The scientific picture of the world is an integral system of ideas about the general properties and patterns of reality, built as a result of generalization and synthesis of fundamental scientific concepts, principles and theories. Depending on the basis of the division, a distinction is made between a general scientific picture of the world, which includes ideas about all reality, and a natural scientific picture of the world. The latter - depending on the subject of knowledge - can be physical, astronomical, chemical, biological, etc.

In the general scientific picture of the world, the defining element is the picture of that area of ​​scientific knowledge that occupies a leading position at a specific stage of the development of science. Each picture of the world is built on the basis of certain fundamental scientific theories, and as practice and knowledge develop, some scientific pictures of the world are replaced by others. Thus, the natural science (and above all physical) picture of the world was built first (from the 17th century) on the basis of classical mechanics, then electrodynamics, then (from the beginning of the 20th century) - quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity, and today - on the basis of synergetics.

The main element of any religious picture of the world is the image of a single God (monotheistic religions) or many gods (polytheistic religions). All religions at all times believe that our empirical reality is not independent and not self-sufficient, but is of a derivative commodity nature, since it is secondary, it is a result, a projection of another - real, true reality - God or gods. Thus, religions double the world and point man to forces that are superior to him, possessing reason, will, and their own laws. They determine the lives of people in the fullness of their existence.

Thus, a specific feature of the religious picture of the world is the division of reality into natural and supernatural spheres, with the former considered dependent on the latter. Achieving the sphere of supernatural existence, understood as the only true one, becomes the goal of human existence. Depending on the content of beliefs, we can talk about the worldviews of specific religions: Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, etc.

Philosophical pictures of the world are very diverse, but they are all built around the relationship: man and the world. This relationship can be understood materialistically or idealistically, dialectically or metaphysically, objectivistically or subjectivistically, etc. The relationship between man and the world in philosophy is considered in all the diversity of its aspects - ontological, epistemological, methodological, value (axiological), activity, etc. That is why philosophical pictures of the world are so multiple and different from one another.

In the history of world culture, philosophical pictures of the world were closer to either religious or scientific pictures of the world, but always differed from them. Thus, within each particular science there are various levels of generalization, which, however, do not go beyond a certain sphere or aspect of existence. In philosophical thinking, these generalizations of particular sciences themselves become the subject of analysis. Philosophy brings together the results of research in all fields of knowledge (and not just scientific ones), creating a comprehensive synthesis of the universal laws of being and knowledge.

Philosophy differs significantly from any particular science, primarily in that it is a worldview. This means that the philosophical picture of the world includes not only the doctrine of the essence and universal laws of development of reality, but also moral, aesthetic and other ideas and beliefs of people.

Main features of the modern scientific picture of the world

Many theories, collectively describing the world known to man, are synthesized into a single scientific picture of the world, i.e. a holistic system of ideas about the general principles and laws of the structure of the universe. Our world consists of open systems of different scales, the development of which follows general patterns.

The main features of the modern scientific picture of the world are presented below.

Systematicity means the recognition by modern science of the fact that any object of the material world (atom, planet, organism or galaxy) is a complex formation that includes component parts organized into integrity. The largest system known to us is the Universe. The systemic effect manifests itself in the appearance of new properties in an integral system that arise as a result of the interaction of its elements (for example, the formation of molecules from atoms). The most important characteristic of a system organization is hierarchy, subordination, i.e. sequential inclusion of lower-level systems into higher-level systems. Each element of any subsystem turns out to be connected with all elements of other subsystems (man - biosphere - planet Earth - Solar system - Galaxy, etc.). All parts of the surrounding world are closely interconnected.

Global(universal) evolutionism– recognition of the impossibility of the existence of the Universe and all smaller-scale structures without development. Each component part of the world is a historical consequence of the global evolutionary process begun by the Big Bang. The idea of ​​evolution originated in the 19th century. and sounded most strongly in Charles Darwin’s teaching on the origin of species. However, evolutionary theory was limited only to the plant and animal world; the classical fundamental sciences, primarily physics and astronomy, which form the basis of Newton’s mechanistic model of the world, remained aloof from evolutionary teaching. The universe seemed balanced and unchanging. The appearance of nonequilibrium formations with a noticeable organization (galaxies, planetary systems, etc.) was explained by random local changes. The situation changed at the beginning of this century with the discovery of expansion, i.e. non-stationary nature of the Universe. This will be discussed below.

Currently, the ideas of evolution have penetrated into all areas of natural science. Until a certain time, the problem of the origin of various elements did not concern chemists; it was believed that the diversity of the periodic table had always existed in an unchanged form. However, the concept of the Big Bang indicated the historical sequence of the appearance of various elements in the Universe. The process of creating complex molecular compounds also traces the ideas of evolution and the mechanism of natural selection. Of the more than 100 chemical elements, only six make up the basis of living things: carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur. Of the 8 million known chemical compounds, 96% are organic compounds, based on the same 6-18 elements. From the remaining elements, nature created no more than 300 thousand inorganic compounds. Such a striking discrepancy cannot be explained by the different abundance of chemical elements on Earth and even in Space. There is a completely obvious selection of those elements whose properties (energy intensity, strength of the bonds formed, ease of their redistribution, etc.) provide an advantage in the transition to a higher level of complexity and orderliness of matter. The same selection mechanism can be traced in the next round of evolution: out of many millions of organic compounds, only a few hundred are used in the construction of biological systems, out of 100 known amino acids, only 20 are used by nature in the construction of protein molecules of living organisms, etc.

In general, natural science has the right to formulate the slogan: “Everything that exists is the result of evolution.” A new interdisciplinary direction – synergetics – claims to describe the driving forces of the evolution of any objects in our world.

Self-organization is the observed ability of matter to become more complex and create more and more ordered structures in the course of evolution. The mechanism of transition of material systems into a more complex and ordered state, apparently, has a single algorithm for systems at all levels.

