In the history of the development of philosophical and scientific thought, there have been repeated attempts to combine various knowledge in accordance with a single universal principle. Classifications of various kinds, i.e., the division of things into genera and types, were also applied to the sciences. These include attempts to classify the sciences of Aristotle, F. Bacon, the French Encyclopedists, O. Comte and the positivists of the 19th century, Hegel, as the finalist of German classical idealism, F. Engels and the Marxists, as well as many modern scientists.

Aristotle as a whole followed the general logic and tradition of ancient philosophy, highlighting the sciences of nature (physics), knowledge and soul (logic) and society (ethics). However, it was Aristotle, as the founder of many new sciences (biology, meteorology, etc.), who proposed an additional, original principle for classifying sciences in accordance with the functions they perform: creative sciences (poetics, rhetoric, dialectics), practical sciences (ethics, politics). , medicine, astronomy) and theoretical sciences (logic, mathematics, physics, first philosophy).

F. Bacon (XVII century) divided the sciences in accordance with the abilities of the human soul: memory, imagination and reason. Historical sciences are associated with memory (natural, civil history, church history); with imagination - poetry, as an image of the world not as it really is, but in accordance with the desires and ideals of man; the sciences about nature, about man and about God, i.e., natural science, theology and what is commonly called extra-scientific, parascientific knowledge (magic, alchemy, astrology, palmistry, etc.) are associated with the mind.

O. Comte (19th century) rejected the principle of dividing the sciences according to the various abilities of the mind. He believed that the principle of classification should be based on the subjects of science and determined by the connections between them. Comte's principle arranged the sciences according to the simplicity and generality of their subjects and their corresponding methods. Thus, mathematics has a universal subject and method, followed by mechanics, the sciences of inorganic bodies, the sciences of organic bodies, and sociology.

In the second half of the XIX century. F. Engels connected the objects of science with the forms of the motion of matter. The positivist principle of the classification of sciences (O. Comte, G. Spencer) was developed by him, since he left open the possibility of the emergence of new sciences on the basis of still unknown forms of the motion of matter.

Modern classifications as a whole are reduced to three blocks: natural and mathematical sciences, philosophical and humanitarian and technical and applied. At the basis of such a classification, the influence of ancient thought (Aristotle), positivism, Marxism, and especially the spiritual situation of the 20th century, the focus of which turned out to be the problem of man, is clearly traced. It is a person who has knowledge about nature (natural science), about himself (humanities) and about the fruits of his activity to transform the world (technical sciences).

Natural Sciences. Knowledge about nature is an integral system, the structural complexity and content depth of which reflects the infinite complexity and depth of nature itself. Knowledge of nature is achieved through practical and theoretical human activity. All knowledge of nature must be subject to empirical verification.

Since all sciences arise from the situation of the relationship between the subject and the object (according to I. Kant), it is clear that the sciences of nature pay more attention to the object than to the subject. But for modern natural science it becomes fundamentally important to observe a strict measure of attention not only to the object, but also to the subject. The history of natural science provides an object lesson in this sense. So, for classical natural science, starting from the 17th century. characteristic is the tendency of a complete "exclusion from the description and explanation of everything that relates to the subject and the procedures of his cognitive activity" .

Non-classical natural science (end of the 19th - mid-20th centuries) is characterized by the assumption of correlations between the object and the procedures of cognitive activity, the concept of “an object within the instrumental situation” arises, which can differ significantly from “an object outside the instrumental situation”.

Finally, in the post-nonclassical science of nature, the very subject of research has changed. Now it is not limited only to the object determined by the means of scientific knowledge, but includes its orbit and the subject in - 47. The subject of science is already a subject - an object system in its self-movement and development.

For a long time, the paradigms of natural science determined the course of development of the entire complex of sciences, and even philosophy. Thus, Euclid's geometry is reflected in I. Kant's formulation of the a priori foundations of sensory cognition and human reason - so much its "paradigmality" was convincing for the German philosopher. The same situation developed around the physics of I. Newton (XVII century) and the physics of A. Einstein (early XX century), around the discoveries of G. Mendel (late XIX century), D. Watson and F. Crick (mid-XX century .).

In the XX century. "Palm tree" is gradually moving from the natural sciences to the social sciences and the humanities. The political-economic studies of K. Marx, the sociology of M. Weber become a model of a truly scientific approach for many scientists and scientific schools.

