Forsyth of science historians

In June, a slurry event was held in the Novosibirsk Akademgorodok: the Novosibirsk State University in cooperation with the European University in St. Petersburg held a Foresight session "Humanitarian studies of science: horizons and guidelines. In a press release, among other problems, for discussion, a weak connection of academic research and practice of research of research activities in our country was stated.

About why the history of science is more relevant than ever, why historians to participate in Forsyt sessions and how they can help in thinking about the future of science, Julia Chernya talked with the organizer of the event-an assistant professor of NSU, a researcher at the Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vadim Zhuravlev .

The word "Forsyth" itself is taken from the language of the venture business. Forsyt involves isoating the image of a possible future in order to determine points for promising investments. It was this logic that the organizers of the June event decided to put it in its basis. Participants of several research projects from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Tomsk, Germany, the USA and, of course, Novosibirsk gathered at NSU. However, in total, it was possible to collect less than a dozen scientific groups that actually work in this field. In response to my surprise, why there were so few of them, Vadim only shrugs:

- Indeed, only a very small number of researchers are engaged in the history of science. I'm not talking about the history of individual scientific disciplines, but about the history of Soviet and post -Soviet science as a social phenomenon. It would seem that in the Novosibirsk Akademgorodok such an object of study literally under the nose, but only units are somehow engaged in the history of Akademgorodok, literally two names. The contribution of these scientists in no case should be underestimated. But, unfortunately, these are not scientific schools, but separately taken research tracks, there is no need to talk about the research community yet.

In the world there is a large field of research of science, but the Russian contribution to it is very modest. Therefore, the experience and trends of Western science are primarily studied. Of course, Russian examples in such studies are also given, but rather as confirming global trends. Differences are perceived as local features that go beyond the norm.

The assertion that science is a self -reflexive system that is sufficiently studying itself - this is utopia. In fact, domestic science has been poorly studied (as, indeed, Russian society as a whole). As a result, we get the reform of science, which is based on data and concepts that have a very distant attitude to Russian reality.

- Why is the reform of the science that our government holds concerned?

We are trying to use someone else's experience on our soil. At the same time, we do not just know our soil, we are also trying to fight it. This is an old bureaucratic disease: “The sovereign commanded everyone to be the Dutch ...” At the same time, one should not idealize the system of organization of Western science. Before Western science, which has not experienced our collapse of the 1990s, there are also calls to reform. We are now familiar with some of these problems firsthand: for example, the negative aspects of the science of science (pursuit of citation and Hirsch index with a loss of quality of research). In addition, not only here, but throughout the world they discuss the “death of conferences”, the general deterioration of the quality of scientific communication, the creation of virtual research groups, the increase in competition ... and this is far from a complete list.

We must be aware that, copying the current device of Western science, we are copying yesterday in fact - while we are introducing the system, it is already evolving abroad. Going this way, we will always be late. But the saddest thing is that such changes are guaranteed not to take root.

It seems to me a successful metaphor for mushrooms and mycelium. Our science reorganizers concentrated all their attention on the fruits of science - conditionally “mushrooms”. They are difficult, but ready to recognize the existence of the "mushrooms". But no one even wants to think about the "soil" that is the "mushroom lord" of science. This situation is strictly set by the very state of the research field, which is dominated by philosophers-epistemologists and sociologists of science. The former develop the problems of scientific knowledge as ideas, the latter study scientific activity as a type. At the same time, modern historical research is clearly not enough, which could just deal with the “mushroom mushroom” and “soil”, because for historians, attention is natural to the special and context.

- And we can give an example what specifically should have taken into account the reformers from the history of domestic science?

- Today, the development of science is mainly reduced to the construction of new buildings, the purchase and production of equipment and the allocation of funds for specific projects. In principle, reformers even understand that this is not enough, for example, they are ready to bring scientific leaders to us. But the trouble is that this is not enough. The most difficult and requiring the largest intellectual and administrative efforts remains outside of attention. It is necessary that which is usually denoted by the term "environment".

- Do you mean schools, roads, clubs?

- And that too. For example, Mikhail Lavrentiev (founder with the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and the Novosibirsk Akademgorodok. - Approx. Ed.) It was not without reason that a fencing club organized in a young town, and not a club, say, basketball. Designing the environment, he appealed to the noble tradition. He built the elite and, as a symbol of elitism, chose a sword. He developed skis as a symbol of Siberia. Other successful science -degrees had their own symbols. For example, there were no skis in Obninsk, there was mountaineering.

