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Валентин Бажанов (Россия). Комментарий к докладу Ханса Позера
Александр Печенкин (Россия). Парадигма и идеология. Исторический пример
Alexandre Pechenkin (Russia). Paradigm and Ideology. A Historical Example.
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Валентин Бажанов (Россия). Комментарий к докладу Ханса Позера

Valentin Bazhanov (Russia). Comments to: "Chaotic autopoiesis and the self organisation of catastrophes? The new scientific models and their consequences" by Hans Poser

Professor Hans Poser presented very interesting and thought provoking paper. I would not reiterate its main conclusions and just draw your attention to the last judgment of this paper: "Back to metaphysics of science – this is neither a conceptual chaos nor an intellectual catastrophe, as hard-minded analytic philosophers might think, but the consequence of the new scheme of thought in sciences as well as in the world view". Nevertheless within the paper Professor Poser makes some far going claims. Say, he speaks of dissipative structures as "creative processes" or "the models one gets by means of an interpretation are by no means pictures of complex reality, but a way to impose a selective structure on this reality without really meeting it. Instead of a hierarchy of knowledge sources, we find a network of mathematical theorems, interpretations as a model and correspondences between the models and generalized empirical data".

I think we can assess dissipative process as creative in a sense that after passing the point of bifurcation we witness not only the new (stable) structure but the novel trajectory of evolving of the system which is unpredictable. The metaphoric sense of term creative is quite evident: almost any form of self-organization or/and evolution may be described by the same term.

At the beginning of the paper Professor Poser reminds great I. Kant and the consequence of his a priori elements of cognition: "the condition of possibility of empirical knowledge is – in a Kantian perspective – at the same time a condition of the possibility of the objects of empirical knowledge". Afterwards he argues that "our understanding depends on a model which we impose, a model of which it is even impossible to say that it is an abstraction." Thus, the imposition of some mental (conceptual) structure upon the reality lies within, so to speak, the traditional picture of knowledge acquisition: subject of cognition cuts certain reality at the angle of his/her a priori tankage. Namely this situation enables us to prescribe the feature of activity role of subject of cognition or his/her consciousness. To put it in a few words, we are far from intellectual catastrophe and being keep ourselves within the frame of normal philosophical reasoning.

Let me express disagreement with some of the papers items. I'm not share the view that in quantum mechanics we have to "substitute causality by probability"; quantum mechanics implies probabilistic determinism and, hence, causality interpretable in probabilistic terms.

Synergetics without any doubt revealed verges of complex systems and reality as a whole. Meanwhile the resulting picture of the world is not drastically novel; more likely it is expanded and more accurate than we have had before the synergetics emerged. Moreover the cornerstone principles of quantum mechanics or/and theory of relativity are not falsified. At the best we can claim Kuhnian paradigm switch but not a radically "new worldview".

Old methodological idea of falsifying a hypothesis by prediction in the lack of the latter (in classical, as far as I understood, sense) didn't hold. Nevertheless, the main goals of science are not only prediction but explanation and description as well. We can explain and mathematically describe new phenomena – Professor Poser will certainly agree with this statement. The type of unpredictability – due to ontic contingency – in synergetics of the same type as in quantum mechanics; we could predict within the probabilistic paradigm.

Most disturbing factors of milieu acting on the system due to persistent noises with definite time of correlation. When these noises are of antipersistent character their behaviour still predictable within the time of Lyapunov and thus have prognostic value.

"We cannot understand ‘complex’ nature ‘as it is’ by means of explanations, since the classical presupposition of each inductive generalization, “similar causes are followed by similar effects”, does not hold (even in the case of deterministic chaos, one only could say: “identical causes are followed by identical effects”, whereas there will never be really identical causes)," – claims Professor Poser. We cannot distinguish sharply between induction and analogy. Induction in a general sense is a procedure of extrapolation of the local trends upon the whole sample, totality. Analogy is a procedure of comparison of certain objects or systems in order to deduce their similarity. The quest of identical causes which are followed by identical effects more close to the goal of analogy, and induction – at least in the sense mentioned by me – is not affected.

I do not share Professor's Poser generalized treatment of Gödel's theorems (No extended logical system can, as a system, treat itself in totality; this follows from Gödel’s theorem) for this theorems holds for certain class (though wide enough) of formalized theories and sense of these theorems is questionable in some advanced paraconsistent systems.

Along with Professor Poser I keen to say that the development of new complexity theories lies along the ancient aspiration to find unity in the diversity though it marks new stage of this quest. As Professor Poser puts it, "the theories of complexity offer a universal order for the cosmos of matter as well as of ideas". Finally, I would express gratitude for the person who asked me to comment the brilliant paper by Professor Poser.


