infrastructural frameworks of

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INFRASTRUCTURAL FRAMEWORKS OF

SCIENTIFIC QUESTION GENERATION

Constantin GRECUVasile Goldi Western University of Arad

Faculty of Humanities, Politics and Administrative Sciences

Department of Social and Human Sciences

ABSTRACT. The thesis of this essay is that scientific questions are not simply

willingly created by scientists but rather imposed on them by the background

knowledge, which comprises not only facts, laws and theories but also several

infrastructural frameworks such as: general conception about the world,

philosophical presuppositions, scientific world view, style of scientific thinking,

ideal of scientific knowledge, ordinary and scientific common sense. These are

internalized socio-cultural frameworks, and so they constitute together a socio-

cultural background which penetrates the content and form of scientific knowledge

as a whole. They also play a determining role in scientific question generation.

What does question generation in science mean?

The generation of questions and problems is a less studied process,

and one also much more difficult to analyze, than the process of

finding out answers and solutions. If we agree that science is

nowadays the most important and efficient modality of cognition, it is

to be expected that the results obtained from research on the process

of scientific question and problem generation should shed light on the

whole human process of knowledge, all the modalities of human

interrogation. Far from making a fetish of science, I see it as a human

creation and attach a great philosophical significance to its study

because this is an important way of understanding the human being as

such. For, according to G. Radnitzky (and many other scientists and

philosophers), Since science (natural science and human science)plays an ever increasing role in our lives, an improvement of science


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is essential for an improvement of mans conception of himself in hisworld (1972, p. 132).

Until recently, research has concentrated especially on the final

products of scientific knowledge looked upon as concepts andstatements logically correlated within scientific theories, analyzed as

static entities in the so-called context of justification. By contrast,

another direction in the study of science considers that scientific

cognition consists mainly in problem solving and question answering.

This line of thought, whose starting point may be found in Aristotlesworks and later in Collingwoods view, has led to the so-called

problematological conception about science according to which themain goal of science is to find solutions and answers and that any

sentence should be viewed not simply as a sentence but as an answer

to a question.

For an answer to exist, there must first be a question, and if an

answer as product may be appreciated as valuable, then so must it be

with questions. Consequently, the process of question generation is at

least as important as that of answering, not to mention its priority. Sothat, as J.T. Dillon notes, finding (discovering, formulating, posing) aproblem represents a distinct and creative act, equal to or more

valuable than finding a solution (1982a, p. 98). The act of finding, ofposing a question is the deepest expression of scientific originality and

creativity, which means, in my opinion and according to my principal

thesis, that such an act is more important than that of answering and

not that it is a purely subjective act. From the history of scienceperspective, A. Einstein and L. Infeld remarked that The formulationof a problem is often more important than its solution and that itmarks real advance of science (1938; apud Dillon, 1982a, p. 98).The same position was held, among others, by K.R. Popper, who said

that the most lasting contribution a theory can bring in thedevelopment of scientific knowledge is the new problems it raises

(1970, p. 112), and M. Bunge, according to whom all investigationconsists in finding, starting, and wrestling with problems. It is not


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just that research begins with problems: research consists in dealing

with problems all the way along (1967, p. 165).Before going on, let us dwell a little on the nature of questions and

on the relationships of questions with the cognate concepts. From thevery outset we must remark its ambiguity and many-sided character,

that makes it an object of multidisciplinary research. J.T. Dillon, for

example, has pointed fifteen perspectives from which questions may

be studied, starting from the philosophical one and ending with the

practical one involved in parent-child relations (Dillon, 1982b). But

for the time being, we must distinguish between the conceptual or

logical aspect and the linguistic aspect here. In agreement with manyauthors, I contend that questions properly speaking are of a

conceptual, deep nature and can be expressed by many kinds of

sentences, as a rule, by interrogative sentences. Or, one may say that

the other kinds of sentences expressing questions can be transformed

into interrogative ones. If openly asked, a question may be expressed

in different ways, the interrogative one among others, in one and the

same language or in different languages, so that there is much reasonin Harrahs suggestion to view a question as a set of interrogativesthan as a single interrogative (Harrah, 1982, p. 29).

But scientific questions, unlike the educational or conversational

ones, are not always openly expressed and, in fact, as we will see,

rarely are so. They are not addressed by the scientist to other people

but rather to himself, so that they do not necessarily appear as

interrogative sentences. M. Meyer rightly notes that Interrogativesentences are used by a questioner to elicit an answer, or if the latter isnot verbal, the solution. The scientist, if he is to advance globalknowledge, he must find the answer by himself. Nobody else already

has it and, therefore, questions do not need to be formulated (Meyer,

1980, p. 53).

A somewhat more complicated relation arises between question

and problem. As far as my concern with scientific knowledge goes,one may say that the two overlap in the sense that I will be only


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interested in those questions which express cognitive difficulties, i.e.

problems, and that all knowledge problems, as questions, if openly

formulated, may appear as sets of interrogative sentences. In other

words, I will have in view the common territory of questions andproblems in scientific knowledge. Otherwise, there may exist

questions that are not problems (rhetorical, educational, conversational

etc. questions), and problems that are not questions (i.e. interrogative

sentences), at least prima facie. As J.T. Dillon observes, scientistsand scholars pose problems not only as questions to answer, but also

as hypotheses to test, theses to sustain, purposes to fulfill and topics to

address (1986a, p. 144; also 1984, p. 331). Referring to the samecommon territory of questions and problems, M. Meyer says that since

scientific questions need not be formulated, they are treated asproblems or puzzles (1980, p. 53). The same author claims thatquestion and problem lie on a deeper level than interrogative

sentences, and that In general, questions and problems can be

identified. If you prefer a psychological definition, you can say that a

question is an obstacle, a difficulty, an exigency of choice, andtherefore an appeal for a decision (Meyer, 1982, p.84).Now, what should we mean by question generation in science?

There are different answers to this question. So, for example, after

analyzing a rich literature on problem finding and solving in general,

J.T. Dillon distinguishes three levels of activity which clarify what can

be meant by problem finding: recognize problem, discover problem

and invent problem (Dillon, 1982a, p. 104). It is worth noting that hedeals with problem finding, which, especially in science, suggests a

process of discovery. From various researches one may conclude that

in science question generation is to be understood as something that

happens to scientists, as a process in which questions arise rather than

are raised or put voluntarily by scientists. It is a process in which

scientists wrestle with questions and problems which face them: they

consciously look for answers and solutions, but not for questions andproblems which impose themselves on scientists and are in need of


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solutions. Rather than invent or generate knowingly such questions

and problems, scientists must choose among them, must select the

important or solvable ones, must appreciate them from a number of

viewpoints and try to bring them to an end. From the history ofscience one may see that the scientists ingenuity is consciouslyworking only to grasp, to express, to select and to answer the

questions, not so much to bring them out. And often they are

mentioned only by their name, as metaquestions, at a metalevel, in

terms such as x-question or x-problem (the question of theemergence of life on Earth, the problem of the existence of extra-

terrestrial civilizations, etc.) (see Cackowski, 1982, pp. 225-226).Even when some famous scientists came to formulate certain

questions, as was the case with Boyle, Kepler, Newton, Darwin,

Hilbert, etc., further research has shown that many of them were not

the real ones and were not followed by future researchers or were

susbstantially modified. So, for example, J. Agassi states that Robert

Boyle has told his fellow members of the Royal Society of London

which questions to pursue in their empirical studies, among them thefollowing: What increment of the product of pressure and volume of a

given gas is due to what increment of its temperature? So many times

Boyle asked people to study this question, so many times he expressed

his disappointment over the neglect which this question suffered(Agassi, 1975, p. 245). Some such questions are fully neglected,

others are rediscovered after decades or centuries in other scientific

contexts. Similar things can be said about Newtons queries in hisOpticsor about Hilberts geometrical queries.The most diverse studies reveal the implicit and unintentional

character of question generation in the history of science. Since the

scientists themselves do not as a rule state clearly their pursued

questions (perhaps most of them are not aware of their questions) and

since in the final products of their research work (treaties, handbooks,

articles, etc.) they formulate only the researches results, there appearsthe need to discover or reconstruct those questions by means of a