Historicity is the recognition by modern science of the fundamental incompleteness of the present and any other picture of the world. Over time, the Universe and human society develop, value orientations and the strategy of scientific research change. These processes occur on different time scales, however, their mutual overlap makes the task of creating an absolutely true scientific picture of the world practically impossible.

Security questions

1. How do philosophy, culture and religion relate to each other?

2. Material, spiritual and social culture. How do these forms of culture relate to each other?

3. What examples of different approaches to assessing the same phenomena do you know? Why is natural science knowledge more objective than humanitarian knowledge?

4. What is the confrontation between the two cultures? Will the gap between “physicists” and “lyricists” widen?

5. When did science begin? What do the terms “science as a social institution” and “science as an activity of individual scientists” mean?

6. What are the social conditions of science? How do you assess these conditions in our country? Abroad?

7. What properties should scientific knowledge have? What is its practical value? What research, in your opinion, should be funded first: applied or fundamental?

8. How do you understand the activity of the subject? What, in your opinion, are the motivations for engaging in scientific activities?

SIBERIAN UNIVERSITY OF CONSUMER COOPERATION

Test on the concepts of modern science

Novosibirsk 2010

Introduction

1. Mechanical picture of the world

2. Electromagnetic picture of the world

3. Quantum – field picture of the world

Introduction

The very concept of a “scientific picture of the world” appeared in natural science and philosophy at the end of the 19th century, but a special, in-depth analysis of its content began to be carried out in the 60s of the 20th century. And yet, a clear interpretation of this concept has not yet been achieved. The fact is that this concept itself is somewhat vague and occupies an intermediate position between the philosophical and natural science reflection of trends in the development of scientific knowledge. Thus, there are general scientific pictures of the world and pictures of the world from the point of view of individual sciences, for example, physical, biological, or from the point of view of any prevailing methods, styles of thinking - probabilistic-statistical, evolutionistic, systemic, synergetic, etc. pictures of the world. At the same time, the following explanation of the concept of a scientific picture of the world can be given. (NKM).

The scientific picture of the world includes the most important achievements of science that create a certain understanding of the world and man’s place in it. It does not include more specific information about the properties of various natural systems, or about the details of the cognitive process itself. At the same time, the NCM is not a body of general knowledge, but represents an integral system of ideas about the general properties, spheres, levels and patterns of nature, thus forming a person’s worldview.

Unlike strict theories, NCM has the necessary clarity and is characterized by a combination of abstract theoretical knowledge and images created using models. The features of various pictures of the world are expressed in their inherent paradigms. Paradigm (Greek – example, sample) is a set of certain stereotypes in the understanding of objective processes, as well as ways of knowing and interpreting them.

NCM is a special form of systematization of knowledge, mainly its qualitative generalization, ideological synthesis of various scientific theories.

1. Mechanical picture of the world

In the history of science, scientific pictures of the world did not remain unchanged, but replaced each other, thus we can talk about the evolution of scientific pictures of the world. The physical picture of the world is created through fundamental experimental measurements and observations on which theories are based that explain facts and deepen our understanding of nature. Physics is an experimental science, therefore it cannot achieve absolute truths (like knowledge itself in general), since experiments themselves are imperfect. This determines the constant development of scientific concepts.

Basic concepts and laws of MCM

The MCM was formed under the influence of materialistic ideas about matter and the forms of its existence. The very formation of the mechanical picture is rightly associated with the name of Galileo Galilei, who was the first to use the experimental method to study nature, together with measurements of the quantities under study and subsequent mathematical processing of the results. This method was fundamentally different from the previously existing natural philosophical method, in which a priori, i.e., were invented to explain natural phenomena. speculative schemes not related to experience and observation; additional entities were introduced to explain incomprehensible phenomena.

The laws of planetary motion discovered by Johannes Kepler, in turn, indicated that there is no fundamental difference between the movements of earthly and celestial bodies, since they all obey certain natural laws.

The core of the MCM is Newtonian mechanics (classical mechanics).

The formation of classical mechanics and the mechanical picture of the world based on it occurred in 2 directions:

1) generalization of the previously obtained results and, above all, the laws of free fall of bodies discovered by Galileo, as well as the laws of planetary motion formulated by Kepler;

2) creating methods for quantitative analysis of mechanical motion in general.

In the first half of the 19th century. Along with theoretical mechanics, applied (technical) mechanics also stands out, having achieved great success in solving applied problems. All this led to the idea of ​​the omnipotence of mechanics and to the desire to create a theory of heat and electricity also on the basis of mechanical concepts.

In any physical theory there are quite a few concepts, but among them there are basic ones, in which the specificity of this theory, its basis, is manifested. These concepts include:

· matter,

· movement,

· space,

· interaction

Each of these concepts cannot exist without the other four. Together they reflect the unity of the World.

MATTER is a substance consisting of tiny, further indivisible, solid moving particles - atoms. That is why the most important concepts in mechanics were the concepts of a material point and an absolutely rigid body. A material point is a body whose dimensions can be neglected in the conditions of a given problem; an absolutely rigid body is a system of material points, the distance between which always remains unchanged.

SPACE. Newton considered two types of space:

· relative, which people become familiar with by measuring spatial relationships between bodies;

· the absolute is an empty container of bodies, it is not associated with time, and its properties do not depend on the presence or absence of material objects in it. Space in Newtonian mechanics is

Three-dimensional (the position of any point can be described by three coordinates),

Continuous

Endless

Homogeneous (the properties of space are the same at any point),

Isotropic (properties of space do not depend on direction).

TIME. Newton considered two types of time, similar to space: relative and absolute. People learn relative time in the process of measurements, and absolute (true, mathematical time) by itself and in its essence, without any relation to anything external, flows evenly and is otherwise called duration. Time flows in one direction - from the past to the future.