Humanitarian sciences. The very concept of humanitarian, i.e. human, comes from the first humanists of the Renaissance, who in the XV-XVI centuries. took the trouble to revive in the original the legacy of ancient thinkers, primarily poets, writers, philosophers, historians, i.e., those who worked to exalt the human spirit and its power. The humanities are associated with a specific, single, unique subject and his achievements, which have something in common with the spiritual state of other subjects, i.e., causing them a certain spiritual resonance.

Of the three functions of science listed above, understanding (interpretation) is the most suitable for the humanities. The humanities deal with single, unique facts, events, phenomena of a socio-cultural, spiritual nature, which are least characterized by homogeneity and identical repetition. It is extremely difficult to bring them under general concepts, theories, laws, that is, to explain. As for the function of prediction, it is realized in the humanities, in contrast to the natural sciences, to a rather small extent. Predicting any social event, the further course of history is much more difficult than predicting a solar eclipse or a meteorite approaching the Earth.

Views on the subject of the humanities are extremely contradictory. According to G. Rickert, laws in the humanities are not nomological (reflecting regular, recurring connections between objects or phenomena), but ideographic (interpreting unique single facts and phenomena from the standpoint of specific authors). According to neo-Kantians, in the humanities one should rely not on causal connections and laws, but on the goals, intentions, motives, and interests of people. Marxist point of view

On the other hand, historical regularities "make their way" in society with the necessity of a natural process and operate in spite of the desires and desires of people. Such an antinomy, however, is resolvable within the framework of the humanities itself, although it requires qualified philosophical assistance.

The conscious activity of people, presented here in the form of motives and interests, is always determined by a certain historical situation that has developed in the past, but, in turn, determines the future contours of history, thus becoming, as it were, part of the objective "historical landscape". One goes into the other and back. If we separate the sphere of people's conscious activity from the historical conditions in which it takes place, then we cannot avoid fatalistic or voluntaristic interpretations, subjective-idealistic or objectivist concepts of the philosophy of history.

Comprehension of the subject of the humanities is increasingly associated with hermeneutics, which originally existed as exegesis. Hermeneutics means not only the method of the humanities (art and theory of text interpretation), but also the doctrine of being (ontology). Currently, it traditionally distinguishes two approaches: psychological and theoretical. Psychological understanding refers to understanding based on one person experiencing the spiritual experience of another, his feelings, moods, emotions. To understand the author, one must internally experience what he experienced. The theoretical approach implies revealing the meaning of the ideas, goals, motives of the authors, i.e., it seeks to understand what they wanted to convey to us and how this information conveyed to us can enrich our understanding of life. The writer must be understood better than he understood himself, says the principle of hermeneutics. Another principle is that the understanding of a separate fragment is conditioned by the understanding of the whole (text, document, history) and, conversely, the whole can be comprehended thanks to the achieved understanding of individual fragments (the so-called "hermeneutic circle"). Another important principle of hermeneutics says that to understand means to understand another, that is, to find something in common with him in worldview, culture, rights, language, and so on. . The question arises, is it possible to use hermeneutics to study nature? At first glance, it seems that it is not, because in nature we are dealing with repeating, similar, uniform groups of objects and phenomena. But after all, in nature, scientists also encounter unique, unrepeatable objects and phenomena that do not fit into the framework of known patterns, existing theories. In this case, the scientist also seeks to understand and interpret the nature of such objects and phenomena, to identify patterns or put forward a new hypothesis for their explanation. However, in this case, the natural object inevitably loses its “uniqueness”. Against this background, the example of different interpretations of microworld objects by different scientists and scientific schools is especially clear.

The ideal would be the use of hermeneutics in natural science, if we assume that "nature is a text written by God", which must be deciphered. G. Galileo also thought in this vein: nature is a book written in the language of mathematics, and a person who is not versed in mathematics will not understand it.

