Further development of the history of science and technology requires the solution of a number of methodological problems. The article considers the object and subject of the history of science and technology, its place in the system of sciences. Today, more and more people are turning to the factors that determine the interaction of the society with the environment (productive forces of the society), to study which in the historical aspect and called a special scientific discipline - the history of science and technology. The society as an object of knowledge is a biological organism of the highest level of organization of “cells” - individuals. It exists and develops in the environment due to its own entropy. The society organizes this removal through a specialized subsystem formed on the basis of technical devices – “technosphere”. The success of such a process is ensured (through the information field) by another subsystem - the “noosphere”. These subsystems include both ideal and material objects. The composition and development of the technosphere and noosphere are considered in the article. It is shown that the functioning of the technosphere is based on its interaction with the noosphere, which provides information about the environment and controls the effectiveness of interaction with it. It is formed by combining the mental structures of individuals through sign systems. The production process that ensures the functioning of the society begins with the noosphere, which through individual consciousness controls the actions of each individual, who through the means of production (technosphere) interacts with the natural environment. However, the gradual development of productive forces leads at some point to the fact that the information needed by the individual to perform all necessary actions for the benefit of the society, ceases to fit in his individual consciousness. As a result, there is a new social phenomenon - the social division of labor. On the one hand, there is a division of technological operations between different performers (technological division of labor), and on the other - the selection of individuals who coordinate the efforts of performers and receive impetus to work not directly from public consciousness, but through these persons (social division of labor). As a result, there are special relationships between individuals and their groups (production relations), and thus begins the class period of human existence. And it will continue until the development of productive forces leads to the full transfer of all technological functions to technical systems, which due to the direct interaction of the noosphere and technosphere will put an end to the social division of labor. However, the development of productive forces is also accompanied by the acceleration of entropy in the environment of mankind - the geobiosphere of the planet Earth, which is gradually making it less and less suitable for life. The cardinal solution to the problem is the prospect of humanity entering infinite space.
Current tendencies question the role of science in modern society, force returning to the processes of formation of the scientific paradigm. The latter was complex and nonlinear, and the formation of scientific principles of cognition was their natural result. Throughout human history, the knowledge about the objective world has been acquired and used in various, historically necessary forms – both in the methodology of cognition and in the method of systematisation, which was determined by the level of their accumulation. The accumulation of knowledge took place in different ways: in the process of direct practical activity, on the basis of supposedly “foreign” contemplation and as a result of conscious influence on an object of study (experiment) with their different “specific weight” at different historical stages. As for the systematisation, the need for which was determined by systemic nature of an object of knowledge and the social nature of knowledge, throughout the history of mankind its forms differed considerably, but, in the end, were reduced to three main ones.
В статье представлено исследование социальной природы историко-культурного наследия. Показано, что оно характеризует объекты материальной культуры прошлого, которые утратили свое первоначальное утилитарное назначение и превратились в материальные свидетельства ушедших культурных и исторических процессов. Сегодня такие памятники истории и культуры являются носителями семантической и аксиологической информации о данных процессах и поэтому, будучи включенными в современный культурный контекст, способствуют социализации индивидов.
The article reveals the authors' vision of the essence of the technology as a sociohistorical phenomenon. It is based on the idea that technology is not only a set of technical devices but a segment of the general system – a society – located between a social medium and its natural surroundings in the form of a peculiar social technosphere, which simultaneously separates and connects them. The main objective purpose of the technosphere is to promote the effective rendering of society-generated entropy outwards; it defines the features of the technosphere as a sociohistorical phenomenon. The analogues of such material formations take place also in wildlife (from the spider-web to the beaver dam) but are very few and arise from the implementation of instinctive programs of the species. In a person's consciousness, such programmes are not given by “nature”, they are formed on the basis of “desobjectivation” of technical objects available in society. In the process of “desobjectivation” the essence, the “logic of the subject” becomes the achievement of a person and due to his abilities is filled with new meaning. As a result, the technology is a materially ideal phenomenon: on the one hand, it is a set of technical objects and on the other hand – technical thinking of a person, the highest manifestation of which is technical sciences nowadays. Properly technical objects are created by society to meet the individual and social needs of a person. These are primarily consumption items; due to their manmade nature, the question of production means development arises, which over time becomes increasingly important, especially by virtue of their significant impact on social relations (which in time also require certain technical devices for their implementation). The complex of these devices forms the techno sphere of society as a compound integrity. Not only groups of different in application technical objects become the constituent parts of the technosphere, but also their conglomerates designed to perform certain functions, which, similar to the biological branch, were called techno enosis; in the latter at the account of a peculiar “competition”, the development of these components in particular and the technosphere integrally takes place. However, despite consistency, the technosphere is a subsystem of a society, therefore, there is no perspective of creating certain laws of its development and an appropriate coherent periodization. For this reason, the scientific periodization of the development of technology as such is connected with the purpose of the given research and is defined by it.
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