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special inference from answers to questions. This is not an easy matter

since to a given answer there may correspond many questions, just as

to a given question there may correspond many answers, depending

on the context. J.T. Dillon remarks, for example, that Case studyproceeds as a rule by examining the sources to see what the scientist

did and discovered, and then by supposing and reconstructing the

question that the scientist must have asked in discovering it (1986a,

p. 145). By way of counterexamples, he refers to Kleiner who resorted

to DarwinsNotebooksin order to discover the question Darwin askedand formulated during his studies, to Knorr-Cetina who observed that

scientists discovered by chance a phenomenon that later on wasregistered as an experimental result, i.e., as an answer to a question

they had posed only afterwards, and to Knorr-Cetina and Mulkays

research from which the conclusion follows that the scientists wereseen to encounter the solution by chance, and then to formulate the

problem (Dillon, 1987, p. 13, preprint).This gives rise to an epistemological and logical problem, which

could be treated by an interrogative model of scientific rationality,namely, whether it is possible to find a solution before formulating aproblem, or, in more general terms, how can we come to know thequestions that scientists ask? (Dillon, 1987, p. 14). Other case studiessuggest that the problem is to discover the scientists questions andproblems (because they did not formulate them explicitly); this gives

rise to conceptual inference from the result quaanswer to question or

questions, which amounts to the reconstruction of those questions.About such an inference, J.T. Dillon said: Understanding what

answers are is a good way to understand what questions are; a

theoretical knowledge of answers is the best practical guide to

formulating and asking questionsand then seeing what the answer isand whether it is an answer at all (Dillon, 1986b, p. 116). In a similarway, S. Gale proposed as a task of his interrogative theory of scientific

inquiry the study of mutual inferences between questions and answers,partly in order to reconstruct the respective questions. For example,


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data are often collected for reasons which have little to do with the

ways in which they are later employed. In the use of these data,

however, it is important that we are able to distinguish among the

classes of questions which might have given rise to them (Gale,1978, p. 338). And finally Gale suggests that any interrogative theory

of scientific inquiry must involve an inference process in whichquestions (or, rather, classes of questions) were inferred from answers

(i.e., models of data) (ibid., p. 339).The history of science offers us examples of questions answered

before being consciously posed, as an unexpected result of the

attempts to answer other, consciously pursued questions. B.S.Griaznov (1982) distinguishes two types of questions: problems,

whose solutions are whole theories, and tasks, whose solutions are

only parts of theories. The first are unknowingly solved, without being

posed, but only retrospectively reconstructed. For example,

Copernicus started from the task of determining the day of Easter.

This task, assigned by the Catholic Church, became an astronomical

task, meaning the establishing of the vernal equinox. It could besolved within the Ptolemaic system with the only difference that,

within that system, a 10 days difference had accumulated by the 166h

century. It was proved that equinoxial points are not fixed and that

they are the result of the rotation of the Earths axis, its period beingof 26,000 years, never mentioned in the observations made during the

relatively short time between Ptolemaic and Copernican theories. In

order to find out the causes of this mistake in the Ptolemaic theory,Copernicus felt obliged to find a fixed reference systems. Neither the

elliptic nor the celestial equator, whose two intersections are the two

equinoxes, were suitable for it because of their instability. Therefore,

driven more by logico-theoretical motifs, Copernicus chose as a stable

reference system the system of fixed stars, considering the Earth to

rotate around its axis. This did not solve his task because the

movement of the vernal equinox might have been explained also bythe movement of the celestial equator. Therefore, Copernicus


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introduced the second movement, i.e. the Earths movement aroundthe sun, in addition to that around its axis. The resulting system was a

new theory, incompatible with Ptolemys one, and it seemed to be a

solution to a problem that Copernicus never explicitly formulated orpursued to solve, regarding the structure of the Universe. This

problem was retrospectively rebuilt, starting from the resulting

solutions obtained. Similar considerations may arise studying Planckstheory, which appeared as a solution to the problem of energyscontinuity or discontinuity, although Planck aimed to solve only the

task of finding out a formula for the radiation law, by which it shall

coincide for the short waves with Wiens formula and for the longwaves with Rayleighs one.In what follows, I shall try to demonstrate that this is due mainly to

what will be called infrastructural frameworks of scientific thinking.

Background knowledge and infrastructural frameworks

Looked upon from a phenomenological point of view (i.e.

described on a surface level), questions and problems are of the mostvarious kinds and arise in the most different situations. Roughly

speaking, there are two very important sources of questions and

problems in science: practical needs and curiosity. The first source is

an external or extrinsic one because, as M. Bunge notes, scientificproblems are not primarily problems of doing but problems of

knowing (1967, p. 167). Such problems may become scientific if

they could be internalized. As B.S. Griaznov said, In order that theexternal factor influence change in scientific knowledge, at least thefollowing conditions should be met: the external problem (suppose a

social one) must be either transformed into an internal problem, or be

put in certain correspondence with the internal problems (1982b, p.

97).

The second source is mans curiosity or need to explain and

understand himself and his surroundings. The role of curiosity,noticed as early as in Aristotles philosophy, is also defended by M.


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Bunge, according to whom creative work can be done only with

enthusiasm, and this is apt to be absent if the line of research is not

freely chosen out of curiosity (1967, p. 167). In the same line of

thought, S. Gale writes that the primum mobile in the scientificenterprise is curiosity and that in any nontrivial sense it [thecuriosity] may be regarded as being capable of being expressed as a

question and, more specifically (in a linguistic construction), as an

interrogative sentence or set o sentences (1978, p. 320). Curiositymay be an expression of ignorance, of doubt, of wonder and of desire

to know. As C. Noica says, man does not ask a question only because

of ignorance and desire for information but also because of knowingignorance, the need for denial, or because of the need for completing,

specifying, reformulating a meaning; just as, if it is not involved in a

dialog, mans question may be the expression of doubt, or suppositionand of directed search (1987, p. 144). As to the relation of doubt withquestion, V. Komarov stresses that There is no knowledge withoutquestions, and no question without doubt The doubt of good sort

contributes to the development of science (1978, p. 157).This immediately suggests that questions do not arise in a totalgnosiological void. Generally speaking, questions arise only in mans

cognitive relation to reality, this last term denoting whatever enters the

field of subjects cognitive activity, including himself as a spiritualentity (as in the case of introspection). The reality as such, lato sensu,

is not problematic in itself, it is neuter from this point of view. Man,

as the epistemic subject and agent of action, is the one who questionsreality in order to satisfy his material and spiritual needs. He is able to

do this because he is a structured knowing entity. He approaches

reality by means of his previous knowledge context consisting of

information, interests, expectations, beliefs, desires, etc. As is well

known and proved by epistemological and historical studies, no

knowing process starts from an absolute beginning, from a zero point.