The methods of the natural sciences can be used in certain aspects for the knowledge of social phenomena. The experience of studying economic, demographic, ecological processes, for example, in the activities of the Club of Rome, in the calculations of the “nuclear winter” scenario by K. Sagan and N. Moiseev, shows the relative success of such use. The same applies to the justification for the partial application of the historical concept of K. Marx or the concepts of A. Toynbee, O. Spengler (about the isolation and cyclicity of civilizational processes). All these theories have a quite clear and rational, but dry and abstract scheme. The specificity of the very subject of research with its colorfulness, fullness of life, individuality disappears from these schemes, as if they took the life of Russian society in the middle of the last century as an object of study and studied it only in terms of political, economic, demographic, etc. theories, forgetting about JI novels. Tolstoy, F. Dostoevsky. K. Marx himself believed that reading the novels of O. Balzac gives him an understanding of the economic situation in France at the beginning of the 19th century. incomparably more than the most careful study of economic tables and stock reports.

The technical sciences study nature transformed and placed at the service of man. "Techne" in ancient Greek means art. In ancient theatrical performances, the “God from the Machine” often appeared at the climax, driven by an ingeniously designed block mechanism. Thus, technology (art) became a mediator between man and God, man and fate, man and nature. T. Campanella (XVI century) believed that a person in his desires does not stop at the things of this world, but wants even more - to rise above heaven and the world. Not having fast legs like a horse, a man invents a wheel and a wagon, not being able to swim like a fish, he invents ships, and, dreaming of flying, like a bird, he creates aircraft. The phenomenon of technology includes a number of meanings. The first is the instrumental understanding of technology. Technique is understood as a set of artificially created material means of activity or a set of artifacts used as a means of activity. In this sense, technology is always things created by people from an inorganic substrate and used by them. In the second sense, technology is understood as a skillful process of activity or as a skill, for example, the technique of agriculture, navigation, healing, etc. Now, in this sense, the word “technology” is most often used, denoting a set of knowledge and skills for making something. The third meaning of technology is understood extremely broadly as a way of activity, a way of life and a way of thinking, for example, language, first oral and then written, is technology, modern world religions are also technology.

Unlike natural sciences, technical sciences (applied mechanics, radio electronics, mining, agronomy, genetic engineering, pharmacology, etc.) are more specific, because they study specific objects created by man, "second nature", and also utilitarian, since they are focused not on the knowledge of the essence of the phenomenon as such, but on a specific result that has practical application. But technical sciences, in principle, cannot develop without the natural sciences, because the former provide them with a basis, reveal the essence of the processes used in technical systems.

In turn, the humanities also have their influence on the technical ones. Technology is created by man and for his needs. It is included as an integral part in the process of his life and at the same time should not subjugate a person to himself, deprive him of freedom and creativity. The technical and engineering ethics that arose on this basis is designed to prevent the distortions of society in the direction of technism.

Technical sciences tend to progress, which is due to the social need for practical scientific achievements used in production. However, there is a limit here and a transition into its opposite: progress in one respect is regression in another. No wonder it has long been believed that technology as a "gift of the gods" can turn out to be "Pandora's box".

The qualitative diversity of reality and social practice has determined the multifaceted nature of human thinking, different areas of knowledge.

modern science- an extremely ramified set of individual scientific branches. It includes about 15,000 disciplines that are increasingly interacting with each other. Science today studies everything, including even itself – how it arose, developed, how it interacted with other forms of culture, what impact it had on the material and spiritual life of society. According to researchers, science as a serious analytical phenomenon is still young. She did not comprehend all the secrets of the universe. In the minds of modern scientists there is a clear idea of ​​the enormous possibilities for the further development of science, a radical change based on its achievements of our ideas about the world and its transformation.

According to their subject, sciences are divided into natural-technical, studying the laws of nature and ways of its development and transformation, and Humanities, studying man and the laws of his development.

Natural sciences consider the world as objectively existing, study the structure of this world, the nature of its elements. Natural science appeals to experience as the basis of knowledge and the criterion of truth.

The humanities study the world, primarily created by man in terms of its spiritual content and cultural value. The humanities rely most of all on the significance and meaning of things. The humanities deal with sign systems and their relation to human reality.

The natural sciences and the humanities differ in function. The natural sciences are engaged in the description, explanation and prediction of the phenomena and properties of the material world.

The specific function of the humanities is understanding, which consists in revealing and interpreting the meaning of the work. There are two interpretations of understanding. One of them is psychological and argues that the process of understanding is an act of getting used to the idea, motives and goals of the "author" of a particular work. For example, if any historical event is taken as a work, then its understanding is achieved by revealing the socio-economic, political, cultural and other conditions, as well as the personal and psychological prerequisites for the actions of specific historical subjects.