So circles are also important. But I had in mind another, developing environment that organizational creativity creates. While we are acting on the principle: “I saw there or there is a chic structure! She works cool! Let's do the same! " This can be done, but the structure is likely to die or mutates. You can and should study someone else's experience. But it cannot be photocopy.

We already have a practice of “sowing” support for projects, and it works great at the business level, a little worse - at the level of civil society. But at a more difficult level (and science is one of the most complex activities in the modern world), all the started reforms only enhance the centralization and concentrate the initiative in the hands of the authorities.

- Why is it so sad for us?

- As a scientist, I must honestly say: I don’t know yet. As an employee who is cooked in this, I can express my “opinion”. But it will be “cheap”, not wealthy scientific capital. For a qualitatively different answer, you need to study history. Without this knowledge, we are guaranteed not to make the right decisions, be sure to make a mistake.

- Fine. Now we do not know where to go. But we have a successful experience. I often hear that there is a simple solution on the surface: to return everything as it was! In the USSR, it worked well and harmonious: they flew into space, there were Akademgorodok, Obninsk, Dubna and a lot of successful scientific towns, scientists respected, large -scale projects were implemented ... People have not changed much since then, the “soil” remained almost the same. Let's return everything back and will "live happily and happily."

-Once upon a time, Vladimir Putin successfully said that one who does not regret the Soviet Union does not have a heart, and one who wants to restore it in its former form has no head. The people in such cases speak more figuratively: minced meat cannot be handed back. Those who believe that the situation has changed slightly are very mistaken: society has changed, and not only Russian. In the world, there is already a completely different technical and economic way, other tasks are faced with science, and new challenges to humanity.

In addition, you need to understand that the collapse of the previous system of scientific activity had their own causes. We see a slowdown in the development of science (including Akademgorodok) long before 1991. Since the second half of the 1970s, the system has already demonstrated indirect signs of internal problems. Another thing is that then the system collapsed due to circumstances independent of it. But to believe that all the problems came from outside would be very reckless.

- People generally tend to idealize the past. And in Akademgorodok, this trend is very strong. We are against any construction projects (even a children's clinic), against innovations. Do I need to aggravate it and "live the past"?

- To move on, we need to understand well that we have already passed, where we are now and where we would like to get. History answers the first two questions. She helps to find the answer to the third. In fact, history is a reflective superstructure, the process of introspection. The latter lies with the reason why it is so difficult, but it is so important to study the domestic history. This fully applies to the history of Russian science.

Unfortunately, not all institutions of the Novosibirsk Scientific Center have at least a “jubilee-paralle” version of their history, the history of leading scientific schools. And how many truly large, even outstanding science figures have not been studied biographically?! It is also important to fix that such the most general problems of historiography of the Soviet and post -Soviet society as the history of elites, political history, the history of colonization and Imperioprobial, the history of nature management, the history of culture, are radically incomplete without the study of science and scientific, without the history of the Golden Valley of Siberia.

At the same time, there is a request not on advertising materials, but on the competent informing of the company about which inheritance we really have. Of course, there are separate projects, there are memorial rooms. But these are disparate initiatives. We have no conferences on the history of science where we could discuss what was really done in every institute in a year. And even more so, no one seeks to enter these initiatives into all -Russian processes, to bring this activity from the level of “intra -institute local history” to a more serious level, to make this information relevant and interesting beyond the specific institute and Akademgorodok as a whole.

- What conclusions did you come to as a result of four -day discussions?

-There was no task for us to come to some unambiguous general conclusions. We rather recorded the differences in approaches. The most important task was to understand which groups are, how they work and how we can interact with all existing differences. In other words, the task was to conduct an inventory of what is and think about what network structure we need, a structure that would allow you to communicate, polemicize, exchange experience, situationally combine efforts.

Awareness of the urgent need to maintain and systematize the heritage of the Novosibirsk Academgorodok and other science -city groups is another of the important results of Foresight. A huge number of family archives that went to a landfill is a personal reproach for me as a archivist historian. I do not condemn people throwing old letters and photographs. In Akademgorodka, for example, there is really no structure where the archives could be transferred when the family does not have heirs or there is no place to store such archives. In order for the situation to change, first of all, you need to realize that this is a problem. However, the instructiveization of public mnemonics is only part of the project. The second, no less important part is a historical study. This is the bridge in the present. After all, historical research is by nature cannot be uncritical. So, it gives us knowledge of which elements it is useful for us to preserve, which to give a different status, what conclusions can be drawn, what mistakes to take into account.