So that questioning expresses not only the deficiency of existingknowledge and the need to eliminate it by getting new information but


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also the presence of a previous knowledge context, the capacity to

convey some information contained in the questions presuppositions.Such a previous knowledge context is customarily called

background knowledge or referential, and means the explicit orimplicit set of the prior knowledge by the lack of which no systematic

activity could take place (Tonoiu, 1978, p. 41). In science, it isconstituted both by facts, laws, hypotheses and theories, as intrinsic

elements forming a kind of surface structure, and by a set of seeming

external, social elements, which become internal, implicit in the

former ones, forming a kind of deep structure, to use some widespread

Chomskian phrases. Anyway, it is something composed out of veryheterogenous elements, highly unsystematized and logically

inconsistent, so that J. Agassi, while criticizing Bunges conception, isright to say that Background knowledge is a mixed bag of workinghypotheses and rules of thumb, of scientific theories, of varieties of

levels and metaphysical doctrines, religion, superstition, and what

not (1968-69, p. 458). It is even much more complex but this does

not nullify its role at all.What is very important is the fact that every question arises

precisely against such a background knowledge. As M. Bunge said,

In general, every problem is posed against a certain backgroundconstituted by the antecedent knowledge and, in particular, by the

specific presuppositions of the problem (1967, p. 171). But a minuteanalysis reveals that it contains a set of the subjects commitments of

all kinds, some of them appearing as the assumptions of questions. SoD. Harrah points out that anyone who asks a question is commited to

asserting something, to project something and to receive a direct or

partial answer (1982, pp. 34-35), and J.T. Dillon divides the

assumptions of a question into presuppositions (sentences that are

entitled by the question) and presumptions (the beliefs communicated

by the person when asking a question in certain conditions) (1986b,

pp. 103-105). What Dillon calls presumptions are otherwise known aspragmatic presuppositions of questions.


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Now, the mechanism by which background knowledge contributes

to question arising may be described as a cognitive conflict between it

and emerging surprising phenomena. M. Sintonen, commenting upon

Laudans conception about scientific problems, says that Changes inbackground knowledge make new phenomena seem surprising or

irregular or otherwise in need of explanation and that since thebackground knowledge and expectations of laymen and scientists vary

from person to person and from time to time, different questions seem

pressing or illegitimate, and to different degrees, for differentpersons and at different times (1984, p. 41).

The background knowledge contains as a first part what I havecalled the surface structure (facts, laws, hypotheses, etc.) which can be

named, by and large, scientific theories or theoretical schemes. They

give birth to some expectations as to the behavior of phenomena.

Many questions and problems arise as against such manifest, explicit

part of background and most of them are grasped, formulated and

consciously pursued by scientists. Many logicians and philosophers of

science refer precisely to the role of this part of backgroundknowledge when speaking about scientific question generation, and

have in view certain contradictions or inconsistencies between

theories (or expectations generated by them) and facts, logical

contradictions within theories or between different theories,

unexpected or undesired results of observations, measurements,

experiments, etc. Because of the theoretical background, the questions

and problems arise as objective phenomena, as relative but logicalanomalies. In Humphreys words, what shall count as an anomaly is

a function of the background of belief and knowledge against which

the anomaly is set. Anomalies are what they are in virtue of the

conceptual setting in which they occur (1968, p. 81).According to K.R. Popper, the problems arise especially when our

expectations have been deceived or when our theories lead to

difficulties, to contradictions, and these can happen either within atheory, or between two different theories, or as a consequence of a


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clash between our theories and our observations (1970, p. 111).

Almost in the same way, the famous American logician I. Copi notes

that a problem is a fact or group of facts for which we have no

acceptable explanation, which seems unusual, or which fails to fit inwith our expectations or preconceptions, and that the felt problemarose from an apparent conflict between the data of experience and

accepted scientific theories (1972, p. 445). In his theory of scientific

progress, L. Laudan, after distinguishing between empirical and

conceptual problems, states that empirical problems are anythingabout the world which strikes us as odd, or otherwise in need of

explanation (1977, p. 15); internal conceptual problems are mattersof consistency, ambiguity, and circularity among a theorys concepts,and external conceptual problems arise from conflict with other

theories or doctrines. Finally, I quote P. Alexander, who contends that

what creates problems is that one set of accepted descriptions appearsto conflict with a set of descriptions which seems to fit a newly

observed phenomenon or that this second set of observations, while no

conflicting with any we accept, appears to have no home among, noconnection with those we already accept (1963, p. 99).

But science cannot be reduced to the explicit part of background

knowledge. Just the contrary, the greatest part of it is constituted by

hidden, implicit elements, which can be reconstituted from what G.

Holton has called second hand sources, such as correspondence,

interviews, notebooks, etc. (Holton, 1978). Or, as H. Bondi has noted,

The scientific articles say almost nothing to the readers about howsome outcome has been obtained. Often the solutions, presented bythe author, represent only the fifth part of what he comes to thinkConcerning the question of why the author has dealt with exactly this

problem, the most daring authors venture to do only a perceptible

allusion (1978, p. 7).As science is a social enterprise and an important component of

human culture, it is no wonder that it is strongly influenced by theother components of the socio-cultural background, which, although at


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first sight seems external, in the course of time become internal,

implicit, hidden constituents of science and scientific knowledge.

They are, as C. Noica would say, an external medium which becomes

an internal one (1981, p. 339). Since science, as a part of humanculture, has no absolutely autonomous existence, V.F. Weisskopf is

entitled to formulate a Gdel theorem for science: It must be pointedout that science itself has its roots and origins outside its own rational

realm of thinking. In essence, there seems to exist a Gdel theorem

of science, which holds that science is possible only within a larger

framework of nonscientific issues and concerns. The mathematician

Gdel proved that a system of axioms can never be based on itself: inorder to prove its consistency, statements from outside the system

must be used. In a similar manner, the activity of science is

necessarily embodied in a much wider realm of human experience(1984, pp. 194-195). Scientific knowledge is to a great extent socio-

culturally loaded or has a strong socio-cultural dependence, besides

the empirical and the theoretical ones.

This wider realm of human experience becomes a part of scienceitself, placed on a deep level forming what I call infrastructural

frameworks. These are some preconditions of knowledge, but not only

so, because they underlie and penetrate the very content and form of

scientific knowledge and can be here uncovered by special inferences

and interpretations. More adequately they may be called

presuppositions of scientific knowledge which, as M.S. Kozlova

remarked, are formed outside the special scientific procedures, in thelarger context of culture. These universal spiritual presuppositions,which are formed step by step, constitute boundary bases of science

and are made explicit, conceptually formulated and systematized by

the philosophers efforts (1982, p. 86). We have in mind frames suchas general conception about the world, philosophical presuppositions,

scientific world view, style of scientific thinking, ideal of scientific

knowledge, ordinary and scientific common sense.


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As I have pointed out elsewhere, the components of this set of

ideas, beliefs, pre-conceptions, attitudes, appraisals and so on,

precede, trigger, accompany and lend content to the knowledge

process, are of a relatively a prioricharacter, to the extent to whichthey precede (in chronological or logical order) a process of cognition,

but are also a posterioriin character, since they can be identified in its

finite products. Meanwhile, they are also analytical as they can be

identified through a special type of analysis in the content and form of

knowledge already gained, and synthetical as their account leads to

something novel with respect to the knowledge under consideration

(see Grecu, 1983, p. 172). They play an important role both in thedevelopment of science in general and in the raising, selection and

solving of scientific problems and questions. As E. Sperantia once

said, they appear as postulates of thought that are neither provable, nor

refutable by experience but must be admitted in order to avoid

nonsense and the absurd in human knowledge (see Sperantia, 1943, p.

3). In a similar manner, P.P. Gaidenko remarks that reasearches in the

spheres of history, philosophy and science of science revealed thepresence in any scientific theory of such assertions and assumptionsthat within the framework of this particular theory are not proved but

are accepted as certain axiomatic premises. These premises, however,

play such an important role in theory that their removal or revision

also leads to a revision or abolition of the given theory (1981, pp. 87 -88).

In what follows, I will present these in turn, under the generalphrase infrastructural frameworks.

General conception about the world

This framework, also called the general world view, is the largest

one, and comprise, in one way or another, all the others. The scientist

assimilates it during his becoming a general epistemic subject and a

specialized researcher, which is a result of his living together withother people, within specific social communities, with determined


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preoccupations, interests and desires, related to a determining natural

and social background. Although it is generally very difficult to define

this expressionof its polysemantic character, we do have an idea as to

what it is about, and may observe that the two words composing ithave special meanings in contexts such as the present one.