MOVEMENT. The MCM recognized only mechanical movement, i.e., a change in the position of the body in space over time. It was believed that any complex movement can be represented as a sum of spatial movements. The motion of any body was explained on the basis of Newton's three laws, using such concepts as force and mass.

INTERACTION. Modern physics reduces all the variety of interactions to 4 fundamental interactions: strong, weak, electromagnetic and gravitational.

It should be said that in classical mechanics the question of the nature of forces, in fact, did not arise, or rather, was not of fundamental importance. It’s just that all natural phenomena were reduced to the three laws of mechanics and the law of universal gravitation, to the action of forces of attraction and repulsion.

Basic principles of MCM

The most important principles of MCM are:

principle of relativity,

long-range principle

· principle of causality.

Galileo's principle of relativity. Galileo's principle of relativity states that in all inertial frames of reference all mechanical phenomena proceed in the same way. Inertial reference system (IRS) is a reference system in which the law of inertia is valid: any body that is not acted upon by external forces or the action of these forces is compensated is in a state of rest or uniform linear motion.

The principle of long-range action. In MCM it was accepted that interaction is transmitted instantly, and the intermediate medium does not take part in the transmission of interaction. This position was called the principle of long-range action.

The principle of causality. There are no uncaused phenomena; it is always possible (in principle) to identify cause and effect. Cause and effect are interconnected and influence each other. The effect of one cause may be the cause of another effect. This idea was developed by the mathematician Laplace. He believed that all connections between phenomena are carried out on the basis of unambiguous laws. This doctrine of the conditionality of one phenomenon by another, of their unambiguous natural connection, entered physics as the so-called Laplace determinism (predetermination). Essential unambiguous connections between phenomena are expressed by physical laws.

2. Electromagnetic picture of the world

Basic experimental laws of electromagnetism.

Electrical and magnetic phenomena have been known to mankind since ancient times. It was subsequently discovered that there are two types of electricity: positive and negative.

As for magnetism, the properties of some bodies to attract other bodies were known in ancient times, they were called magnets. The property of a free magnet to be established in the “North-South” direction already in the 2nd century. BC used in ancient China during travel.

The 18th century, marked by the emergence of MCM, actually marked the beginning of systematic research into electrical phenomena. So it was established that like charges repel, and the simplest device appeared - an electroscope. In 1759, the English naturalist R. Simmer concluded that in the normal state any body contains an equal number of opposite charges that mutually neutralize each other. During electrification, their redistribution occurs.

At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, it was experimentally established that the electric charge consists of an integer number of elementary charges e=1.6×10-19 C. This is the smallest charge existing in nature. In 1897, J. Thomson discovered the smallest stable particle, which is the carrier of an elementary negative charge (electron).

Conclusion
Features of the scientific picture of the world

The scientific picture of the world is a holistic system of ideas about the general principles and laws of the structure of the universe.
Differences between the scientific picture of the world and the religious one.
The scientific picture of the world is based on science. The main pillar of science is facts. Science has a critical function, always ready for self-refutation down to its basic principles. The religious picture of the world is based on faith. Religion operates with dogmas (“a position taken on faith as an immutable truth, unchangeable under all circumstances”). Science is based on reason; nothing is accepted without evidence. Religious faith consists of conviction in the truth of the fundamentals of religious teaching, recognition and adherence to the moral norms contained in religious requirements for a person and knowledge of the most essential provisions of religious doctrine. Religion is unchanging, its activities are aimed at confirming the original dogmas and tenets. In the religious picture of the world, the central place is given to God. Until the 19th century The prevailing statement was that the world appeared as a result of an act of divine creation according to the principle: “And God said: let it be... and it was.” And the same applies to the act of human creation. According to this view, the world has no development in history. The past and future are exactly the same as the present. The world came into being because God said so. This is the only reason for its creation. This view lacks an explanation of the natural causes of the emergence and development of the world and man. From the point of view of the scientific picture of the world, the Universe was formed as a result of the Big Bang, and as a result of evolutionary development, stars, planets arose, life arose on Earth, plants, mammals and humans appeared.
In science there is a place for faith (axioms). Both science and religion are the spiritual exploration of the world. Scientists can believe in God, understanding nature by him (pantheism).

Basic principles of constructing a scientific picture of the world

The picture of the world drawn by modern natural science is unusually complex and simple at the same time. It is complex because it can confuse a person accustomed to classical scientific concepts consistent with common sense. The ideas of the beginning of time, the wave-particle duality of quantum objects, the internal structure of the vacuum capable of giving birth to virtual particles - these and other similar innovations give the current picture of the world a slightly “crazy” look. But at the same time, this picture is majestically simple, harmonious and in some ways even elegant.
The phrase “scientific picture of the world” implies a certain analogy between the totality of scientific abstractions describing the real world and a large painting on which the artist has compactly placed all the objects of the world. Real paintings have one significant drawback - the degree of similarity with the depicted object is sometimes far from desired. People sought to achieve accurate images, and soon they invented photography. The accuracy has increased, but the lifelessness and static nature of the photograph has become a noticeable inconvenience. Humanity invents cinema, and the depicted objects come to life and move. Successive scientific pictures of the world (ancient, Newtonian and modern) underwent similar changes.
The ancient scientist painted his picture with a great deal of invention; the resemblance to what was depicted was minimal. Newton's picture of the world became stricter and many times more accurate (black and white photography, unclear in places). The current scientific picture of the world has revealed evolution and development in every fragment of the Universe. Describing the history of the Universe no longer requires photography, but a film, each frame of which corresponds to a certain stage of its development. Therefore, the main principle of constructing a scientific picture of the world is global evolutionism. The principles of constructing a scientific picture of the world as a whole correspond to the fundamental laws of the existence and development of Nature itself.
Principles for constructing a scientific picture of the world:
1) Systematicity means the reproduction by science of the fact that the observable Universe appears as the largest of all known systems, consisting of a huge number of elements (subsystems) of different levels of complexity. By “system” we mean a certain ordered set of interconnected elements. The systemic effect is found in the appearance of new properties in the entire system that arise as a result of the interaction of elements. An important characteristic of a system organization is hierarchy and subordination (“the sequential inclusion of systems of lower levels into systems of increasingly higher levels”). The systemic way of combining elements expresses their fundamental unity: thanks to the hierarchical inclusion of systems of different levels into each other, any element of any system is connected with all elements of all possible systems.
2) Global evolutionism is the recognition of the impossibility of the existence of the Universe and all the smaller systems generated by it without development and evolution. The evolving nature of the Universe also testifies to the fundamental unity of the world, each component of which is a historical consequence of the global evolutionary process begun by the Big Bang.
3) Self-organization is the observed ability of matter to become more complex and create more and more ordered structures in the course of evolution. The mechanism of transition of material systems into a more complex and ordered state is similar for all level systems.
4) Historicity - any scientific picture of the world has a previous history.

