Activity cycles and ideal objects

The attitude “analysis at the empirical level” is common to all forms of activity. However, it is objectified in different ways: depending on which cycles it belongs to. In science these are analytical objects, in politics and everyday life - values, in economics - money, in technology - elements (details) of structures. These analytical divisions of the empirical level of the organization of reality are initially (at the moment of their occurrence) not connected with each other. Giving value to things and substances (valuation) and determining their value (price), i.e. the forms that analytical objects of science and details of constructions take in social practice constitute the content of empirical analysis as a procedure invariant to all forms of activity.

From my point of view, analysis at the empirical level constitutes the content of the market, i.e. epiphenomenon - external in relation to the actual activities of the directly observed process of comparison and mutual assessment of the analytical divisions of reality. At the same time, the analytical objects of science are evaluated and included in political and everyday reality, values ​​are associated with needs, becoming elements of economic life, technical devices are commensurate with needs, and design details are compared with “natural” ones, i.e. scientific, distinctions, etc.

The market, with its identification in this way, is a necessary integrating attribute of reality, divided into science, social life, economics, and technology. With this approach, it is impossible to identify market relations themselves, since the market is a combination of fragments of everyday, political, classification, experimental, economic, technical and technological activities that are associated with empirical analytical divisions, either generating them or resulting from their existence.

For the market, therefore, all the relations in which empirical analytical distinctions are generated and from which they follow are essential. These are identification of features and empirical research, experiment and diagnostics, identification of values ​​and political typology, etc.

The market is not directly related to theoretical and axiological explanatory constructs, however, the results of theoretical analysis are somehow present in it, since the meaning of empirical analytical divisions is formed and preserved at the theoretical and axiological levels. A priori values, mysterious analytical objects (such as the biofield, national character and torsion fields), details of various “perpetual motion machines” and private money are most often not in demand, although they can be mutually exchanged.

Naturally, with such a definition of the market, it makes no sense to talk about a market (or non-market) economy, any particular market activity, etc. There are scientific and social, economic and technical activities that interact with each other in a specific way, forming a continuously changing structure of analysis at the empirical level, called the market. The market inevitably arises as a result of the differentiation of forms of activity from each other, and the market narrows with a natural or artificial combination of activities, as happened in the USSR due to the forceful identification of economic and social activities. The market cannot disappear, but it can acquire unusual (hidden) forms, such as the administrative market 171 .

There is a well-known aphorism: “not everything can be bought with money.” This means the existence of certain values ​​that are not brought to the market for comparison with money or analytical objects. At the same time, some of the analytical objects of science have received a pronounced value connotation. This applies primarily to such analytical objects as ideas, thinking, organism, atom, quanta, etc., which are used by social philosophers in their constructions intended to confirm or refute the existing social order. At the same time, there are values ​​that do not have any scientific, economic or technological justification and are reproduced only within the framework of the everyday cycle of activity. The absence of scientific and other referents does not in the slightest degree detract from their importance.

There are analytical objects that have a very definite price and are embodied in the details of structures, such as physical bodies, things, chemical elements, genes, mediators, behavior (especially electoral) and many others. But there are quite a lot of analytical objects (social institutions, instincts) that have almost no referents in the empirical analytical divisions of other forms of activity.

Markets are, in principle, local, since they are formed by fragments of well-defined social, economic, technical and scientific structures limited in space and time. However, in general, the market is limitless and undefined, since acting people continually bring to it the empirical results of their natural actions in the hope that other acting people will need them.

The market has its own dynamics, its own internal rhythm, which consists of the interference of the rhythms of different activities - economic, political, technical and scientific. Political revolutions are most often incompatible with economic growth, technical and technological innovation periods may not coincide with periods of heyday of scientific activity, etc.

Market activity - analysis at the empirical level - has very specific meanings specific to a particular time. At some times, analytical objects of science are in demand on the market, and at others, objects of scientific description, individuals and individuals. At some times there is a demand for political ideas, i.e. on ideology; at other times, ideas turn out to be of little use to anyone, while the demand for technical innovations is high. Sometimes the demand for money increases, and sometimes for exotic goods.

Demand creates supply, i.e. intensification, for example, of scientific activity in general or in a separate scientific area, descriptive or analytical, in biology or physics, in astronomy or geodesy. In these fertile times, the distinctions between describers, experimentalists, and theorists are blurring. Scientific rhythms in such times dominate over social ones, and geniuses appear who violate scientific canons and break paradigms.

But in every science there are periods of stagnation, when the same observations are made, experiments are repeated, and the same system of theoretical explanations is reproduced. During these periods, the specializations of scientists are formalized, competing among themselves for meager investments, positions or awards. During these times, cycles of research activity are reproduced as social cycles, generational or family-caste. For the time being, for the time being.

Notes:

171 Kordonsky S. Markets of power: Administrative markets of the USSR and Russia. - M.: OGI, 2000.