Here the worldis to be understood not so much as denoting theUniverse in its spatio-temporal infinity and its absolute independence

of man but rather as denoting those parts of it which are object of

mans search and action. And the conception or view has themeaning of general knowledge, beliefs, principles, ideals and values

related to a world viewed as such, concerning as well the relationshipbetween humans and the world. In one of its most complete

definitions, The general world-view is the system of views about theobjective world and mans place within it, about the relationship ofman to his environing reality and to himself, as well as the basic vital

place of men determining these views, their beliefs, ideals, principles

of knowledge and reality, value orientations (Encyclopedic

Philosophical Dictionary, Moskow, 1983, p. 375; apud Smirnova,1984, p. 5). As one can see, this comprehensive framework contains

epistemological, social and logical components, connected more or

less coherently among themselves. But the very essence of the general

conception about the world is the problem of the world in relation to

mans fundamental demands, ideals and desires: here manshould beconsidered in its most general meaning, that is as individual,

representative of a collectivity and standing for society in general.Being a highly complex formation of the human mind, the general

world view cannot be reduced to one or another of its components,

including philosophy. It is the highest and most complex level of

human self-consciousness, as individual and collectivity, the

expression of the human being within his natural and social

surroundings, the reflection of what exists from the point of view of

what must be according to mans ideals and fundamental needs, andvice versa, the reflection of what must be from the point of view of the


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extant reality. And since science arises and develops in a socio-

cultural frame, it incorporates in its content and form more and more

such general world view components. It is not only a body of

knowledge about the external world, as it explicitly appears forphysical sciences, but also a sort of self-knowledge of man himself, an

expression of his personality traits, of his moral, aesthetic and

axiological aspects, as this occurs in its implicit, hidden levels. Taking

into account such general world view elements and their important

role in scientific knowledge in general, C.A. Hooker remarks with

good reason: The recognition that lying at the foundation of science

there are conceptions of the nature of the world are not themselvesopen to immediate empirical verification or refutation, but which may

only be gradually modified or abandoned after literally millennia of

exploration of the adequacy of the theories formulated within their

terms, seems to me to be one of the most important things to recognize

about the nature of the scientific endeavor (1974, p. 144).Roughly speaking, the world is composed of the natural

environment and the social environment, so that, as a consequence, thegeneral world view consists of the conception about the nature and the

conception about society.

The former comprises knowledge, representations, beliefs and

convictions referring to all natural phenomena in their relationship to

man, to mans position as related to nature, and leads to the necessity

of answering questions such as: What is life? How did it appear on

Earth? What other forms of life are there in the Universe? What is theanthropogenetic process? What is the psyche? What about reason and

conscience? How did they come into being? To what extent is man

free in his actions against the forces of nature? etc. The study of these

questions, according to V.F. Chernovolenko, supposes the existence

of certain representations about the structure of the Universe and the

genesis and development of various cosmic systems, about our

planets place in outer space, i.e. cosmological and cosmogonicalrepresentations about the fundamental forms and laws of abiotic


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nature (physical, chemical, geographical representations), about the

laws of the structure, functionality and development of organic bodies

and the general interaction of the biosphere with inorganic nature

(biological representations), about the mechanism of psychic activityand human thinking (the physiology of superior nervous activity,

psychology, cybernetics, etc.) (1970, pp. 59-60).The latter, referring to society and mans position in society,

consists of political, juridical, moral, artistic and religious elements

and leads to questions such as: What does human society represent?

How is it structured and what are the ways it works? What is the sense

of order in social life events? Is the historical process necessary oraccidental?

These problems as well as many others of the kind, though not

strictly scientific at first sight, may become scientific in the course of

the time to the point that various scientific branches differentiate

between their own object and their particular methods of research.

Further on, the problems concerning the general conception about the

world as well as the philosophical ones are considered aspresuppositions of scientific problems to the extent that solving

scientific problems supposes the previous solving of other problems,

concerning a general conception about the world.

Now, the world view may be systematized and presented in special

works (handbooks, treatises, studies), but ordinarily it is not. It works

spontaneously, unknowingly from the point of view of the researcher,

who occasionally nay become aware of it, not as a researcher proper,but as a philosopher of his science or as a metaresearcher of his

domain of interest. Anyway, such a self-consciousness relating to the

general world view is a post factumprocess, a result of reflection on

his own past activity, that can give birth to a prospective or predictive

attitude from the scientists part. That is why T. Oizerman speaksabout an orientational function of the world view: The orientational

function of a world view presupposes certain definite notions(scientific or unscientific) concerning mans whereabouts in the


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natural and social scheme of things. These notions help us to discover

possible paths of motions, to choose a definite direction corresponding

to our particular interests and needs. The orientational function of a

world view is made possible by its integrating function, that is to say,the kind of generalization of knowledge which enables us to single out

relatively remote goals, to substantiate certain socio-political, moral,

scientific, ideals, criteria, etc. (1973, pp. 222-223). The important,directive, role of the world view in scientific knowledge was remarked

by many famous scientists. One of them, Max Planck, for example,

once said that The research scientists world view will always

determine the direction of his work (1949, p. 283; apudOizerman,1973).

As a consequence of the fact that the general world view has as its

core the man-world relationship, it will always maintain an

anthropomorphic trait, even though such a trait tends to diminish

through the history of scientific knowledge. Anyway, in ancient times,

it was very pronounced. For example, as Oizerman points out, Thales

observed that a magnet attracts metal and he asked himself why thishappens, and in order to answer he resorted to the well-known and

perfectly comprehensible conception of the soul. Heraclitus did the

same when he maintained that a drunken man could not stand straight

because his soul, a bright fire and hence extremely dry by nature, had

become damp. Lucretius asked why sea water is salty and replied that

the sea sweats, and sweat is salty. But if it is true, as some erotetic

logician claims, that the answer to a question affirms one of itspresuppositions or that it implies such a presupposition, the

inescapable conclusion is that the raising of such questions is

suggested or even generated by the general world view involving the

conviction that a magnet is a soul, the soul is a bright fire, the sea

sweats, etc. and, therefore, that an anthropomorphic world view

underlies the generation of these questions. This anthropomorphic

character, very strong for the mythological world view, lasted a longtime and, as I have pointed out already, some elements of it are


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generally present, as far as science itself is an outcome of human

activity and lives in a social background.

But if this common element is left aside, there is a deep contrast

between ancient and medieval thought, on the other hand, and modernthought, on the other hand, with respect to their conception of mansrelationship to his environment. For example, ancient and especially

medieval thought claimed that man is the center of the Universe, and

the whole world of nature is teleologically subordinate to him and his

eternal destiny; consequently, the world was held to be immediately

present and fully intelligible to mans mind,which led to the tendency

to describe and explain the phenomena in terms of so-called secondaryqualities. What appeared different for human senses was considered to

be different substances or qualities, each as real as the other. So, a

typical question for medieval physics was: Why is the water hot to one

hand and cold to the other, as heat and cold are distinct substances? It

is just the converse with modern physics, based on a different

conception of man and his relationship to the world. Now man is

dislodged from his central place, the world is viewed as full of atomsand bodies moving within an infinite and homogenous space, man

himself being a chance and temporary product of a blind and

purposeless nature, an irrelevant spectator of her doings. The

phenomena are described and explained in terms of so-called primary

qualities, of material and efficient causality, of relations statable in

mathematical form. And the only legitimate questions considered are

those which can be formulated in such terms. A return, but in a specialand practical manner, has happened in contemporary science, when,

because of Plancks discovery in the first place, man, as knowingsubject, is reintegrated into nature, becoming, as Bohr once said, an

actor and a spectator in the life drama at the same time (1969, p. 84).