The second concept of understanding is related to the idea of ​​a work as a sign system, as a "text" in the broadest sense of the word. The object of understanding is the meaning, interpreted as the invariant content of the “text” with respect to the options for “retelling” or representing the content of the “text” by various sign systems.

The boundaries between sciences are rather conditional. The current stage in the development of scientific knowledge is characterized by the mutual enrichment of scientific methodologies and criteria for evaluating scientific results.

The theoretical levels of individual sciences converge in a general theoretical, philosophical explanation of open principles and laws, in the formation of the worldview and methodological aspects of scientific knowledge as a whole.

An essential component of general scientific knowledge is the philosophical interpretation of the data of science, which constitutes its ideological and methodological foundations.

Man possesses knowledge about the surrounding universe, about himself and his own works. This divides all the information he has into two large sections - natural science and humanitarian knowledge.

Natural science is historically the first field of science, i.e. the process of the birth and formation of science is the emergence and development of natural science knowledge, primarily physics and astronomy in their constant interaction with mathematics. At present, natural science retains its leading role among scientific fields.

The term "natural science" comes from a combination of the words "essence", that is, nature, and "knowledge". Thus, the literal interpretation of the term is knowledge about nature.

Natural science in the modern sense is a science that is a complex of natural sciences taken in their interconnection. At the same time, nature is understood as everything that exists, the whole world in the variety of its forms.

Humanities from the Latin humanus - human, homo - man - disciplines that study a person in the sphere of his spiritual, mental, moral, cultural and social activities. According to the object, subject and methodology, studies are often identified or intersected with the social sciences, while being opposed to the natural and exact sciences based on the criteria of the subject and method. In the humanities, if accuracy is important, for example, the description of a historical event, then clarity of understanding is even more important.

The difference between natural and human knowledge is that:

1. Based on the separation of the subject (human) and the object of study (nature), while the object is mainly studied. The center of the second sphere of knowledge - humanitarian is the subject of knowledge itself. That is, what the natural sciences study materially, the subject of study of the humanities is rather ideal, although it is studied, of course, in its material carriers. An important feature of humanitarian knowledge, in contrast to the natural sciences, is the instability and rapid variability of the objects of study.

2. In nature, in most cases, certain and necessary causal relationships and patterns prevail, therefore the main task of the natural sciences to identify these relationships and on their basis to explain natural phenomena, the truth is immutable here and can be proven. The phenomena of the spirit are given to us directly, we experience them as our own, the basic principle here is understanding, the truth of data - data is largely subjective, it is not the result of proof, but of interpretation.

The method of natural science is “generalizing” (that is, its goal is to find the common in various phenomena, to bring them under a general rule), the law is all the more important, the more universal it is, the more cases it falls under. In the humanities, general patterns are also derived, otherwise they would not be sciences, but since the main object of research is a person, it is impossible to neglect his individuality, therefore the method of humanitarian knowledge can be called “individualizing”.

The system of human values ​​influences the natural sciences and the humanities to varying degrees. The natural sciences are not characterized by value-colored judgments, which are an essential element of humanitarian knowledge. Humanitarian knowledge can be influenced by this or that ideology, and is much more connected with it than naturally scientific knowledge.

The contradictions between the natural and human sciences are supplemented by contradictions within science itself. Science is not able to give exhaustive answers, it solves particular questions, creating concepts that best explain the phenomena of reality, but the creation of such theories is not a simple accumulation of knowledge, it is a more complex process, including both evolutionary progressive development, and "scientific revolutions", when even the most fundamental foundations of scientific knowledge are subject to revision. And new theories are built on a completely different basis.

In addition, the very method of cognition, which is the essence of science, contains contradictions: nature is one and whole, and science is divided into independent disciplines. The objects of reality are holistic complex formations, science abstracts some of them taken as the most important, isolating them from other aspects of the same phenomenon. At present, this method, as well as the method of reducing a phenomenon to its simplest elements, is recognized in many disciplines as having limited applicability, but the problem is that all modern science is built on their basis.

The very structure of science divided into many independent disciplines follows precisely from this, but at present, many researchers recognize that the process of differentiation of science has gone too far, and complex disciplines must overcome this trend.

Modern scientists clearly see huge prospects for the further development of sciences and a radical change in human ideas about the world with their help. The natural laws of nature, as well as the ways of its transformation and development, while studying man and the laws of his evolutionary development. The natural sciences study the structure of the objectively existing world and the nature of all its elements, appealing to experience as a criterion for the truth of knowledge.

