The revised translation of the world famous Russian philosopher's work about attempting to understand man and his place in creation.

Collection of the papers on language and globalization.

The constantly accelerating progress of contemporary natural science is indissolubly associated with the development and use of mathematics and with the processes of mathematical modeling of the phenomena of nature. The essence of this diverse and highly fertile interaction of mathematics and natural science and the dialectics of this interaction can only be disclosed through analysis of the nature of theoretical notions in general. Today, above all in the ranks of materialistically minded researchers, it is generally accepted that theory possesses (...) a value of its own. Contrary to positivist concepts of the nature of our knowledge, the meaning and significance of theory do not consist merely of the recording of experimental data, their classification and notation in abbreviated form. The meaning of theory is considerably more significant and is revealed, above all, in its explanatory and predictive functions. Contemporary theoretical knowledge is quite advanced and comprises a highly complex system, relatively self-contained and capable of internal development. Mathematics is the most interesting and distinctive phenomenon in the system of theoretical knowledge, in the system of science in general. It is in its dialectical development that the internal force and dynamics of the development of theory, in the very broadest sense of that word, find expression. Paul Lafargue tells us that Karl Marx held that "science only attains perfection when it succeeds in making use of mathematics" . In many fields of research the formulation of new ideas and concepts rests upon mathematics, its concepts and notions, and "is suggested" by the latter. "Mathematics," writes F. Dyson, "is the main source of the notions and principles out of which new theories are created" . The basic significance of mathematics to theory has been noted by outstanding thinkers over the course of the entire history of development of science. Today the expressive phrase, "the mathematization of knowledge," has come into general currency as a description of the principal direction of growth of theoretical notions in natural science. However, with respect to the growth of modern theoretical physics in general, the statement that it develops primarily by the method of the mathematical hypothesis has general validity. For example, the principal findings and discoveries of quantum theory and particle physics, starting from the corpuscularwave dualism and terminating with the omega minus hyperon and hypothetical quarks, were obtained or made "at the tip of a mathematician's pen.". (shrink)

The deep and many-sided penetration of mathematical methods into virtually all branches of scientific knowledge is a characteristic feature of the present period of development of human culture. Even fields so remote from mathematics as the theory of versification, jurisprudence, archeology, and medical diagnostics have now proved to be associated with the accelerating process of application of disciplines such as probability theory, information theory, algorithm theory, etc. Mathematical methods are rapidly penetrating the sphere of the social sciences. One can no (...) longer speak of the "exact" sciences in the traditional sense , for today they cannot even be conceived of without the most powerful mathematical "armament." These highly complex processes proceed differently, of course, in different sciences. Let us attempt to analyze them, with our chief emphasis upon the experience of the progress of astronomy, mechanics, physics, and other "exact" branches of natural science. (shrink)

This book is concerned with the problem of applying the theory of verisimilitude to cognitive problems of a quantitative nature. Attention is mostly focused on hypotheses concerned with (physical or other) systems whose state can be represented with an element of a multidimensional state space, but hypotheses concerned with quantitative laws are also considered. The book provides a systematic introduction to the main contemporary forms of the theory of verisimilitude, including both proposed definitions of quantitative degrees of verisimilitude and proposed (...) definitions of the relation `closer to the truth than'. It shows why the quantitative measures that have been proposed earlier produce unacceptable results in the multidimensional case and, using the tools of geometric measure theory, works out alternatives for them in detail. In addition, the standard structuralist theory of science and the way in which the problems of approximation are dealt with in it are presented and evaluated critically. (shrink)

Purpose of the work is to identify and justify the moral priorities in multicultural communication. Theoretical basis is the works of foreign and Ukrainian authors, revealing the main approaches to the problem of multiculturalism; studies on ethics and philosophical anthropology that define the problem field in the anthropo-logy of morality. The work uses: the conceptual provisions of phenomenology – for the disclosure of the semantic uncertainty of human existence as a prerequisite of moral search; existential philosophy – to substantiate the (...) essential relationship of a man and culture. Originality of the results obtained consists of 1) understanding multiculturalism as a "dialogue of people", in which the moral search of every person is actualized; 2) in justifying the demand for inter-individual communication of "negative" ethics : its requirement not to commit immoral acts stimulates a person to moral search, reveals the specifics of the existence of a "person navigator" ; 3) in the definition of intercultural communication as the creation of opportunities for the search for tolerant forms of existence. Conclusions : 1) multiculturalism is a contradictory phenomenon, producing conflicts and creating prerequisites for overcoming them; 2) the possibilities of non-conflict existence in a situation of multiculturalism arise in inter-individual communication, which is a situation of moral search for every person; 3) "ethics of opportunities" unites universal and situational moral norms in multicultural communication: people enable each other to remain people; 4) "ethics of opportunities" creates conditions for tolerant interaction between people and cultures. (shrink)

ch. 1. Filosofii︠a︡ russkikh revoli︠u︡t︠s︡ionnykh demokratov i estestvoispytateleĭ.