Александр Печенкин (Россия). Парадигма и идеология. Исторический пример


В развитие идей Т. Куна, изложенных в «Структуре научных революций», понятие парадигмы сопоставляется с понятием идеологии. При этом парадигма понимается в соответствии с Т. Куном как историко-научная категория, позволяющая на когнитивном уровне описать, что представляет собой «научное сообщество». Идеология понимается в соответствии с У. Куайном как лингвистический ресурс «научного сообщества», как специфическая система идей, которую «научное сообщество» несет в науку. Парадигма обеспечивает решение научных задач. Это совокупность предписаний, усваиваемых в процессе образования, предписаний как формулировать и решать задачи. Идеология же обеспечивает предварительное понимание фактов, она выделяет то, что интересно и актуально. При этом авторитетное научное сообщество несет в себе сильную и влиятельную идеологию, и наоборот, сильная и влиятельная идеология характеризует авторитетное научное сообщество.

История реакции Белоусова–Жаботинского позволяет пояснить роль парадигмы и идеологии в развитии науки. Открытая в начале 1950-х гг. Б.П. Белоусовым колебательная химическая реакция не была воспринята сообществом химиков по причине господствующей в то время парадигмы классической термодинамики. В начале 60-х гг. эта же реакция была признана и включена в программу исследований благодаря идеологии авторитетного научного сообщества, занимавшегося развитием теории нелинейных колебаний. При этом началась перестройка социальной структуры науки, исследования в области колебательных химических реакций оказались включенными в парадигму синергетики.


Alexandre Pechenkin (Russia). Paradigm and Ideology. A Historical Example.


The dramatic history of the Belousov-Zhabotinskii reaction (subsequently referred as the B-Z reaction) has become a piece of scientific folklore and it is even outlined in a textbook on non-linear dynamics (Strogatz, 1998: 254-255). The main historical problem which provides a “narrative tension” is the following. The Boris Belousov’s paper, where he described the oscillatory homogeneous reaction conducted by him and attempted a mechanism of this reaction, was rejected by two Soviet main chemical journals in 1951 and respectively in 1955. Belousov finally managed to publish a brief abstract in the obscure proceedings issued by the Institute where he was employed as head of a laboratory (Institute of Biophysics at the Ministry of Public Health). His paper was only posthumously published in 1981 (Belousov died in 1970). An English translation of his 1951 paper appears in: Field and Burger (eds.), 1985.

It is interesting that it is not possible to blame external forces for this development. Nor the Communist party authority, neither the state ideologists intervened. The scientific community as it is represented by the editors of scientific journals and their referees ignored Belousov’s discovery.

To explain the 1951-1955 situation the prominent biologist Arthur Winfree points to “the resistance of human nature to observations that do not fit into existing theory” (Winfree, 1987: 661). Zhabotinsky’s teacher S.E. Schnol provides a similar attitude (1997, 2001). However, he also makes emphasis on a moral aspect of the situation.

I am going to treat the subject by inviting the modern philosophy of science. However, formerly I call for attention to some historical details. Really, the situation with the Belousov’s discovery looks more complicated. In 1949, that is, two years earlier than Belousov made his first attempt to publish his results, Zhurnal Fizicheskoi Khimii (Journal of Physical Chemistry) published an article dedicated to the oscillatory homogeneous reactions. This was I.E.Salnikov’s article that summed up a series of his studies conducted together with D.A.Frank-Kamenetsky at the Institute of Chemical Physics since 1941. Salnikov said to me that he experienced difficulties as he attempted to legitimate his research at Institute of Chemical Physics. Nevertheless, his articles had appeared and he finally received his PhD from Gorky (now Nizhniy-Novgorod) University (but he never received Dr. Science degree usual for the scientists of his level in the USSR).

In 1957 Schnol started to publish his results concerning the oscillations of ATP-ase activity of actomyosin. Schnol was invited to teach at Lomonosov Moscow State University and in 1961 he was set his student Zhabotinsky a problem to continue Belousov’s research. Zhabotinsky successfully conducted his research which became soon collaborative and resulted in a series of publications in the most authoritative Soviet scientific journals and led him to the Lenin prize (the highest Soviet scientific honor) which he received in 1981.

At the end of the fiftieths D.S.Chernavsky, who worked at the Physics Institute of the Academy of Sciences, published a number of articles on a homogeneous oscillatory reaction in biochemistry. So, at the beginning of the sixtieths one can observe a “scientific movement” towards legitimization of chemical oscillations. Articles about chemical oscillations appeared a bit earlier Belousov’s unsuccessful attempt to publish his results, and they appeared a bit later. Why was Belousov’s paper rejected? And vise versa, why Belousov’s contemporaries succeeded to publish their results on chemical oscillations?