General contours of the modern natural-scientific picture of the world

The general contours of the modern natural-scientific picture of the world were shaped by the third scientific revolution. At this time, a whole series of brilliant discoveries in physics followed (the discovery of the complex structure of the atom, the phenomenon of radioactivity, the discrete nature of electromagnetic radiation, etc.). The most significant theories that formed the basis of the new paradigm of scientific knowledge were the theory of relativity (special and general) and quantum mechanics. Revolutionary changes affecting the foundations of fundamental sciences determine the general contours of the scientific picture of the world for a long period.
General contours of the modern scientific picture of the world.
1) The entire scientific picture of the world is relative.
2) The original concepts of space, time, continuity were rethought.
3) The object of knowledge has ceased to be perceived as existing “by itself.”
4) The “idea” of the scientific picture of the world about itself has changed: it has become clear that it will never be possible to draw the “only true”, absolutely accurate picture.
The modern natural-scientific picture of the world has a feature that distinguishes it from previous versions. It lies in the recognition of historicity, and therefore the fundamental incompleteness of the present, and indeed any other picture of the world. The one that exists now is generated both by previous history and by the specific sociocultural characteristics of our time. The development of society, changes in its value orientation, awareness of the importance of studying unique natural systems, in which man himself is an integral part, changes both the strategy of scientific research and man’s attitude to the world
The universe and society are developing, although their development occurs at different paces. But their mutual overlap makes the idea of ​​​​creating a final, complete, absolutely true scientific picture of the world practically impossible. Knowing this, we can only note the general outline of the modern natural scientific picture of the world.

Conclusion

Based on the material presented in the test work, the following conclusions can be drawn:
1) The scientific picture of the world differs from the religious picture in the presence of evolutionary development.
2) The scientific picture of the world is built on global evolutionism, systematicity, self-organization and historicity.
3) There was a realization that it would never be possible to draw an absolutely accurate picture of the world. Consequently, only its general contours can be described.

List of used literature

1) Concepts of modern natural science: Textbook for universities / V.N. Lavrinenko, V.P. Ratnikov, G.V. Baranov and others - M.: UNITY-DANA, 2002. pp. 42 - 91.
2) Gorelov A.A. Concepts of modern natural science: Textbook - M.: Higher Education, 2007. pp. 288 - 298.
3) Ozhegov S.I. Dictionary of the Russian language. - M.: GIINS, 1961. p. 165.

1. Introduction
2. Features of the scientific picture of the world
3. Basic principles of constructing a scientific picture of the world
4. General contours of the modern scientific picture of the world
5. Conclusion
6. References

