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The text introduces a translation of Ilyenkov’s famous text “On the State of Philosophy,” which was meant as a letter to the Central Committee of the CPSU and expressed his exasperation with the development of Soviet philosophy. In our introduction, we describe the historical context of the emergence of the letter, including the main changes in Soviet philosophy in the 1960s (esp. rise in popularity of cybernetics), and the institutional details of Ilyenkov’s biography. We point to the contemporary relevance of (...) |
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ArgumentThis paper provides an introduction to three translations of articles by Soviet philosopher Boris Hessen: “Mechanical Materialism and Modern Physics,” “On Comrade Timiryazev’s Attitude towards Contemporary Science” and “Marian Smoluchowski (On the Tenth Anniversary of His Death)”. It begins by presenting a central tension in Hessen’s work; namely, how even though he is better known for the externalism of his 1931 Newton paper, much of his work has been considered exemplary of an internalist approach. I then show that for Hessen, (...) |
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This paper presents a survey of the philosophy of science in Estonia. Topics covered include the historical background (science at the 17th century Academia Gustaviana, in the 19th century, during the Soviet period) and an overview of the current situation and main areas of research (the problem of demarcation, a critique of the traditional understandings of science, φ-science, classical and non-classical science, the philosophy of chemistry, the problem of induction, the sociology of scientific knowledge, semiotics as a methodology). |
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The new discipline of exobiology formed from the intertwining of origin of life research with the search for life or its building blocks on other planets, from 1957-1973. The field was inherently highly interdisciplinary, yet it coalesced very quickly and was responsible in its first twenty years for numerous important contributions to twentieth century life science and planetary sciences such as climatology, the study of mass extinctions, etc. NASA played a very important role in catalyzing the rapid consolidation of exobiology, (...) |
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I make a large claim for the intellectual and institutional centrality of the history of science as critical reason. The reality on the ground, of course, does not always exhibit this. I trace the vicissitudes of my own way of thought in relation to developments in the field, leading to an interest, first, in relating intellectual history (with its philosophical orientation) to mainstream (evidence based) history, and second, to finding a place for the human sciences in the history of science. (...) |
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We study the possible interpretation of the "universal constants" by the classification of J.-M. Lévy-Leblond. The Planck constant and the speed of light in vacuum are the most common examples of constants of this type. Using Fock’s principle of the relativity w.r.t. observation means, we show that these two constants can be viewed as manifestations of certain relativity. We also show that there is a possibility to interpret the Boltzmann constant in a similar way, and make some comments about the (...) |
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In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the leaders of the Genetics Society of America (GSA) struggled to find an appropriate group response to Trofim Lysenko's scientific claims and the Soviet treatment of geneticists. Although some of the leaders of the GSA favored a swift, critical response, procedural and ideological obstacles prevented them from following this path. Concerned about establishing scientific orthodoxy on one hand and politicizing the content of their science on the other, these American geneticists drew on democratic (...) |
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In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the leaders of the Genetics Society of America struggled to find an appropriate group response to Trofim Lysenko’s scientific claims and the Soviet treatment of geneticists. Although some of the leaders of the GSA favored a swift, critical response, procedural and ideological obstacles prevented them from following this path. Concerned about establishing scientific orthodoxy on one hand and politicizing the content of their science on the other, these American geneticists drew on democratic language (...) |
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A standard problem with the objectivity of social scientific theory in particular is that it is either self-referential, in which case it seems to undermine itself as ideology, or self-excepting, which seem pragmatically self-refuting. Using the example of Marx and his theory of ideology, I show how self-referential theories that include themselves in their scope of explanation can be objective. Ideology may be roughly defined as belief distorted by class interest. I show how Marx thought that natural science was informed (...) |
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The present study analyzes specific traits of Lysenkoism dogmas as they were reflected in Soviet hydrobiology. As a case study, I use the now-forgotten productivity theory of bodies of water developed in 1940 by the Soviet hydrobiologist Vladimir I. Zhadin. Zhadin’s views on production relied on his observations of changes in the communities of riverine faunas caused by the construction of water reservoirs. The theory is of particular interest because it attempts to address the unresolved problems of that period. Some (...) |
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In this paper, we focus on the launch of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, which was first published in 1925. We present the context of the launch and explain why it was closely connected to the period of the New Economic Policy. In the last section, we examine four articles about randomness and probability included in the first volumes of the encyclopedia in order to illustrate some debates from within the scientific scene in the USSR during the 1920s. |
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This article revisits the left-wing response to sociobiology in the 1970s and 1980s by examining the sociobiology debate in Finland in a larger European context. It argues that the Finnish academic left’s response to sociobiology represents a “third way” alongside the purely negative, often Marxist denial of biology’s relevance, which characterized the left’s response to sociobiology in many European countries such as Hungary and Sweden, and alongside the disregard that sociobiology confronted in most parts of Eastern Europe, as well as (...) |
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The Neurogenomic Paradigm. Anthropological Dimensions and Freedom in the Care of the Patient: The experimental scientific method disengages the body from the mind and the spirit. Ascertaining the meaning of each individual may overcome the methodological limitations within the current scientific paradigm. The noetic clues afforded by Neurogenomics via an integrative anthropological perspective should pave the way to heal the individual who feels ill, at the heart of his or her disease. |