The general world view contains and influences all the other

infrastructural frameworks of scientific knowledge, and at the same

time mediates the influence of the socio-cultural medium upon scienceas a whole. For example, it was the main factor that determined the


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increase of the role of philosophy, especially the centrality of

epistemology, in modern times. And this is, as Burtt noted, a mostnatural corollary of something still more pervasive and significant, a

conception of man himself, and especially of his relation to the worldaround him (1967, p. 2).

Philosophical conception of the world and knowledge

This second infrastructural framework, implicitly contained in the

previous one, appears as a set of various presuppositions of several

kinds. These are ideas which are neither conclusions derived from

inductive generalizations of scientific data, nor premises of deductivereasoning by means of which certain scientific information can be

obtained, but exist both at the beginning and at the end of scientific

knowledge, belonging both to the external cultural medium and to the

contents of this knowledge. Some authors, such as V.S. Cherniak

(1976, p. 148), call them philosophical substructure of thought. Butaccording to my opinion, they are not exactly, or not merely so, since

they may be found in the very content of scientific knowledge, ofcourse, on some deep levels.

The philosophical presuppositios of scientific knowledge and

question generation must not be identified with another kind of

philosophical influence upon science. Generally speaking, in each

historical epoch there are two kinds of philosophical ideas, not

completely isolated from each other. There are, on the one hand, the

professionally elaborated philosophical conceptions as results of thesystematization by philosophers of the most general views concerning

the theoretical understanding of the world. Lato sensu, they may be

named philosophical presuppositions of science as the latter is born

and develops in a socio-cultural background containing such

conceptions which influence it and even, some of them, are

internalized by science itself. But influence can lead to the very

presuppositions just when it suggests or inspires scientists to certainways of research, ideas and questions. The history of science shows


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that many times scientists claimed that they share, and are influenced

by, certain philosophical theories (e.g. Einstein vis--vis Mach,

Heisenberg vis--vis Plato, etc.), but their true philosophical options

and presuppositions, derived from the study of their scientific ideas,are of a distinct nature.

So that philosophical presuppositions,stricto sensu, are rather and

most often unprofessional philosophical views, spontaneously or

unknowingly embodied by scientists in their process and outcomes of

scientific research, as a result of the internalization of existing

philosophical ideas, of their life and scientific experience, of their

daily contact with the world, of their language and laws of thoughts,etc. They thus appear as philosophical ideas contained, unasserted, in

other ideas or, according to Armours expression (1971, p. 216), theyare packed in the latter, and can be made explicit by a specialoperation of presupposing or unpacking.

Due to their essentially spontaneous character, philosophical

presuppositions of science rarely become conscious, and scientists

rarely are aware of them. Their existence and role are revealed byphilosophers of science, or by scientists themselves quaphilosophers

of science. Thus, for example, the well known physicist L. Brillionne

writes that Scientists always work on the bases of some philosophicalpresuppositions and, though many of them may be aware of this, these

presuppositions really determine their general position in research

(1966, p. 11). And M. Flonta remarks that presuppositions as

research framework, i.e. options with a specific philosophicalcharacter, have a determinative influence upon the research peoples

scientific mind. The problem is that they are rarely aware of their

existence and role. The nature of these presuppositions makes them

difficult to identify and isolate. Research, debates and scientific

reasoning are decisively structured by presuppositions, deeply rooted

in the way of thinking and the working habit that researches assimilate

during the process of their professional instruction (1985, pp. 365-366).


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Not being explicitly formulated in scientific texts, with an

academic character such as text-books, scientific treatises or articles,

they may be partially found in second hand sources which belong to

certain scientists and seem private rather than public knowledge atfirst sight, as G. Holton also remarks when speaking about the themes

of scientific thinking (see Holton, 1978). They also act within the

process of creation, usually helping towards the generation of

scientific ideas rather than to their testing or validation.

The philosophical presuppositions are mainly of ontological,

epistemological, axiological, logical and methodological nature.

The principal ontological and, in general, philosophicalpresuppositions is that of existence. To a great extent, it is a

consequence of the use of language, because terms have references

whose existence is assumed some way or another from the beginning,

and statements presuppose the existence of something by reference to

which they have truth-value. So that, as E.A. Burtt has pointed out,

there is no escape from metaphysics, that is, from the final

implication of any propositions or set of propositions. The only way toavoid becoming a metaphysician is to say nothing (1967, p. 224).Further on, cognition presupposes at least the existence of the subject

and the object of knowledge. The existence of the knowing subject

cannot be doubted unless we want to be absurd and self-denying, and

the existence of the object is presupposed by the use itself of concepts

and statements.

These ontological or metaphysical presuppositions are veryimportant for scientific question generation, because, as M. Bunge

notes connecting the ontological and the epistemological

presuppositions, No question is ever posed without presupposingsomething. To raise any question at all presupposes our own existence

and to ask about the ways of things presupposes at least the possibility

of their existence and of the possibility of our knowing them to some

extent (1967, p. 178). This is a reason why existence is often calledthe presupposition of presuppositions. Several other ontological


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presuppositions refer to motion, space, time, quality, quantity,

causality, etc. As to the last two, M.S. Kozlova remarks that n fact,scientific knowledge in any forms are oriented by representations of

lawfulness and causality. Spontaneously formed in certain stages ofculture, these universal spiritual forms work in science. And this realfunctioning of them inside science makes them different from the

philosophical conception professionally elaborated and stated in

treatises about causality and laws (1982, p. 87).The main epistemologicalpresupposition consists in admitting the

world cognoscibility or the epistemic determinism. Any cognition

process presupposes the conviction that the object under study can beknown, albeit partially or imperfectly. Without this assumption the

entire cognitive undertaking would be meaningless. Likewise, the

scientist is assumed to have prior knowledge of what to knowmeans, of how he may obtain true knowledge and to discard the false,

which presupposes a prior understanding of what truth and falsity

mean.

As for axiological presuppositions, right from the beginning onemust admit that the scientist can appraise and assign values. Even

before he proceeds to the proper study of the object, he performs a

selection of the latter, he considers it to be interesting and apt for

study in several respects, refers it to certain material and spiritual

requirements in order to assess the manner and the extent to which the

study of this object might contribute to satisfaction of these needs.

Similarly, the scientist is assumed to be able to assign to theknowledge gained such values as objectivity, certainty, truth,

simplicity, etc.

Among the logicalpresuppositions, one must admit the existence

of thought, analysis and synthesis, generalization and determination,

definition, induction and deduction, the laws of identity, non-

contradiction, etc., widely used in science and assumed beforehand,

even in a spontaneous, implicit manner. Obviously, real scientificknowledge as well as common knowledge involve, beside the


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elements of thought that are the object of classical logic, still a host of

others, most of which form the object of some new types of logic,

called nonstandard logics.

Finally, the methodologicalpresuppositions refer essentially to thestructure, function and methods of scientific knowledge, to the

relationships between formal and factual, between empirical,

theoretical and metatheoretical, between experience and theory, to the

nature and the functions of the problem, fact, hypothesis, law and

theory, to the role of description, explanation and prediction, to the

operations of confirmation, falsification, corroboration, verification,

etc. About all of these and many others the scientist has a prioropinion, however weak or unaccounted it may be.

Philosophical presuppositions, which can be formulated both as

statements and questions, play an important role in raising scientific

questions and problems.

In the greatest part of the history of science, this was an implicit

role. Nowadays, when science studies phenomena and domains of

reality inaccessible to direct approach, and appeals more and more tothe scientists imagination and abstracting power, as a consequence ofthe discovery of new phenomena that cannot be integrating into the

traditional representations, it is obvious that before raising and solving

special scientific problems, it is necessary to formulate and solve

philosophical problems. An example of such could be the situation of

quantum mechanics in the 30s and 40s years of the past century ,

when scientific research proper drew physicists attention upon theconcept of reality, upon the criteria of physical reality, determinismand causality, space, time, movement, etc. Only the correct raising and

solving of these philosophical problems pushed ahead the physical

problems properly. But philosophical presuppositions, both assertive

and interrogative, act, at the same time, as selector in relation to

scientific problems. First of all, during each epoch in the development

of science, out of all real or possible scientific problems, onlyproblems noticeable in relation to the existing philosophical problems


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and theories were selected as interesting and worth studying (see

Grecu, 1982, p. 165).