- Many people criticize the reforms of the Academy of Sciences that the government has been conducting in recent years. But could we then and can we change this situation today?

- This is very strange: while we are talking about the physics of elementary particles, we use a normal scientific language. As soon as we proceed to the discussion of the modern (and not only modern) state of science - we go down to the level of kindergarten. Good fan / bad fano, hard leader / soft. We do not discuss bread in the store!

Many scold the reform of science. I agree with part of the charges, I could argue with a part. But, for example, critics are right and the authorities made a completely wrong decision. Did she have an alternative? Was there a pool of other solutions from which it was possible to choose?

We are very bad with the expert community. The authorities may or not make any decisions, but if they are not formulated by experts, then the leadership of the country, region, the city will definitely not accept them. Moreover, you need not one only ingenious idea, but a library of ideas from which you can choose the optimal in terms of strategy and tactics.

You can say that the Academy of Sciences has prepared certain programs (Vladimir Fortov’s election program, for example). Such programs, unfortunately, were created by the bureaucracy of the Academy of Sciences of the previous formation and defended primarily its interests. It’s just that at some point the interests of the scientific bureaucracy and the bureaucracy of the nationwide dispersed.

Here we must honestly admit that domestic science has abandoned the essential design of its future. Trying to copy the great domestic experience of the past or successful foreign experience is not an essential solution. We have no answer to the question of what the domestic science of the future is. Because you can’t sit down and just come up with such an answer. From the collection of the best minds of Russia, which is considered the Academy of Sciences, it would be natural to expect a strategic formulation of the urgent steps of the development of scientific activity. Formulations based on a factual funded reconstruction of the path traveled and identifying critical problems. In a good way, it was worth starting this work back in 1991. But then everyone with pleasure complained about life, then divided the oil money that poured into science. Now it's too late. The elementary bureaucratic logic won simply because she actually had no competitors. Over the decades of the lack of an efficient expert community, the authorities have been used to the fact that it is lonely in solving problems.

However, in this case, it is better late than never. If we realize that the cause of defects in the current academic reform is strategic miscalculations, then the way to overcome it is obvious. The basis of any strategy is the story: only after considering the past and the present, you can see yourself in the future.

- But to create such a system of collecting, storing and critical understanding of the past science, you again need money ...

- Often there is not so much money. They just should be distributed in accordance with adequately built priorities. Today we see that the number of funds for research is reduced. So, we are again moving from the network system to the pyramidal. This system will simply be forced to rely in its decisions on focus, on the parameter of the number of publications. And “objective” control will imitate quality outsourcing transmitted by Western journals. Unfortunately, the formalization of processes always pass due to quality.

By the way, no one studied the historical aspect of reporting and its influence on the quality of research. Indeed, over the past decades, completely different leadership models and different reporting models have been implemented in various scientific institutions. We still do not know anything about their effectiveness and their connection with the creative results of the institute. Nobody has studied this yet ...

- Vadim, the problem is posed. And from the side it seems that the volume of work is tremendous. Are the specific first steps already outlined? Or while they are postponed to "ripen"?

- Within the framework of this calendar year, we have three events are scheduled. First of all, we have a summer Karakan expert school, where we hope to arrange the backbone of the student team on the study of the history of the Novosibirsk Academgorodok. This school will be held under the auspices of NSU and Southern Federal University. Secondly, in the framework of the “Heritage” forum, which organizes the Humanitarian Institute of NSU, we will have a large event dedicated to the heritage of the Akademgorodok. That is, along with the heritage of ancient Chinese civilization, the Old Believers, etc., the legacy of Soviet science, the experience of the Novosibirsk Scientific Center, will be discussed. In November, in the framework of the exhibition of the achievements of the scientific economy (conference of the European University) for the first time there will be a special section on the history of Soviet science, which we will organize with Mikhail Piskunov and Timofei Rakov. And this means that for the first time in history a scientific site will appear outside Novosibirsk, at which they will specially discuss the history of Akademgorodok.

So the last Forsyth gave impetus for three events that will take place in the near future.

Vadim Zhuravlev
Talked Julia Cherny