The Image of the Future and Scenarios for the Development of Science as a Cultural Phenomenon

Abstract

Designing an image of the future is not amusement of futurologists and visionaries, but a necessary tool for organizing social life. Today, the construction of such an im­age is formed around the question of the future of science. The article deals with this issue through the analysis of the current state of science, which uses the concept of technoscience explicated not only as a modern form of scientific knowledge pro­duction, but as a new form of existence science as cultural phenomenon. Based on this analysis author generates and discusses four scenarios for the possible devel­opment of technoscience in the long-term (5–20 years) and strategic perspective. Two scenarios are negative, since they are fraught with the actual abolition of science as a cultural phenomenon. The first is associated with the strengthening of applied re­search and the formation of an artificial intellectual environment that radically re­duces the need for developed theoretical knowledge. The second scenario assumes the continuation of the trend of commercialization of science and the commodifica­tion of scientific knowledge, affecting both the field of applied and basic research. The analysis of the directions combined under the name “Megascience” allows to speak about the possibility of two positive scenarios, one of which is inertial and as­sumes the preservation of the ideal of pure science as an activity motivated by the search for truth, and the second demonstrates the possibility of humanizing oper­ationally oriented cognition and softening the contradiction between the discovery of truth and the mastery of new possibilities of action in the world.