This could explain to a large extent the fact that some scientific

problems are sometimes left aside for a while, afterwards discoveredagain, while others, after being dealt with by the scientists of an

epoch, are afterwards completely forgotten. J. Agassi suggests that

question is best and most worthy of pursuing which is most likely toalter our viewpoint, our metaphysics, our whole view of the universe(1975, p. 244). The same author considers that during every historical

period, researchers deal with a lot of problems; so that the question

arises of the criteria for deciding which of them should be declaredfundamental or, at least, most important. There are different suchcriteria, but one must be the most important. Those problems have

chosen which had been related to the metaphysical problems of that

time. The scientific events considered noticeable were those whichcould shad light upon the metaphysical problems in question ( ibid.,p. 208).

In his turn, T.S. Kuhn, taking into consideration the heuristic valueof philosophical problems in relation to scientific ones, underlines that

real research rarely begins before a scientific community is sure tohold clear answers to such questions like: What are the main entities

which govern the Universe? How do they interact with every part and

with our senses? What kind of questions can legitimately rise in

relation to such entities and what are the modalities to search for an

answer? (1976, p. 48). One can thus recognize, under such queries,certain philosophical, ontological, gnosiological and methodologicalpresuppositions.

Concerning scientific research in physics, into socio-cultural

background, I. Prigogine and I. Stengers note that The history of

physics also reveals series of problems, lucidly and deliberately

generated by certain philosophical preoccupations. It also establishes

the fertility of such approach The history of science, as any socialhistory, is a complex process which joins together events generated by


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local interactions and projects formed by the general conceptions

concerning the aim of science and the ambition of cognition (1984, p.408). The two authors pleaded for the recognition of the open

character of science and also for productive communications betweenphilosophical and scientific questions which shouldnt be denied bypartition or destroyed by a defying ratio. Finally, let us remind

ourselves, as B.V. Markov does when he underlines the role of

philosophical ideas in the scientific enterprise, that when analyzingthe problem of motion, Aristotle does not limit himself to the study of

mechanical translation but examines the qualitative transformation,

the transition from possibility to reality, and other kinds of change. Inthis case he constantly puts questions about principles and causes(1984, pp. 127-128).

Scientific world view

This is a third infrastructural framework, more reduced regarding

generality than the philosophical one and therefore closer to the

scientific theories. Roughly speaking, it represents a highly developedsystematization of scientific knowledge, which mediates the influence

of the socio-cultural medium, of the general world view and of

philosophy upon science proper. Therefore, some authors consider

that it belongs manifestly to scientific theories rather than to a level

underlying such theories or to the preconditions of scientific

knowledge.

It must be noted that although a manner to systematize scientificknowledge, the scientific world view is not simply the result of

special, methodical, purposive preoccupations of scientists or

philosophers, but the rather spontaneous product of the historical

development of scientific knowledge and philosophical thinking. It

has a stronger durability and stability than scientific theories, which

makes possible that on one and the same scientific world view many

simultaneous or successive scientific theories may be based. It is madeby the synthesis and generalization of data from all sciences under the


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influence of the dominant philosophical ideas and that of the leading

science at that very moment of sciences development. At the sametime, as we will see in the sequel, the scientific world view is not

necessarily something that comes after or at the end of certainscientific theories, as a synthesis-outcomes of the latter, because, in

some historical epochs, it precedes some scientific theories and, even

more, makes them possible and for some time generations and solves

the corresponding questions.

Different from the theoretical or conceptual scheme which consists

of constructs resulting from a maximal abstractization and idealization

as well as their correlations within scientific hypotheses and laws, thescientific world view represents a model of the world, an ontology of

it, because of its concepts and statements which are meant to describe

entities and relations of the very reality within which the research

domain of science deals and because of the philosophical tint of its

components. Thus, for example, the theoretical scheme of Newtonian

mechanics contains theoretical constructs such as material points,

force, inertial referential frame, while its scientific world viewcontains objects such as atoms, actions of some bodies upon others,

absolute space and time.

There are various scientific world views, differing among

themselves both by the degree of generality and by domains of

applicability. Roughly, there are first the scientific world view of

nature and the scientific world view of society. The former can be

mechanical, physical, chemical, biological, etc. Still more exactly, onemay speak of electrodynamic, relativist and quantum scientific views

as species of the physical one. The latter, in its turn, can be

economical, psychological, anthropological, and so on. Moreover, we

can speak of a general scientific world view, as a special synthesis,

which, as V.S. Stepin points out, involves not only therepresentations about the structural features of nature, rendered

evident in a certain stage of sciences development, but also the


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representations concerning society and men, mans place in the

Universe, the peculiarities of his knowing activity (1984, p. 439).Because of its greater generality and stability, as well as of its

philosophical load, one and the same scientific world view canunderlie several scientific theories or theoretical schemes. So, for

example, on the basis of the mechanical world view, Newtons andEulers mechanics, thermodynamics and Ampres and Webers

electrodynamics have been constituted. In a similar way, on the basis

of the electrodynamical world picture, Maxwells electrodynamicstheory and Hertz mechanics were formed and developed.

But as I noted earlier, the scientific world view is not only asynthesis of certain existing theories, but also it can appear before

their apparition, as a synthesis of the existing knowledge about the

world, it can influence the birth of certain scientific theories and it can

even accomplish their special functions (description, explanation,

prediction). For example, as A.M. Mostepanenko notes, in physics at

the beginning the fundamental elements of the physical world picture

have been formed on the basis of the empirical data and philosophicalideas, and only afterwards the possibility of physical theory

construction occurred (1977, p. 25). Often the role of the scientific

world view was played by the philosophy of nature, as a speculative

attempt to describe and explain natural phenomena. Later on, for

example, many scientists, among whom was Galileo, the greatest one,

established the bases of the mechanical world picture and only

afterwards did Newton create the classical mechanics as a physicalscientific theory. In the same way, a host of scientists with Faraday

established the bases of the electrodynamical world picture and then

Maxwell created the physical theory of electrodynamics; in the works

of scientists such as Planck, Einstein, Bohr, de Broglie, etc. were

outlined the frames of the contemporary quantum field world view

and only next did Heisenberg, Schrdinger and Dirac create the theory

of quantum mechanics, and Feynman, Schwinger and Dayson createthe quantum electrodynamics.


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In order to suggest the role of the scientific world view in the

generation of scientific questions, we will give some examples. The

first example is the ancient or Aristotelian organicist world view,

drawn up under the influence of the existent socio-cultural medium,the biological researches of Aristotle and the usual antrhropological

vision. It presents a finite, closed, ordered universe (Cosmos), making

clear distinctions between up and down, between the perfect circular

movements of the celestial vault and the linear vertical movements of

the terrestrial bodies, awakening the distinction between natural and

imposed movements, admitting the four elements earth, water, air,

fireas being constituents of the earthly bodies, with their four typesof causality (material, formal, efficient, and final), with the entelehia,

the full space and horrorof void, etc. Therefore, within research and

explanation of phenomena corresponding to this image of the world,

only questions about quality of phenomena, teleological explanations,

about bodies nature could be formulated. The Aristotelian Simplicioin Galileos Dialogues says that within natural demonstrations one

should not aim for mathematical accuracy, that being impossiblebecause the nature of physical being is quantitative and indefinite,

opposed to the precision of mathematical concepts. As A. Koyr said,

Therefore, as further settled up by the Aristotelian, philosophy, as ascience of reality, must not look after details, neither does it need the

appeal to mathematical determination in formulating its theories about

movement. All it should do is to reveal its main categories (natural,

violent, rectilinear, circular) and to describe qualitative and abstractfeatures (1981, p. 181).