Introduction

Knowledge of individual things and processes is impossible without simultaneous knowledge of the universal, and the latter, in turn, is known only through the former. This should be clear to every educated mind today. In the same way, the whole is understandable only in organic unity with its parts, and the part can only be understood within the framework of the whole. And any “particular” law discovered by us - if it is truly a law and not an empirical rule - is a concrete manifestation of universality. There is no science whose subject would be exclusively the universal without knowledge of the individual, just as a science that limits itself only to the knowledge of the particular is impossible.
The universal connection of phenomena is the most general pattern of the existence of the world, which is the result and manifestation of the universal interaction of all objects and phenomena and is embodied as a scientific reflection in the unity and interconnection of sciences. It expresses the internal unity of all elements of the structure and properties of any integral system, as well as the infinite variety of relationships of a given system with other systems or phenomena surrounding it. Without understanding the principle of universal connection there can be no true knowledge. Awareness of the universal idea of ​​the unity of all living things with the entire universe is included in science, although more than half a century ago in his lectures given at the Sorbonne, V.I. Vernadsky noted that not a single living organism is in a free state on Earth, but is inextricably linked with material and energy environment. "In our century, the biosphere is gaining a completely new understanding. It is emerging as a planetary phenomenon of a cosmic nature."
Natural science worldview (NSWW) is a system of knowledge about nature that is formed in the minds of students in the process of studying natural science subjects, and mental activity to create this system.
The concept of “picture of the world” is one of the fundamental concepts of philosophy and natural science and expresses general scientific ideas about the surrounding reality in their integrity. The concept of “picture of the world” reflects the world as a whole as a single system, that is, a “connected whole”, the knowledge of which presupposes “knowledge of all nature and history...” (Marx K., Engels F., collected works, 2nd ed. volume 20, p.630).
Features of the scientific picture of the world
The scientific picture of the world is one of the possible pictures of the world, therefore it has something in common with all other pictures of the world - mythological, religious, philosophical - and something special that distinguishes the scientific picture of the world from the diversity of all other images of the world. Like all other pictures of the world, the scientific picture of the world contains certain ideas about the structure of space and time, objects and their interactions, laws and the place of man in the world. This is something common that is present in every picture of the world. The main thing that distinguishes the scientific picture of the world from all other pictures of the world is, of course, the “scientific nature” of this picture of the world. Therefore, in order to understand the peculiarity of the scientific picture of the world, it is necessary to understand the peculiarity of science as a special type of human activity. For about a century it has existed in philosophy is a special direction called “philosophy and methodology of science.” This direction is trying to understand what science is? At first, philosophers thought that science was fundamentally different from non-scientific types of knowledge, and scientific knowledge belongs to such a feature as the “criterion of demarcation.” It shows that science begins behind it, and everything that is on the other side is something unscientific. Various philosophers proposed various features as “criteria of demarcation.” For example, some said that the main thing in science is the use of a special method of thinking called “induction,” i.e., the transition from particular facts to their generalizations in general judgments. Others said that the main thing in science is the use of mathematics, others argued that only science uses such judgments from which it is possible to draw consequences and verify or refute these consequences in experience. All the proposed signs, to one degree or another, turned out to belong to non-scientific types of knowledge. Then philosophers decided that science is not sharply different from non-science. but gradually grows out of non-scientific types of knowledge, strengthening some features and weakening others. The main feature of science is not one thing, but a whole system of properties, which in some special combination and proportions is inherent specifically in scientific knowledge, although each individual element of this system can be found. and far beyond the boundaries of science. All those signs that were previously proposed as a “criterion of demarcation”, they are all little by little true, but now they should be considered together, as separate aspects. One of the biggest problems in human thinking is the problem of connecting facts and ideas. There is, on the one hand, what we observe through our senses - this is the so-called “sensory knowledge”, and there are thoughts, ideas, logic - this is the area of ​​“rational knowledge”. Usually people either limit themselves only to sensory knowledge, or break away from facts and observations and use hypotheses divorced from life. The first feature of science is the combination of sensory and rational types of knowledge. In science, you don’t just need to invent hypotheses, but only those hypotheses that could either be confirmed or refuted by facts. On the other hand, the facts themselves must be objective, i.e. verified by many people and expressing certain patterns and theoretical models. Bringing facts closer to theory, science considers facts as consequences of theories (“deduction”), bringing theory closer to facts, science uses theories that are obtained on the basis of generalization (induction) of facts. The unity of inductive and deductive methods in knowledge increases the scientific nature of this knowledge, bringing closer rational and sensory forms of knowledge. One of the signs of scientific knowledge is the use of mathematical methods. Mathematics is the science of structures. Structure is, for example, a set of natural numbers along with operations and relations on it, a set of vectors in three-dimensional space. and builds theories about these structures - introduces concepts and their definitions, axioms, proves theorems. Theories about structures are constructed using special symbolic languages ​​and strict logical reasoning (logical proofs). Structures in their pure form cannot be observed anywhere through our senses, for example, nowhere can we see the numbers “two” or “three”, we always see some specific two or three objects, for example, two apples, three trees, etc. At the same time, it cannot be said that the number “two” has nothing to do with two apples. For example, if we add the number “three” to the number “two”, we get the number “five” - and all this happens so far only within the framework pure mathematical structure. But it turns out that if you add three apples to two apples, you also get five apples. Thus, the number of apples is subject to the same laws as numbers in general - these are the laws of structure. So, the number of apples is, to some extent, just a number, and in this sense, you can study various numbers of objects by studying number in general. A mathematical structure can realize itself in the sensory world. The implementation of a structure is already a special case of a structure, when the elements of the structure are given in the form of specific observable objects. But the operations, properties and relationships remain the same in this case as in the mathematical structure. So science discovered that the world around us can be represented as realizations of many different mathematical structures, and the next feature of science is the study of the world around us as realizations of mathematical structures. This explains the great importance of mathematics for transforming ordinary knowledge into science. Real science is unthinkable without a scientific experiment, but understanding what a scientific experiment is is not so easy. Let's start with an example here. Until Galileo's discovery of the law of inertia, Aristotle's mechanics dominated in physics. The great ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle believed that force is proportional not to acceleration, as Newton later suggested, but to speed, i.e. F=mv. For example, if a horse is dragging a cart with a load, then as long as the horse applies force, the cart moves, i.e. speed is not zero. If the horse stops pulling the cart, then the cart will stop - its speed will be zero. Now we know that in fact there is not one, but two forces present here - the force with which the horse pulls the cart, and the force of friction, but Aristotle thought differently. Galileo, thinking about the problem of mechanical motion, constructed the following thought experiment. Galileo imagined what would happen to a body that had received a push and was moving along a smooth surface. Having received a push, the body continues to move for some time and then stops. If the surface is made more and more smooth, then from the same push the body will travel an increasing distance before stopping. And then Galileo, having imagined a sequence