Science in perspective: From utopia to reality
The article present a response to the arguments of Ilya T. Kasavin on the development of science and on the problem as its source. At the beginning of the article, the author refers to the idea of scientific progress and shows its necessity, as well as the possibility of a critical attitude to it. She associates criticism of the idea of scientific progress with its character of exclusivity and subjectivity, discusses opportunity preserve the idea, and respond to this criticism. Discussing this opportunity, the author offers an addition to the interpretation of the problem by Ilya T. Kasavin as a form of knowledge. The author interprets the problem as an identified disagreement and a source of social interactions. At the same time, the problem remains a source of progress, but a social certainty complements its epistemological one. The author gives examples of such problems as identified disagreements, firstly, between various subjects governing science and, secondly, between science, the authorities and the public. She shows that it is possible to interpret this kind of problem as a “boundary object” (Star & Griesemer) and demonstrates the constructiveness of the conceptual connection between the problem and the boundary object. In conclusion, she argues that such an expansion of the meaning of the problem, firstly, gives an answer to criticism regarding the idea of progress in science, freeing it from exclusivity, since the problem turns out to be both a source of progress and a condition for social interaction. Secondly, the existence of science as a public good is additionally justified, since the problem actualizes cognitive diversity and attracts various actors to interaction. Thirdly, the prospects of science are presented in a more realistic way, since epistemological definitions of the meaning of the problem serve as a possible basis for the scientist’s work on the organization of social interaction around science, contributing to its development. The author declares no conflicts of interests.