In my article (Pechenkin, 2002) I distinguish between two intellectual constraints on research: paradigm and ideology. Following T.Kuhn I state that paradigm encompasses problem-solving activity, since it cares typical conceptual tools, models, shared examples, it reduces problems to “puzzles”. In Quinian stile, I call “ideology” the language resources of a theory, that descriptive terminology which the theory brings to science. The ideology can also be recognized as a set of concepts which can be expressed in the language of the theory. If the paradigm encompasses problem-solving activity, then ideology provides a preliminary interpretation of facts and indicate what is scientifically important. If the paradigm guides the formation of the theory, then the ideology allows the expansion of the theory into associated areas where it indicates new interesting phenomena and poses new problems.

By referring to “examples”, “heuristic models”, and “values” as the components of the paradigm, Kuhn partially expressed in this concept what I call ideology. Kuhn sometimes tended to distinguish between the paradigm as ideology and the paradigm as “rules for research”. For him, “normal science” was initially formed within the framework of crude analogies, models, or in a word, within framework of what is called ideology here. By means of crude analogies, models, etc., empirical facts were interpreted as interesting and problems were set. When Kuhn was writing about crisis and anomalies, he turned to the paradigm as a set of rules. Crisis and anomalies appeared in the course of problem-solving activity which the rules encompassed.

In contrast to Kuhn, I take ideology as intellectual machinery in its own right. The ideology is an essential part of a paradigm, but it can go beyond the paradigm and prepare the rise of a new paradigm. A scientific community, if it is an authoritative scientific community, can push its shared concepts and shared examples far beyond that area in which its rules and methods are effective, that is, beyond the area of its problem-solving activity. In other words, an authoritative scientific community has authoritative concepts and examples. Ideology comprises a legitimating framework which indicates what is worthy of attention, allows the posing of problems, and hence provides a prior interpretation of phenomena. However, ideology is not able to reduce problems to puzzles. It only prepares problem-solving activity, which is provided by the extension of an old paradigm or by formation of a new paradigm.

In the present paper I argue that the history of the Belousov’s discovery can not be understood solely within the framework of Kuhnian paradigms. Kuhnian paradigms should be supplemented by ideologies (understood in the sense of Quine).

True, Kuhnian paradigms shed light on the rejection of Belousov’s paper from 1951-1955. Belousov’s discovery did not fit into the paradigm of classical chemical thermodynamics.

As mentioned above, Winfree and Schnol emphasize that Belousov discovery did not fit into contemporary chemical theories. Winfree’s and Schnols interpretations should each be elaborated more carefully. Belousov’s discovery did not contradict thermodynamics or any other existing scientific theory. Moreover, in his 1974 book Zhabotinsky explained the situation with Belousov’s discovery by pointing to a confusing identification of the stationary state of a chemical system with its equilibrium state (Zhabotinsky, 1974: 43). However, this explanation does not concern the historical reasons: the chemists, who rejected Belousov’s discovery, could not read I.Prigogine’s books on non-linear thermodynamics and Zhabotinsky’s own papers. I believe that the situation can be elucidated with the benefit of Kuhnian paradigms. Belousov’s discovery did not fit into the paradigm of classical chemical thermodynamics. This paradigm can be described as follows: 1) (”symbolic generalizations”) themodynamical functions which characterize how a system is approaching its equilibrium state, 2) (“ontological model”) dynamic chemical equilibrium at which every free system spontaneously arrives, 3) (values) thermodynamics provides grounds for studies in chemical processes, and 4) (“shared examples”) simple physical processes, say, equilibrium between a liquid and its vapor, the irreversible process of mixing of two gases.

In turn, Belousov’s reaction presupposes the following: 1) The periodic functions describes the state of the system, whereas thermodynamic functions are monotonic. 2) The evolution of the system results in a stable stationary structure constituted by ordered transformations of molecules, whereas thermodynamic equilibrium, at which every system should spontaneously arrive, is provided by a chaotic set of molecular processes (approximately a half of particles participate in a straight reaction, while the other half participate in a reverse reaction, and as a result there are no net changes in the system). 3) The Belousov discovery invites suspicion toward standard thermodynamics. 4) "Shared thermodynamic examples" turn out to be irrelevant.