of such situations in which the body moves on an increasingly smooth surface, moves to the limit - to the case of such an ideal situation when the surface is already absolutely smooth. Taking the tendency to move further and further after a push to the limit, Galileo now claims that on an ideally smooth surface a body will never stop after a push. But after the push, the force does not act on the body, therefore, the body will move indefinitely, the speed is not zero in this case, and the force will be zero. Thus, force is not proportional to speed, as Aristotle believed, and force-free motion is possible, which we today call uniform rectilinear motion. Summarizing this example, we can draw the following conclusion. The experiment involves some transformation of the real situation, and in this transformation the real situation, to one degree or another, approaches some ideal limit. It is important that in the experiment it would be possible to achieve an ever greater idealization of the real situation, building, as it were, a limiting sequence of experimental situations tending to some ideal-limit. In scientific knowledge, experiment plays the role of a kind of “isolator” of limit states from real natural situations. These limits are usually called “models” and are implementations of certain mathematical structures. Thus, another feature of science is the use of such structures that are obtained as the limits of experimental situations. So, the scientific picture of the world assumes that the world around us consists of two principles - form and matter. Forms are simply another name for various mathematical structures that make up, as it were, a regular and logical skeleton of all processes and phenomena in the world. Thus, at the heart of everything are structural forms that express themselves in numbers, operations and relationships. This kind of philosophy is close to the philosophy of “Pythagoreanism,” named after the great ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras, who taught that numerical structures are the basis of everything. The scientific picture of the world further assumes that structure-forms are clothed in matter and are thus realized in the form of the infinite diversity of sensually perceived phenomena and processes. Structures do not simply repeat themselves in the sensory-material world, they are largely transformed, weakened and mixed. Therefore, a special method is needed that could allow one to see pure structures behind their material realizations. This is a method of experiment, a method of unity. induction and deduction, the method of mathematics. The scientific picture of the world assumes that we can understand the world around us only to the extent that we can see the underlying forms-structures that constitute the part of the world that is comprehended by our mind. constitute the logical basis not only of the reality that lies outside our consciousness, but they are also the logical foundation of the human mind. The structural unity of the human mind and the world is a condition for the cognizability of the world, and, moreover, its cognizability precisely through structures. Science is in many ways a special method of cognition, a unique way of obtaining structural knowledge. But in science there is always another component that presupposes this or that philosophy or even religion. For example, during the Renaissance, science was closely connected with the so-called “pantheism” - the idea of ​​God as penetrating any part of the world and coinciding with the infinite Cosmos. Later, science adopted the philosophy of materialism and atheism. Therefore, we can talk about two types of principles of the scientific picture of the world: 1) internal principles of science, providing the scientific method of cognition as the method described above for restoring the structures lying behind the visible shell of the sensory world, 2) external principles of science, determining the connection of science as a method of cognition with a particular picture of the world. Science can connect with any picture of the world, as long as the internal principles of science are not destroyed. From this point of view, a pure (i.e. built only on the basis of internal principles) scientific picture of the world does not exist. In all those cases when we talk about the scientific picture of the world, there is always one or another picture of the world (as a system of external principles of science), which is consistent with the internal principles of science. From this point of view, we can talk about three scientific pictures of the world: 1) a pantheistic scientific picture of the world - here the internal principles of science are combined with pantheism (this is the picture of the world of the Renaissance), 2) a deistic scientific picture of the world - here the internal principles of science are combined with deism (" Deism”, or “the doctrine of double truth” is the doctrine that God intervened in the world only at the beginning of its creation, and then God and the World exist completely independently of each other, therefore the truths of religion and science are also independent of each other . Such a picture of the world was accepted in the Age of Enlightenment), 3) an atheistic scientific picture of the world - here the internal principles of science are combined with atheism and materialism (this is the modern scientific picture of the world). In the Middle Ages, the dominant religious picture of the world too suppressed the existence and development of the internal principles of science, and therefore we cannot call the medieval picture of the world scientific. But this does not at all mean that the impossibility of combining the Christian picture of the world and the scientific method of cognition in the Middle Ages is the final argument against the possibility of harmonizing the internal principles of science and Christianity in the general case. In this regard, one could imagine the possibility of a fourth version of the scientific picture of the world: 4) a theistic scientific picture of the world (“theism” is the doctrine of the creation of the world by God and the constant dependence of the world on God). The development of the modern scientific picture of the world speaks for this that the external principles of science are gradually changing, the influence of atheism and materialism in the modern scientific picture of the world is weakening. One of the most powerful arguments of defenders of the atheistic scientific picture of the world is the principle of objectivity. Scientific knowledge is objective knowledge, and objective is that which does not depend on human consciousness. Therefore, scientific knowledge must involve going beyond the framework of human subjectivity, as if throwing out from the sphere of scientific knowledge everything that relates to psychology, consciousness and the humanities in general. The principle of objectivity is presented by supporters of the atheistic scientific picture of the world as one of the principles of materialism and only then in it. In this form, it is presented as one of the most essential internal principles of science, as a necessary condition for the knowability of the structures of reality. We can try to explain this by separating the two principles of objectivity - structural and materialistic. The structural principle of objectivity is one of the internal principles of science, which presupposes the construction of scientific knowledge on the basis of objective structures that are common to man and nature. The materialistic principle of objectivity is an external principle of science that limits the area of ​​objective structures only to the framework of predominantly inorganic structures, i.e. structures that realize themselves in the material-sensual world on inorganic processes and phenomena. Moreover, the development of modern science leads to an increasing convergence of natural science and humanities knowledge, showing in practice that it is possible to build scientific knowledge, and therefore to implement the principle of objectivity, not only in the sphere of dead nature, but also in the field of humanitarian knowledge. Moreover, the penetration of scientific research methods into the humanities has recently been achieved not through reduction to inorganic structures, but on the basis of the humanization of the methods and means of scientific knowledge themselves. So, we can conclude that the scientific picture of the world always consists of two types of principles - internal and external. What unites all scientific pictures of the world is precisely the presence in them of the internal principles of science, providing it as a specific, structural-empirical method of cognition and presupposing a philosophy of matter and form-structure. The difference in scientific pictures of the world stems from the possibility of accepting different external principles of scientific knowledge that are consistent with its internal principles. From this point of view, we have identified pantheistic, deistic, atheistic and theistic scientific pictures of the world. It can be assumed that the development of the modern scientific picture of the world gradually leads to a departure from the external principles of atheism and materialism and the emergence of some 5) synthetic scientific picture of the world, in which coordination of the internal principles of science will apparently be achieved with external principles expressing the synthesis of external principles individual (analytical) scientific pictures of the world.
Basic principles of constructing a scientific picture of the world

