Historiography of Science in the Focus of the Theory of Social Relays

Abstract

M.A. Rozov’s theory of social relays is one of the most original concepts of Rus­sian epistemology and philosophy of science. Its main provisions directly deter­mined the consideration of a wide range of methodological problems of socio-humanitarian knowledge, including understanding the specifics of research in the field of history of science. The author shows that the traditional view of the development of science is teleological. It is believed that scientists are ap­proaching the truth step by step, although they never fully achieve it. Reality is the ultimate goal of scientific research, and in this sense, scientific development is objectively predetermined. The article argues that this is a stereotype of scien­tific reflection that should not be rejected, but analyzed by means of epistemo­logy. Analysis of the reflection of scientists leads to unexpected and paradoxical conclusions. Any action can remain invariant, but its goal setting is interpreted differently. In the theory of social relays, these non-coinciding descriptions of the goals and objectives of materially invariant action are called “reflexive transformations”. The power of knowledge lies in the fact that it speaks on be­half of reality, but this is just a reflexive transformation of activity. It is impossi­ble to convincingly answer the question of how reality “in itself” can correspond to knowledge. The correspondence theory of truth avoids accusations of incon­sistency if it postulates the practical nature of knowledge and in this perspective considers the ontologization procedure. According to the theory of social relays, the fundamental goal of scientific knowledge is the ontological proof of the suc­cess of human activity.