Another famous example is the mechanical world view formulated

during the 17th

and 18th

centuries under the decisive influence of

Galileo-Newtonian mechanics, which held the position as a leader of

science. It was based on the idea of an infinite and opened universe,

homogenous and isotropic, abandoning the sensitive qualities of

objects considered without reality, the absolutization of quantitativeand measurable aspects, the Cosmos unstructuration and natures


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geometricalisation, joining theoretico-mathematical research with the

experimental one. As Galileo says, the great book of nature is written

in a mathematical language, whose elements are different simple

geometrical entities. In accord with this image, completed further bythe idea of the atom as the last component element, science should not

aim save at the determination and measurement of things quantitativeaspects, in order to express them by general and constant

mathematical proportions valued as laws. Therefore, according to this

image only questions referring to quantity and measurable aspects can

be legitimately and logically formulated. This image imposed a lot of

convictions and interdictions about the phenomena for understandingand explanation.

So, as T.S. Kuhn observes, later after 1630 and especially after the

appearance of Descartes extremely influential scientific works, thegreat majority of physicists accepted a large amount of ontological

and methodological options, according to which the Universe is

composed of microscopic corpuscles and that all natural phenomena

might be explained by the corpuscles form, shape, movement andinteraction. This series of options, From the metaphysical point ofview indicates to scientist the entity types contained or not by the

Universe: there exists only configurated matter in movement

(substance). From the methodological point of view it shows how

laws and fundamental explanation should appear: laws must specify

the corpuscle movement and interaction, and the explanations have to

reduce any given natural phenomenon to the corpuscular actionsubjected to these laws. More important: the corpuscular conception

told scientists which problems might be most of their research

problems (1976, pp. 84-85).The mechanicist image eliminates as senseless questions in terms

of formal and final causes, making room for only the material and

efficient causes. At the same time, why questions referring to things

nature were abandoned, being substituted by how questions referringto the development and correlation types of phenomena and processes,


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which can be mathematically expressed. According to I. Prigogine and

I. Stengers, Galileo discovered that nature should not be interrogatedabout the cause of its movement state if it is uniform, neither about the

cause of its repose state: movement and repose always maintainthemselves (by themselves) if no disturbance occurs. Instead, it has to

explain every passing from repose to movement or from movement to

repose, including every speed change. Nevertheless, nature should not

be interrogated about the acceleration cause but how it succeeds in

doing this transformation in order to describe it and settle the

mathematical law (1984, p. 88).

Style of scientific knowledge

If for a long period the notion of style was used only regarding

artistic products, it was subsequently applied to analyze other human

creations including science, thus becoming an important category of

the philosophy of culture.

Style is hard to define (though there are a lot of definitions)

because there exist not only artistic, scientific, philosophical styles,but also ancient, medieval, Renaissance, classical, romantic, modern,

etc. styles, not to mention individual, collective, national styles, as

well as styles of different schools and trends. Regarding science

especially, Otto Benesch, a scholar of Renaissance culture, noted that

the history of science, as well as other cultural achievements ofmankind, has its own phases and stylistic periods and that it depends

not on chance alone which problems of mathematics and naturalscience arise in a given period (1973, p. 170).

Although the idea of style is not new, in science it was explicitly

introduced and defined by W. Pauli and M. Born, for analyzing

scientific works and thinking, in order to establish the stability of

some principles of science during a period with experimental and

novel facts stockage. M. Born says, for instance, that the theory of

physics has its own style and it determines a certain stability of itsprinciples. They are, so to speak, relatively a priori, referring to the


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respective period of time. The one aware of his epochs style may

make some prudent predictions. There might be rejected at least those

ideas not proper to his own epochs style (1969, p. 147). Certainly,

the notion of style of scientific thinking was subjected to special studyduring the latest period, being provided with a multitude of other

definitions. Thus, starting from Born and Paulis idea but enriching it,authors related style to a larger assembly of principles, standards and

research methods, characterized by great stability during a period of

time.

Thus, as L.A. Mikeshina says, Style of scientific thinking is a

stable system itself in an historical development of generallyaccepted methodological standards and philosophical principles which

lead the scientists during a certain epoch. It expresses and settles itself

in the scientific language, principally in its categorical apparatus. As

stable methodological standards, it reveals the requirements of

description, explanation and prediction, equally in the process of

scientific creation as in the final results of knowledge(1977, p. 63).

G.G. Granger developed a point of view which brings style ofscientific thinking near not only to science as an organized system of

knowledge concepts, laws, theories , but also as an activity ofacquiring that knowledge. He defines style in terms of content, form

and process (i.e. work or practice). Work is a certain manner ofputting in relation a form and a content, awakening them (1968, p. 5),and style is a modality of integrating the individual within a concrete

process which is work, and which is necessarily present in all forms ofpractice (ibid., p. 8). Oppositions such as form-content, individual-work allow one to characterize style, on the one hand, as a certain way

of introducing the concepts into a theory, of linking and unifying

them, and, on the other hand, as a certain way of determining the

intuitive contribution to the determination of these concepts.

However, the above definitions are hiding significantly important

aspects of style. I consider as more adequate to the purpose of thispaper those definitions according to which style characterizes human


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creation related to their individual, collective or social subject. In this

case, style represents an ensemble of common and stable features,

which gives them unity in relation to the respective subject, by virtue

of which a creation belongs to an entirety. Thus in one of thedefinition of style given by L. Blaga, he mentioned: Style revealsitself to us partly as a unity of dominant shapes, emphases, and

attitudes, within a complex, various, and rich variety of forms and

contents (1969, p. 12). And another Romanian specialist in the theoryof style, T. Vianu, defines artistic style as the unity of artisticstructure within a group of works related to their agent, which may be

either the individual artist, the nation, the epoch or the cultural circle.Unity and originality are the two more particular ideas which merge in

the concept of style (1975, p. 11).Thus we are told not only about stylistic unity but also about

stylistic correspondence, which confer unity of culture upon a nation

or epoch. L. Blaga situates these correspondences and what he calls

stylistic matrix in a hidden, profound level belonging to the collective

subconsciousness; therefore the cultural stylistic unity of an epoch isnot the result of some mutual influences of different domains of

culture or cultural personalities, but the result of some factors acting

from the depth of culture. A similar point of view was formulated

more recently by P.P. Gaidenko, who notes the existence of some

analogies between style of scientific thinking, on the one hand, and the

style of art, economic and political institutions, etc. of an epoch, on

the other hand, though such analogies are not purely external. It isundoubtedly most useful to establish such analogies. Nevertheless, inorder that these analogies do not remain only of an outward

semblance, it is necessary to further advance, to reveal the internal

form(if we are to use an analogy from the sphere of linguistics) whose

external manifestation we observe in diverse spheres of culture science, art, religion, etc. (1981, p. 86).

Style is also a frame which binds the interior of science with thesocio-cultural exterior, by which the latter influences the former and


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the external background becomes an internal background. In this

respect, it represents a sui generis synthesis of the logical with the

social and the psychological, a phenomenon subject to historical

transformation. There has even been observed a close relationshipbetween the life style of the scientist and his scientific style of

thinking. Exemplary in this regard is the relation underlined by G.

Holton in the presentation of R. Clarks work about Einstein, betweenthe life style of the great scientist, characterized by manner and

simplicity of dress, and simplicity as the characteristic note of his

scientific thinking style. In his own personal life wrote Holton

about Einstein, the legendary simplicity of the man was an integralpart of this reaching for the barest minimum on which the world rests.

