Cycles of scientific research

In the methodology of science, a certain, albeit implicit, idea of ​​science and scientific activity has developed, in which, according to methodologists, the dominant place is occupied by the creation of explanatory theories, the explication of consequences from them, the description of the sociocultural consequences of the functioning of explanatory theories in the role of “pictures of the world,” and the comprehension of the results research and analytical work 6 . Classification, empirical research (as a component of determining whether an individual belongs to a taxon), and diagnostics, if included in the circle of interests of methodologists, are more likely to be prerequisites for explanatory and predictive activities.

Another significant feature of ideas about science in its methodology can be considered the virtual absence of studies of description as a structural, rather than historically transitory, component of research activity. The importance of description is not questioned in internal scientific reflection and in the social organization of science: mineralogy, microbiology, botany, zoology, anthropology in their many specializations act as necessary components of science as a whole, and describing activities, such as classification, are considered completely independent and valuable in their own right. At the same time, in the methodology of science, description is recognized only as auxiliary functions. Classification and other procedures are considered to be prior to "real" scientific work, and the descriptive sciences themselves are considered to be prior to analytical research. Most often, methodologists identify description with the empirical level of research, while analysis is considered a purely theoretical exercise. 7 .

In my opinion, there are empirical and theoretical levels of research in both description and analysis, and each level of research in description and analysis corresponds to objects and relationships that are specific only to them.

The initial distinction in the presented work is to highlight description and analysis as research methods, on the one hand, and the empirical and theoretical levels of knowledge organization, on the other. At the same time, I abstract from the variety of methodological interpretations of theoretical, empirical description and analysis, limiting myself to recognizing the certainty of their existence. Objects of science - within the framework of the developed logic - are introduced into the fabric of research as relationships between research methods and levels of knowledge organization.

Transitions from the empirical to the theoretical, mediated by methods of description and analysis - with this approach - are interpreted by me as research itself. These transitions, repeating, form cycles of scientific research, internally coupled with the fact that a pair of relationships - transitions - are associated with one object of research (generated by some fixed relationship between methods and levels of organization of knowledge). The object of research generates one relationship, another follows from the existence of the object. The objects of research are thus fixed by the relations of research, and the relations in turn constitute the object. Therefore, attempts to explore the relations of scientific research beyond the objects that arise in them, and to explore the objects of science as self-sufficient realities - outside of those relations in which they exist, are equally meaningless.

The internal cyclical organization of science ensures the reproduction of research objects by each subsequent generation of scientists and the achievement of generally accepted scientific ideals, i.e. verification of scientific facts and falsification of describing theories. The theoretical and empirical components of science, when presented in this way, are woven into cycles of activity: they structure it, and they are also reproduced at each iteration of the cycles in an updated form.

Notes:

6 See: Lakatos I. Falsification and methodology of research programs. - M., 1995.

7 See: Mitrofanova S.S. Classification problem in modern science. - Novosibirsk, 1986.