Forecasting and its place in the system of scientific knowledge
The article answers the questions what scientific status of forecasting is and what it may be. Forecasting, as author argues, inherits generic features of pre-scientific predictive activity, the first samples of which are found as a practice of calculating astronomical and meteorological phenomena in the Ancient East. It is proved that the forming of scientific predictive research known as forecasting is due to both externalist and internalist reasons − on the one hand, to the social request for scientifically based predictive representations of objects of different nature, and on the other hand, to the ineffectiveness of the practice of making predictions (inferences based on laws of nature and information about initial conditions) as a form of scientific prevision different from forecasting. It is shown that the forecasting is methodologically more diverse activity than making predictions, but it is also a set of different applied researches so under certain conditions development of forecasting includes in the process of increasing dominance of applied research and the ideal of useful science over research aimed at expanding and deepening knowledge about the world. At the same time, it is revealed that forecasting raises a number of fundamental scientific problems that have a purely cognitive interest.