The leading principles of constructing a modern scientific picture of the world are: the principle of global evolutionism, the principle of self-organization (synergetics), the principle of systematicity and historicity.
Global evolutionism is the recognition of the impossibility of the existence of the Universe and all the smaller systems generated by it without development and evolution. The evolving nature of the Universe also testifies to the fundamental unity of the world, each component of which is a historical consequence of the global evolutionary process begun by the Big Bang.
One of the most important ideas of European civilization is the idea of ​​world development. In its simplest and undeveloped forms (preformationism, epigenesis, Kantian cosmogony) it began to penetrate natural science back in the 18th century. And already the 19th century can rightfully be called the century of evolution. First, geology, then biology and sociology began to pay more and more attention to the theoretical modeling of developing objects. But in the sciences of inorganic nature, the idea of ​​development made its way very difficult. Until the second half of the twentieth century, it was dominated by the original abstraction of a closed reversible system, in which the time factor does not play any role. Even the transition from classical Newtonian physics to non-classical (relativistic and quantum) did not change anything in this regard. True, some timid breakthrough in this direction was made by classical thermodynamics, which introduced the concept of entropy and the idea of ​​irreversible time-dependent processes. Thus, the “arrow of time” was introduced into the sciences of inorganic nature. But, ultimately, classical thermodynamics studied only closed equilibrium systems. And nonequilibrium processes were viewed as disturbances, minor deviations that should be neglected in the final description of the cognizable object - a closed equilibrium system. And, on the other hand, the penetration of the idea of ​​development into geology, biology, sociology, and the humanities in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries was carried out independently in each of these branches of knowledge. The philosophical principle of the development of the world (nature, society, man) is common. did not have a core expression for all natural science (as well as for all science). In each branch of natural science it had its own (independent of other branches) forms of theoretical and methodological concretization. And only by the end of the twentieth century did natural science find theoretical and methodological means for creation. a unified model of universal evolution, identifying general laws of nature that link into a single whole the origin of the Universe (cosmogenesis), the emergence of the Solar system and our planet Earth (geogenesis), the emergence of life (biogenesis) and, finally, the emergence of man and society (anthroposociogenesis). Such a model is the concept of global evolutionism. In the concept of global evolutionism, the Universe is presented as a natural whole developing over time. The entire history of the Universe from the “Big Bang” to the emergence of humanity is considered in this concept as a single process in which the cosmic, chemical, biological and social types of evolution are successively and genetically interconnected. Cosmochemistry, geochemistry, biochemistry here reflect fundamental transitions in the evolution of molecular systems and the inevitability of their transformation into organic matter.
The principle of self-organization (synergetics) is the observed ability of matter to become more complex and create more and more ordered structures in the course of evolution. The mechanism of transition of material systems into a more complex and ordered state is apparently similar for systems of all levels.
The emergence of synergetics in modern natural science was apparently initiated by the preparation of a global evolutionary synthesis of all natural science disciplines. This trend was to a large extent restrained by such a circumstance as the striking asymmetry of the processes of degradation and development in living and inanimate nature. To maintain the consistency of the general picture of the world, it is necessary to postulate the presence of matter as a whole not only of a destructive, but also of a creative tendency. Matter is capable of carrying out work against thermodynamic equilibrium, self-organizing and self-complicating itself.
The postulate about the ability of matter to self-develop was introduced into philosophy quite a long time ago. But its necessity in fundamental and natural sciences (physics, chemistry) has only now begun to be realized. On this wave, synergetics arose - the theory of self-organization. Its development began several decades ago. Currently, it is developing in several directions: synergetics (G. Haken), nonequilibrium thermodynamics (I.R. Prigogine), etc. The general meaning of the complex of ideas they developed is calling them synergetic (G. Haken’s term).
The main ideological shift produced by synergetics can be expressed as follows:
the processes of destruction and creation, degradation and evolution in the Universe are equal;
processes of creation (increase in complexity and orderliness) have a single algorithm, regardless of the nature of the systems in which they are carried out.
Self-organization is understood as the spontaneous transition of an open nonequilibrium system from less to more complex and ordered forms of organization. It follows that the object of synergetics cannot be any system, but only those that satisfy at least two conditions:
they must be open, i.e. exchange matter or energy with the external environment;
they must also be significantly nonequilibrium, i.e. be in
state far from thermodynamic equilibrium.
So, synergetics claims that the development of open and highly nonequilibrium systems proceeds through increasing complexity and orderliness. There are two phases in the development cycle of such a system:
1. A period of smooth evolutionary development with well-predictable linear changes, ultimately leading the system to some unstable critical state;
2. Exit from a critical state simultaneously, abruptly, and transition to a new stable state with a greater degree of complexity and order.
An important feature of the second phase is that the transition of the system to a new stable state is ambiguous. And it follows from this that the development of such systems is fundamentally unpredictable.
The most popular and clear example of the formation of structures of increasing complexity is a well-studied phenomenon in hydrodynamics called Bénard cells.
This phenomenon, which is well known to everyone, is incredible from the standpoint of statistical mechanics. After all, it indicates that at the moment of the formation of Benard cells, billions of liquid molecules, as if on command, begin to behave in a coordinated manner, although previously they were in chaotic motion. (The word “synergetics”, by the way, just means “joint action”). Classical statistical laws clearly do not work here; this is a phenomenon of a different order. After all, if, even by chance, such a “correct” and
A stable “cooperative” structure had been formed, which is almost incredible; it would have immediately disintegrated. But it does not disintegrate under appropriate conditions (influx of energy from the outside), but, on the contrary, remains stable. This means that the emergence of structures of increasing complexity is not an accident, but a pattern.
The search for similar self-organization processes in other classes of open nonequilibrium systems seems to promise to be successful: the mechanism of laser action; crystal growth; chemical clock (Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction), the formation of a living organism, population dynamics, market economics - all these are examples of self-organization of systems of a very different nature.
The synergetic interpretation of this kind of phenomena opens up new possibilities and directions for their study. In general terms, the novelty of the synergetic approach can be expressed in the following terms:
Chaos is not only destructive, but also creative, constructive; development occurs through instability (chaoticity).
The linear nature of the evolution of complex systems, to which classical science is accustomed, is not the rule, but rather the exception; The development of most such systems is nonlinear. This means that for complex systems there are always several possible paths of evolution.
Development is carried out through a random choice of one of several allowed possibilities for further evolution at the bifurcation point.
Consequently, chance is not an annoying misunderstanding; it is built into the mechanism of evolution. It also means that the current path of evolution of the system may not be better than those that were rejected by chance.
choice.
The ideas of synergetics are interdisciplinary in nature. They provide the basis for the global evolutionary synthesis taking place in natural science. Therefore, synergetics is seen as one of the most important components of the modern scientific picture of the world.
Systematicity
Systematicity means the reproduction by science of the fact that the Universe appears as the largest system known to us, consisting of a huge number of elements (subsystems) of different levels of complexity and
orderliness.
A system is usually understood as a certain ordered set of interconnected elements. The systematic effect is found in the appearance of new properties in an entire system that arise as a result of the interaction of elements (hydrogen and oxygen atoms, for example,
combined into a water molecule radically change their normal properties). Another important characteristic of a system organization is hierarchy, subordination - the sequential inclusion of lower-level systems into higher-level systems. The systemic way of combining elements expresses their fundamental unity: thanks to the hierarchical inclusion of systems of different levels into each other, each element of any system is connected with all elements of all
possible systems. (For example: man – biosphere – planet Earth – Solar system – Galaxy, etc.) It is this fundamentally unified character that the world around us demonstrates to us. In the same way
the scientific picture of the world and the natural science that creates it are organized accordingly. All its parts are now closely interconnected - now there is practically no “pure” science. Everything is permeated and
transformed by physics and chemistry.

