Can We Overcome the Temptation of Relativism?

Abstract

The anniversary of Elena Arkadyevna Mamchur is a reason to recall her noticeable contribution to the theory of scientific rationality, which she did not think compati­ble with relativism and devoted to the problem of freeing the philosophy of science and epistemology from the “relativistic temptation” a number of works that have become exemplary in Russian philosophical literature. In them, she outlined a pro­gram for developing a theory of scientific rationality based on the intellectual tra­ditions of science, on general scientific principles that determine and direct the movement towards true and objective knowledge. She showed the failure
of attempts by modern relativists to rely on epistemological consequences from the “standard” interpretation of quantum physics, emphasizing the difference
between the unattainable objectivity of describing and explaining microcosm
phenomena and their object-relativeness, inextricably linked with truth. However, criticism of relativism in its content is still defensive. It is aimed at refuting the ar­guments of relativists, but at the same time relativism itself remains a seductive methodological trick: it justifies the substitution of special scientific research for the philosophical analysis of science itself. It is proposed the direction of such a re­form of epistemology and philosophy of science, as a result of which historicism would become one of the main criteria for scientific rationality – together with ob­jectivity and truth. Consistent application of historicism as a criterion of rationality would deprive relativism of its methodological seductiveness.