the social sciences, leading to his anti-foundationalism. Finally, I turn to the public policy literature which has produced results that partly overlap with, and partly contradict Neurath’s views.

The article discusses the possibility of a naturalistic explanation of phenomenal experience (qualia). It starts with the analysis of one of the thought experiments described by D. Chalmers in his book “The Conscious Mind. In search of a fundamental theory”, namely, a zombie experiment. The article shows that the conclusions of this experiment can be recognized as correct only provided that the experimenter imagines a complete functional analogue of a human being. However, this condition is not feasible, since the experimenter is required to possess the totality of knowledge about the imaginary creature. Experimenter’s imagination is in one way or another determined by the available conceptual schemes. It is concluded that the thesis of the irreducibility of qualia, based on the data of thought experiments, is a presupposition of conscious mind studies, and not their conclusion. From my point of view, this presupposition can be challenged just as N.I. Lobachevsky challenged the intuitive plausibility of Euclid’s fifth axiom. As an alternative understanding of the nature of qualia I propose J. McDowell's approach, which is called “perceptual conceptualism”.

This article is dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the publication of Niklas Luhmann’s book The Science of Society. The system-communicative approach to the analysis of science is reconstructed with a focus on the relation of science to its highly complex external world. The problem of complexity is posed as a key one and is considered in the context of the communicative “reduction of the complexity” of the external world, which science actualizes through its unique binary opposition (truth/falsehood distinction). The complexity of the world that science is facing disintegrates into two large areas. On the one hand, science processes its own external world, i.e., nature, society, the human psyche, as its object and thus fulfills a unique function, the pursuance of research. Scientific communication in this case can be integrated in the form of transdisciplinary studies. On the other hand, science has to respond to the complexity of the internal (i.e., social) external world of the communicative system of science, namely, to interfaced communicative systems of the embracing system of world society (politics, economy, religion, education, law, etc.). In the latter case, science does not fulfill a function but delivers achievements on request to the above-mentioned communicative systems in exchange for resources for interdisciplinary studies, which are occasional and cannot serve for integrating scientific communication on a systematic basis. We will propose some corrections to this theory and apply it to the situation in Russian science.

The article is devoted to the discussion on priority in the invention of scientific journal. In the first part of the article, the author makes a critical analysis of the arguments in the discussion, explicating some contradictions. In the second part, he develops his own approach claiming that the solution lies in the correct definition of the social demand which has impulsed the search for new tools of scientific communication. The author argues that, because of the universality of the socio-economic processes, this demand was common for the early Modern European sciences in general. The author shows that the first scientific journals (Philosophical Transactions, Journal des scavans) have appeared in the atmosphere of competition for the invention of new forms of scientific communication. He argues that Kantian distinction of the public and private application of reason seems to be helpful for better understanding of this process.

A new interpretation of quantum mechanics, the interpretation which became popular in XXI, has been taken under consideration. This is the quantum baysinism (QBism) which may be taken as an extrapolation of the baysian philosophy of probability over the interpretation of quantum mechanics. The baysian philosophy of quantum mechanics has been compared with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, the interpretation which can been treated as standard as it is represented in the main textbooks. In contrast to the Copenhagen interpretation which proceeds from the triplets – nature, apparatus and observer (agent), QBism emphasizes the conscious of the observer: the quantum state is the observer’s state, and by means of the quantum conceptual technique the observer constructs his/her own image of quantum processes. By means of measurement the observer updates his/her quantum state, the measuring apparatus being an extension of the observer’s sensuality. From the point of the QBism’s view the phenomenon of decoherence which is widely discussed in the contemporary literature is not essential for the theory of measurement in quantum mechanics. The decoherence explains why the macroscopic phenomena don’t expose the interference behavior which is characteristic for quantum superposition. From the historicо-philosophical point of view Qbism can be traced back to American instrumentalism and operationalism.

The article substantiates that science, thanks to the latest media in the dissemination of scientific communication (especially computer word processing, big data accumulation, mega-science installations, the latest international networking platforms and collaborations), has gone beyond all institutional, organizational, regional, national and partly disciplinary borders. Science as a supranational communication system has reached a complexity that is incompatible with the standards for evaluating scientific work and scientific achievements, which are traditionally carried out in the form of scientific committees, individual examinations and other collegial forms of scientific communication. The collegiality of making the most important decisions regarding the examination of the scientific product itself, the thematic agenda, professional competencies and the resulting distribution of remuneration, reputation, ranks, degrees, grants has exhausted its capabilities to a certain extent. As a result, science turns out to be opaque both for the regulator, who is trying to exercise control over scientific institutions, and for science itself, which in the form of scientific self-government and philosophical reflection of science carries out the function of self-observation and self-description. A working hypothesis is proposed, which states that in response to this crisis of collegiality, reflection and control, new media of communicative success and new organizational forms of scientific communication crystallize in science, which can restore the ability of a scientific system to process its internal and external complexity. These media are represented by a new, social-networked form of scientific expertise and partly scientific work, which will be able to compensate for the lack of self-reflection, both at the organizational level of research institutes and at the level of global control over science as a whole.