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The article is a study into the advent of the ‘systems approach’ in Soviet psychology in the 1970s. This arose mainly through the theoretical publications of B. F. Lomov, written after he had been appointed director of the newly established Institute of Psychology. These publications are examined as reflections of those interests related to the sociopolitical role of the director of this leading psychology institution, which was officially charged with building a common theoretical and methodological framework for all Soviet psychology. (...) |
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This article focuses on the emergence and development of gerontology in communist Bulgaria, looking at the interplay of various circumstances: scientific and political, national and international. We ask if an apparently ideologically neutral field of knowledge such as gerontology may have had some intrinsic qualities imbued by the regimes of knowledge production under a communist regime. More specifically, we ask to what extent and in which ways the production of such specialized, putatively universal knowledge could be ideologically driven and/or politically (...) |
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This article presents a fragment of the history of psychology in Poland, discussing its development in the years 1945–56, which saw sweeping political and geographical transformations. In that maelstrom of history, psychology was particularly affected by the effects of geopolitical changes, which led to its symbolic ‘arrest’ in 1952, when psychological practice was prohibited and all psychology courses were abolished at universities. Amnesty was declared only in 1956, with the demise of the so-called Stalinist ‘cult of personality’ and the onset (...) |
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The rich tradition of Siberian science and higher education is little known outside Russian academic circles. Using institutional history, this article focuses on the founding and pre-war period of the Siberian Physical Technical Institute, the establishment of its research focus and its first difficult steps to become a leading centre of R & D in Siberia. Based on archival materials, the article describes how local and national physicists justified the institute's creation by demonstrating ties with industry and building on the (...) |
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At some point in America in the 1940s, T. D. Lysenko's neo-Lamarckian hereditary theories transformed from a set of disputed doctrines into a prime exemplar of "pseudoscience." This paper explores the context in which this theory acquired this pejorative status by examining American efforts to refute Lysenkoism both before and after the famous August 1948 endorsement of Lysenko's doctrines by the Stalinist state, with particular attention to the translation efforts of Theodosius Dobzhansky. After enumerating numerous tactics for combating perceived pseudoscience, (...) |
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Although many facets of Lev Vygotsky’s life have drawn considerable attention from historians of science, perhaps the most popular feature of his personal narrative was that his work was actively chastised by the Stalinist government. Almost all contemporary references to Vygotsky’s personal history emphasize that from 1936 to 1956, it was forbidden to either discuss or disseminate any of Vygotsky’s works within the Soviet Union. Although this ‘Vygotsky ban’ is both widely acknowledged and frequently cited by a variety of scholars, (...) |
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Abstract Frolov, I. T. (1990) Man, Science, Humanism: A New Synthesis (Buffalo, NY, Prometheus Books), 342 pp. Graham, L. R. (Ed.) (1990) Science and the Soviet Social Order (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press), ix + 443 pp. Understanding the place of science in Soviet culture is essential if we are to understand the distinctive character of the Soviet Union, its failings and contradictions, and its prospects for the future. This paper examines Soviet conceptions of the role of science in the (...) |
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This paper addresses theoretical challenges, still relevant today, that arose in the first decades of the twentieth century related to the concept of the organism. During this period, new insights into the plasticity and robustness of organisms as well as their complex interactions fueled calls, especially in the UK and in the German-speaking world, for grounding biological theory on the concept of the organism. This new organism-centered biology understood organisms as the most important explanatory and methodological unit in biological investigations. (...) |
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Naukovedenie (literarily meaning ‘science studies’), was first institutionalized in the Soviet Union in the twenties, then resurfaced and was widely publicized in the sixties, as a new mode of reflection on science, its history, its intellectual foundations, and its management, after which it dominated Soviet historiography of science until perestroika . Tracing the history of meta-studies of science in the USSR from its early institutionalization in the twenties when various political, theoretical and institutional struggles set the stage for the development (...) |
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This paper investigates how an introductory philosophy course influences the moral and political development of undergraduate students in a Liberal Arts university in Central Asia. Within a context of rapid changes characteristic of transitional societies—reflected in the organization of higher education—philosophy provides students with the means to reason about moral and political values in a way that overcomes the old ideological tenets as well as contemporary reluctance to theoretical inquiry. Studying philosophy provides a remedy for deficiencies in both secondary and (...) |
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A global economy powered by non-solar energy sources is limited by global warming, finite reserves and concomitant insults to the earth's biosphere, including our own species. Some of these impacts, such as loss of biodiversity, will be irreversible. Without constraints on the reproduction of capital, the global driver of the contemporary environmental crisis, these impacts will intensify. This is not a necessary outcome for an economy utilizing the high efficiency capture of solar energy, a conclusion informed by consideration of the (...) |
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The article is devoted to the philosophy of cosmology, its history and contemporary conditions, the tradition of studying and modern trends in teaching this discipline in higher education in Ukraine. There is problem of defining the subject of philosophy of cosmology, there are similar and different motifs with modern astrophysics, cosmology on the one hand, and, with the history of philosophy and modern philosophy on the other hand. The change in the subject of the philosophy of cosmology in the history (...) |
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