Researchers consider science to be a rather young analytical phenomenon that has not yet comprehended all the secrets and universes.

The humanities, unlike the natural sciences, study the world created by man, from the side of its cultural values ​​and spiritual content, while relying on the meaning and significance of things. In addition, the humanities work with sign systems and the relationship of these systems to human reality.

Functions

Humanitarian and also differ in their functions. So, the natural sciences tend to describe, explain and predict the phenomena/properties of the material world, while the humanities tend to reveal and interpret this or that meaning of things. There are several interpretations of understanding - one of them, purely psychological, claims that initially the process of understanding is an act of getting used to the motives and goals of the author's intention.

For example, historical events are understood through the disclosure of political, social, economic and cultural conditions, as well as specific actions.

Another interpretation is based on the idea of ​​an event or work, the object of understanding of which is the meaning, usually interpreted as an invariant textual content in relation to the variants of its retelling or its presentation using various sign systems. Otherwise, the boundaries between the humanities and the natural sciences are rather arbitrary. At the present stage of development of scientific knowledge, they are characterized by mutual enrichment with scientific methodologies and criteria for evaluating various scientific results.

At the theoretical level, individual sciences have a general theoretical and philosophical explanation of the open laws and principles used to form the methodological and ideological aspects of scientific knowledge. An essential component of general scientific knowledge is the philosophical interpretation of scientific data, which constitutes the methodological and ideological foundations of the natural sciences and the humanities.

Modern scientific knowledge is represented by several major categories. So, distinguish the humanities and natural sciences. What are the features of both?

Humanities Facts

Under humanitarian It is customary to understand the sciences that arose during the Renaissance. Philosophers and thinkers of that time were able to restore ancient knowledge about a person - as a subject of creativity and spirituality, capable of developing, reaching new heights in culture, law, political self-organization, technical progress.

The key tool of the humanities is the interpretation of facts. These can be historical events, social processes, the emergence of influential literary works. The interpretation of facts in the humanities in many cases is quite difficult to implement using mathematical methods - using formulas, statistics, modeling. Therefore, for its implementation are used:

1. comparative approaches (when there is a comparison of some facts with others);
2. theoretical methods (when the interpretation is based on a reasonable assumption);
3. logic (when it is difficult to find a reasonable alternative to the result of interpretation).

Examples of modern humanities: history, philosophy, religious studies, psychology, art history, pedagogy. The humanities should be distinguished from the social sciences, which study predominantly social phenomena. However, within the framework of the former, tools that are primarily characteristic of the latter can be used.

Science Facts

Under natural It is customary to understand the sciences, the subject of which is natural phenomena in all their diversity. These can be physical or chemical processes that reflect the interaction of substances, electromagnetic fields and elementary particles with each other at various levels. It can be the interaction of living organisms in nature.

The key tool of the natural sciences is the identification of patterns within the framework of these interactions, the compilation of their most detailed description and adaptation, if necessary, to practical use. This involves the use of more accurate methods - in particular, mathematical, engineering. The use of comparative and theoretical tools is often not enough - but they can also be used and play an important role. Logical methods are characterized by a very high utility.

Natural sciences should be distinguished from technical ones, such as, for example, mechanics and computer science. The latter may be the most important source of tools for the former, but are not considered in the same category with them. It is not customary to classify mathematics as natural sciences, since it belongs to the category of formal sciences - those that involve working with specific, standardized quantities, units of measurement. But, as in the case of technical disciplines, mathematical tools play a crucial role in the natural sciences.

Comparison

The main difference between the humanities and natural sciences is that the first studies mainly a person as an independent subject, the second - natural phenomena in their wide variety. The categories of sciences under consideration also differ in terms of tools. In the first case, the main method is the interpretation of facts, in the second - the description of patterns that characterize the course of various processes.

In both types of science, logic is equally useful. In the humanities, it allows the researcher to interpret this or that fact in the most reasonable way, in natural sciences it is one of the tools that can explain this or that process.

Sometimes methods that are more characteristic of the humanities - a comparative approach, the development of theories - are also applied in the natural sciences. But the mathematical and engineering tools often used in the natural sciences are rarely used in the humanities.

Having determined what is the difference between the humanities and natural sciences, we will reflect the conclusions in the table.