The article presents an attempt to evaluate the influence of the late Wittgenstein philosophy (by the example of the rule-following problem) on sociology and some empirical programs of sociological research. At first we give a brief overview of the rule-following problem and consider, on the one hand, a skeptical reading and a skeptical solution to the problem by S. Kripke and, on the other hand, criticism towards Kripke by some Wittgensteinians). Then we reveal the role of skeptic reading in the sociological works of D. Bloor and the role of anti-sceptic reading in ethnomethodological projects. At the end we show the paramount importance of Peter Winch – we prove the following thesis: the ideas of Peter Winch anticipated many of the points and arguments in the dispute between D. Bloor and ethnomethodology.

The article presents an analysis of K.A. Rodin’s argument that after publishing of Peter Winch’s book “The Idea of Social Science” (1958) the discussions of rule-following problem concerning to social epistemology and the methodology of social studies have not had tangible results. It is shown by the example of modern legal studies that this conclusion is not valid. On the contrary, Wittgenstein’s problem of rule-following and the very idea of rule-shaped activity have proved to have a great importance for an analytical legal philosophy and turned into an independent subject of study.

The article is devoted to the rule-following problem and its impact on the sociology of science as K.A. Rodin presents them in his article. It is known that L. Wittgenstein in “Philosophical Studies”, using the rule of arithmetic addition as an example, formulated the rule-following problem, which has acquired the ultimate form of skepticism thanks to S. Kripke. This problem was transferred to the sociology of science by D. Bloor, where it received the following sociological explanation: rule-amenably activity can be understood only by incorporating rules into social institutions. P. Winch rejected a skeptical interpretation of this problem, and as K.A. Rodin shows in the article, most adequately showed the consequences of Wittgenstein’s ideas for sociology. In his answer, A.A. Sanzhenakov draws attention to two circumstances. Firstly, sociology was influenced not only by late but also early ideas of Wittgenstein. Secondly, the rule-following problem as an important factor in the sociological turn can also be found in the phenomenology of E. Husserl. The author concludes about the need for additional research, which will draw a line between the influence of Wittgenstein and Husserl on sociology.

This article is a response to the thesis of K.A. Rodin about the exclusively conceptual influence of Wittgenstein and the problem of following the rule on social research. The authors argue that along with the methodological line traced by K.A. Rodin, one should single out a purely scientific line of influence of Wittgenstein's ideas, the result of which was the so-called performative turn in social sciences.

The article contains some considerations on influence of Wittgenstein’s Problem of Rule-Following to Social Theories, especially as it is analyzed in the text of K.A. Rodin. I consider “skeptical decision” of S. Kripke, and demonstrate that in some new situation’s theory of G. Baker and P. Hacker are preferable.

The article is devoted to the analysis of research approaches and attitudes to the study of the a priori in the philosophy of science. In the first part, I outline the basic premises of this study: (a) scientific knowledge as the highest manifestation of rationality; (b) the normative nature of scientific knowledge. In the second part, I turn to the difference in the subject of philosophical research on the history of science – the history of science as a “history of facts” vs the history of science as a history of scientific thought. The third part discusses the main theoretical and technical difficulty associated with changing the subject of research – the possibility of a transition from historical fact to “scientific thought at the time of its birth” (in Helene Metzger terminology). The forth part is devoted to the analysis of the “model approach” (Arianna Betti, Hein van den Berg) in philosophy as a possible way to overcome this difficulty and includes both theoretical and technical aspects of the future direction of research. In conclusion, consequences are drawn about the possibility of using the “model approach” for reconstruction a priori in the history of science as “constitutive elements of scientific knowledge” (David Stump).

The mental models theory is a current approach trying to account for human thought and hence communication by highlighting the action of semantics and ignoring, to a large extent, syntax. However, it has been argued that the theory actually contains an underlying syntax related to any kind of modal logic. This paper delves into this last idea and is intended to show that the concepts of possibility and necessity as understood in it fulfill the basic requirement that, according to Fitting and Mendelsohn, every modal logic has to meet: to satisfy the relationships provided by the Aristotelian modal square of opposition.