Logic, methodology and philosophy of science VIII proceedings of the eighth international congress of logic, methodology and philosophy of science, and philosophy of science proceedings) ( PDFDrive ) 32

PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE AND MAN 13 The prior development of the fundamental branches of sciences of nature provides the necessary pre-conditions for scientific and technical progress, for new machinery and technologies On the other hand, the development of the scientific-technicaldisciplines, engineering and design affect natural science, mathematics and even social science Computerisation facilitates such an interaction Thus, the nature of the present-day scientific work cannot be explained without an analysis of the foundations of the constructive, technical and technological activity Under the conditions of the fusion of fundamental and applied investigations and the intensive exchange of ideas between various disciplines, the activity aimed at forming a synthesis of the ideas about the object under study and the methods of its cognition, begins to play a special role Questions inevitably arise about the interrelationships of the subjects of various sciences from which the original ideas are borrowed, about the connection between the subject and the method, about the limits and possibilities of the use of the methods tested in one field of knowledge in a completely new field The same holds for the ever greater drawing together of the logic, methodology and philosophy of science The establishment of the unity of science does not exclude its differentiation and growing division into individual disciplines Moreover, this process is just as legitimate and natural as the integration of knowledge It stems from the qualitative multiformity of the world, indivisible in its essence However, one cannot but see that the continuous division of the cognitive process into isolated spheres, disregarding their common ties, leads to a disintegration of knowledge This is true of both the sciences about nature and the sciences about society and man The division and isolation of scientific disciplines hampers scientific progress Social science suffers most from such negative consequences The differentiation, and in some aspects the disintegration, of social knowledge is based on the increasing diversity of the human world: the societies and institutions, social groups and organisations comprising it, culture and mass consciousness, the diversity of human personalities, ever more often referred to as unique personalities The growing diversity is a progressive phenomenon, the source of the further development of the human race as a whole and of the emergence within it of new, deeper interconnections and interdependencies That process, however, was often interpreted by social scientists not in its contradictory integrity, but one-sidedly, from the point of view of some of its isolated aspects The whole was ignored and there appeared a tendency towards the differentiation of the social sciences which was apt to lead to disintegration This