To understand the way in which Belousov’s reaction was adopted by the chemical community, we need to shift our attention to the other intellectual constraint, which I discuss in the present article, namely, to the scientific ideology. It is the ideology of the expansion of biology into chemistry that formed the context in which Zhabotinsky started his research under Schnol. More specifically, this research was legitimated due to the ideology of biorhythms (and biological clocks).

However, this ideology had not played a considerable role in his work. It allowed Schnol to legitimate this work. Zhabotinsky formulated his problems and results by using the language of physico-mathematical theory of oscillations. This language was penetrated by the ideology of a powerful scientific community which is usually called the Mandelstam School. I call this ideology the ideology of self-oscillations. “Self-oscillations” is a central concept of the theory of non-linear oscillations developed by the Mandelstam community, the characteristic message of the theory of non-linear oscillations. It formed around the concept of self-oscillations. In its early stage, the theory of non-linear oscillations was simply the theory of self-oscillations. This concept made possible the broader application of the theory of non-linear oscillations, whose domain was originally lumped systems, to continuous media and its subsequent progress toward synergetics.

What is meant by the Mandelstam School? In 1925 L.I. Mandelstam, who graduated from Strasbourg University in 1902 and started as a radiophysicist and optician at the Strasbourg Institute of Physics, took a chair of theoretical physics at the Moscow State University. Around him a group of talented scientists arose. In 1927 Mandelstam set his graduate student A. Andronov the problem of improving a mathematical technique with the help of which radio-engineering device (a tube generator) was approximately described. Andronov’s work resulted in important conceptual innovations. In his 1928 paper and in his subsequent Ph.D thesis, a rigorous mathematical theory of the oscillations typical for a tube generator and evident in many customary engines (say, a clock) and in living beings (say, beats of the heart) had been elaborated upon. Andronov applied the qualitative theory of differential equations developed by H. Poincaré in another context. Andronov called these (undumped, unforced) oscillations self-oscillations. The phase portrait of self-oscillations is the Poincaré limit cycle, a kind of attractor.

After a number of successful studies (which Andonov partially conducted with another Mandelstam’s former student A.Vitt) the concept of self-oscillations gained popularity. This concept turned out to be the conceptual center of Andronov-Vitt-Khaikin’s book “The theory of oscillations” (1937) which appeared in three Russian editions and was twice translated into English (1949, 1965). After War II two books dedicated to elaboration and popularization of self-oscillations appeared.

At the beginning of the 1930s Andronov moved to Gorky city (now: Nizhny Novgorod) where around him a scientific community was formed. This community can be considered as a branch of the Mandelstam School. The main concern of Andronov’s community was to develop the concept of self-oscillations for multidimensional systems applicable to control engineering and for continuous media.

As early as 1929 Andronov wrote about chemical self-oscillations. This was a purely ideological application of the theory of non-linear oscillations. The chemical oscillations did not fit into the paradigm of non-linear oscillations. Andonov called chemical periodical oscillations “self-oscillations”, but he could not show that these oscillations really met the mathematical criteria of self-oscillations (he could not show that these oscillations can be represented by the Poincaré limit cycle). Nevertheless, Andronov inspired Salnikov to study chemical oscillations. D.S. Chernavsky, who spent several years in the intellectual interchange of Andronov’s community, also treated chemical oscillations as self-oscillations. One reads in his article that “by nature every internal rhythm is nothing more nor less than a self-oscillatory regime of the internal chemical reactions” (1960: 632). In spite of the paradigm of classical thermodynamics, chemical oscillations treated as self-oscillations were welcome in the scientific communities that were close to the Mandelstam-Andronov School.

Zhabotinsky’s work consisted of two parts: 1) he elaborated the mechanism and eventually the mathematical model of Belousov’s reaction; 2) he proved that a homogeneous chemical oscillator is possible. The former part was rather paradigmatic, Zhabotinsky worked within the framework of Andronov’s paradigm and his puzzle was how to find a limit cycle corresponding to the Belousov oscillator. The latter was solved by “turning around” the Bodenstein method of quasi-stationary concentration. It cannot be considered as a puzzle within the paradigm of non-linear oscillations. Moreover, Zhabotnsky and his co-author came close to another paradigm, the paradigm of synergetics. However, the ideology of self-oscillations also was in operation when Zhabotinsky proved that a homogeneous chemical oscillators are possible. The thing is that Zhabotinsky proved that the self-oscillatory homogeneous reactions are possible.

So, the ideology of self-oscillations was nor a merely part of the corresponding paradigm. This ideology was intellectual machinery in its own right.

Over last two decades social constructivism has become a popular conception in the philosophy of science. I hope that the present article shows that the resources of the intellectual history of science are not exhausted.