Even people who knew nothing else about Einstein knew that he

preferred the simplest possible clothing and that he hated nothing

more than artificial restraints of all kinds (1978, p. 281).The life-style simplicity had its correspondent in his thinking and

scientific activity level, in his efforts to make simplifications and to

find symmetries and aesthetical correlations, to find connectionsbetween previously separated concepts, such as substance and energy,

space and time, mechanics and electrodynamics, gravitation and

electromagnetical fields. Generally speaking, simplicity as a feature of

life style and thinking was embodied in the idea of unifying the

different forces of nature, in order to elaborate a unitary theory of

these forces, even a formula from which all can be deduced. Here also

another feature of thinking style is present, i.e. the ambivalence shownin his endeavor to combine opposed themes and tendencies, such as

continuum (expressed by the concept of field) and discontinuum (the

quantification of the electromagnetical field), positivism (and the

operationalism used in defining some concepts) and rational realism

(present in the formulation of the two postulates of restrained

relativity). To be able to see and use such polar oppositions lies close

to the very meaning of genius. The seemingly ambivalent style ofthinking, acting, and living is therefore not merely a good copy, but


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needs to be considered as one aspect of his unusual ability to deal with

the ambiguities inherent in the chief unresolved problems of science.

The key to his genius may well lie in the mutual correspondence

between his style in thought and act on one side and the chiefunresolved puzzles of contemporary science on the other (Holton,1978, p. 280).

For its great importance in analyzing science, style of scientific

thinking has become a major category of epistemology and

methodology. It is valued as one of the factors which lead to the

foundations of schools of science. It makes it possible for individual

scientists, as well as for scientific communities and schools withdifferent thinking style to raise different scientific problems, to make

different selections from the multitude of existing problems, to assess

and solve them differently. Even if many scientists study the same

phenomena or aspects of the world, because of their different styles of

thinking they might arrive at different problems and solutions. As J.R.

Ravetz underlined, the investigation of a scientific problem is creative

work, in which personal choices and judgments are involved at everystage, the scientist coming to the problem with a set of interests, skills,

and preferences, which introduce differences in raising and solving

scientific problems. For the scientist, as well as for the artist, thepersonal style will be realized through choices within the range of

possibilities defined by the whole body of methods for his problem.

There is no conflict between a highly individual style in the

investigations of problems, and the production of results which meetthe socially imposed criteria of adequacy for the field (Ravetz, 1973,

pp. 104-105).

Ideal of scientific knowledge

Studies on history, sociology, psychology and philosophy of

science make obviously clear that the science of a certain epoch

cannot be understood, with all its aims, methods, descriptions,explanations and foundation patterns, if the scientific ideals which


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governed the research of that same epoch are not taken into account.

Ideals, as implicit, hidden phenomena, belonging both to the socio-

cultural medium and to the deep structures and presuppositions of

scientific knowledge, an external medium that became an internal onefor science, are of the utmost importance not only for science as a

whole, but also for the processes of question and problem raising and

solving.

By the ideal of scientific knowledge one may understand, roughly

speaking, the ideal model, considered perfect, to which this

knowledge must tend, the ensemble of standards of scientific

excellence. According to this, the ideal evidently has a strongnormative character, although built up by the absolutization and the

idealization of the peculiarities of scientific knowledge of that science

which plays the leading role in the given epoch, as well as according

to the philosophical world view and scientific knowledge. As a result

of a certain epoch, ideals are not consciously formulated and obeyed

by scientists, but they work and are accepted as something taken for

granted by scientists. As B.G. Kuznetzov says, To every epoch andevery remarkable orientation of philosophical thinking corresponds acertain ideal of knowledge. It is expressed by the ideal model of

scientific knowledge, within a system of scientific representations

about world, coordinated between them, and coordinated with

observation and experiment within a system which fully fits the initial

principles of the given orientation of the philosophical thinking

(1974, pp. 241-242).The ideal may refer to the functions of scientific knowledge

(description, explanation, prediction), to the sciences organizationaltype (the categorical-deductive model, the hypothetical-deductive

model), to the pattern of scientific knowledge foundation (logico-

mathematical demonstrability, experimental verification). According

to V.S. Stepin, The ideals and patterns of scientific knowledge

include: 1) standards and types of explanation and description; 2)standards of demonstrability and knowledge foundation; 3) the ideal


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of knowledge organization, particularly, standards for construction

and display of representations of knowledge (1979, p. 208).The ideal differs from one kind of science to another (from the

formal, logico-mathematical sciences to the empirical sciences; fromthe natural sciences to the social and behavioral sciences; from the

theoretical- foundational sciences to the practical, applied ones), as

well as from one historical period to another, itself changing as a

result of scientific revolutions, the profound qualitative leap in the

history of science. It is true that in the history of science one may

observe the tendency to mould the ideal of a science or type of science

according to the ideal corresponding to another type of science. A casein point is physics, strongly mathematized, especially its mechanical

part, which played for a long period of time, and to some extent even

nowadays it plays the role of model for the other types of sciences,

especially the biological and social ones.

On the other hand, influenced by sciences internal factors, as the

science which took the leading role, the ideals of scientific knowledge

partially mould the scientific experience of the researchers, scientifictraditions, scientific authority and fashion; and partially influenced by

external socio-cultural factors, like the philosophical conceptionabout world and knowledge, the scientific world view, cognitive

interests, social values and ideals, art, morality, etc., scientific ideals

provide a link between continuity and discontinuity in the history of

science, between unity and diversity of scientific disciplines, and even

determine, to a certain extent, the orientation of scientific research. Ina certain sense, we may say, as B.G. Kuznetzov does, that the concept

of ideal of science is related to the concept of potential infinity,

perceived by intuition as an actual infinity, which has as a

consequence the fact that such an ideal acts upon the development of

science itself. The movement of science toward its ideal is irreversible

and continuous, which amounts to saying that the concept of ideal is a

sort of infinite invariant of sciences transformation (see Kuznetzov,1983, pp. 3-4).


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Conceived of as a part of scientific world view and of style of

scientific thinking, the ideal of scientific knowledge can be illustrated

by examples from the history of science. Thus, for instance, classical

science had as an absolute ideal the discovery of the simplest andprofound level of reality governed by universal and a-temporal laws, a

description in terms of which reveals the entities and relations of this

fundamental level, the achievement of a straight distinction between

the subject and the object of knowledge, the elimination of any

manifestations or influence of the subject upon the behavior of the

object, the attaining of absolute objectivity and truth, the formulation

of definite, univocal predictions, based on the absolutization of thedynamical (determinist) character of the Newtonian mechanical laws,

the framing of all phenomena under the auspice of total necessities,

where the hazard is to be considered as an expression of the subjectsignorance and must be excluded.

This ideal changed and was replaced with another as science

passed on to do research on statistical phenomena and laws, making

only probabilistical predictions, finding out that truth is never totaland absolute, taking into account the subjects presence and influenceon obtained knowledge, as a result of his impossibility to absolutely

discern between the objects and subjects contribution to knowledgebecause of the penetration in the microcosmic world, taking into

consideration the uncontrollable influence of the measuring apparata

on the researched objects behavior, etc. Though the ideal of

determinism continues to direct scientific research, it is essentiallymodified and adjusted to the novel conditions of scientific knowledge.

On the other hand, besides this duality dynamical-statistical referring

to determinism, there appeared another one, that between the ideal of

reductionism, peculiar to classical science, and the ideal of integralism

or holism, pertaining to contemporary scientific thinking. It is

connected with the necessity of interdisciplinary, pluridisciplinary and

transdisciplinary researches, among other things.


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The ideal of scientific knowledge plays an important role in raising

and answering scientific questions. Even more, by its very nature, it

expresses, as B.G. Kuznetzov observes, the unity of themes and of the

problems, the unity of affirmative and interrogative components ofscientific knowledge. It is a fully determined system of scientificfacts and generalizations directing scientists thinking and startingfrom what these scientists know about the world. At the same time, an

int

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