Historicity

Historicity, and therefore the fundamental incompleteness of the present, and indeed any scientific picture of the world. The one that exists now is generated both by previous history and by the specific sociocultural characteristics of our time. The development of society, a change in its value orientations, an awareness of the importance of studying unique natural systems, in which man himself is an integral part, changes both the strategy of scientific research and man’s attitude to the world.
But the Universe is also developing. Of course, the development of society and the Universe takes place at different paces. But their mutual overlap makes the idea of ​​​​creating a final, complete, absolutely true scientific picture of the world practically impossible.

General contours of the modern natural-scientific picture of the world

The world we live in consists of multi-scale open systems, the development of which is subject to general laws. Moreover, it has its own long history, generally known to modern science. Here is a chronology of the most important events in this story:

20 billion years ago - Big Bang.
3 minutes later - the formation of the material basis of the Universe (photons, neutrinos and antineutrinos with an admixture of hydrogen, helium and electron nuclei).
After several hundred thousand years - the appearance of atoms (light elements).
19-17 billion years ago – formation of structures of different scales.
15 billion years ago - the appearance of first generation stars, the formation of atoms of heavy elements.
5 billion years ago - the birth of the Sun.
4.6 billion years ago - formation of the Earth.
3.8 billion years ago - the origin of life.
450 million years ago - the appearance of plants.
150 million years ago - the appearance of mammals.
2 million years ago - the beginning of anthropogenesis.
We pay attention primarily to the successes of physics and cosmology because it is these fundamental sciences that form the general contours of the scientific picture of the world.
The picture of the world drawn by modern natural science is unusually complex and simple at the same time. It is complex because it can confuse a person accustomed to classical scientific concepts consistent with common sense. The ideas of the beginning of time, wave-particle dualism of quantum objects, the internal structure of the vacuum capable of giving birth to virtual particles, and other similar innovations give the current picture of the world a slightly “crazy” look.
But at the same time, this picture is majestically simple, harmonious and in some ways even elegant. These qualities are given to it mainly by the leading principles of construction and organization of modern scientific knowledge that we have already discussed:
consistency,
global evolutionism,
self-organization,
historicity.
These principles for constructing a scientific picture of the world as a whole correspond to the fundamental laws of the existence and development of Nature itself.
These fundamental features of the modern natural-scientific picture of the world mainly determine its general outline, as well as the very way of organizing diverse scientific knowledge into something whole and consistent.
Conclusion

In the modern world, the scientific picture of the world causes people not only admiration, but also fear. You can often hear that science brings people not only benefits, but also the greatest misfortunes. Atmospheric pollution, disasters at nuclear power plants, increased background radioactivity as a result of nuclear weapons tests, the “ozone hole” over the planet, a sharp reduction in plant and animal species - people tend to explain all these and other environmental problems by the very existence of science. But the point is not in science, but in whose hands it is, what social interests are behind it, what social and government structures guide its development.
The increase in global problems of humanity increases the responsibility of scientists for the fate of humanity. The question of the historical destinies and role of science in its relation to man and the prospects for his development has never been so acutely discussed as at the present time, in the context of a growing global crisis of civilization.
Science is a social institution; it is closely connected with the development of the entire society. The complexity and inconsistency of the modern situation is that science is involved in the generation of global, environmental problems of civilization; and at the same time, without science, solving these problems is in principle impossible. This means that the role of science in the history of mankind is constantly increasing.
I tried to note some fundamental features
modern natural scientific picture of the world. This is just its general outline, having outlined which you can begin a more detailed acquaintance with specific conceptual innovations of modern natural science.

References
1. Concepts of modern natural science. Ed. Lavrinenko V.N. and Ratnikova V.P. M., 2004.
2. Kapitsa S.P. and others. Synergetics and future forecasts. M., 2001.
3. Pakhomov B.Ya. The formation of a modern physical picture of the world. M., 1985.
4. Haken G. Information and self-organization. Macroscopic approach to complex systems. - M., 1991.