Scientific knowledge is different from everyday knowledge. Differences between ordinary and scientific thinking

Throughout their history, people have developed several ways of knowing and mastering the world around them: everyday, mythological, religious, artistic, philosophical, scientific, etc. One of the most important ways of knowing, of course, is science.

With the emergence of science, unique spiritual products accumulate in the treasury of knowledge passed on from generation to generation, which play an increasingly important role in the awareness, understanding and transformation of reality. At a certain stage of human history, science, like other previously emerged elements of culture, develops into a relatively independent form of social consciousness and activity. This is due to the fact that a number of problems facing society can only be solved with the help of science, as a special way of understanding reality.

It seems intuitively clear how science differs from other forms of human cognitive activity.

However, a clear explication of the specific features of science in the form of signs and definitions turns out to be a rather difficult task. This is evidenced by the variety of definitions of science and the ongoing discussions on the problem of demarcation between it and other forms of knowledge.

Scientific knowledge, like all forms of spiritual production, is ultimately necessary in order to regulate human activity. Different types of cognition perform this role in different ways, and the analysis of this difference is the first and necessary condition for identifying the characteristics of scientific cognition.

Activity can be considered as a complexly organized network of various acts of transformation of objects, when the products of one activity pass into another and become its components. For example, iron ore, as a product of mining production, becomes an object that is transformed in the activity of a steelmaker; machine tools produced at a plant from the steel mined by a steelmaker become means of activity in another production. Even subjects of activity - people who carry out transformations of objects in accordance with set goals, can to a certain extent be presented as the results of training and education activities, which ensures that the subject masters the necessary patterns of action, knowledge and skills in using certain means in the activity.

A person’s cognitive relationship to the world is carried out in various forms - in the form of everyday knowledge, artistic, religious knowledge, and finally, in the form of scientific knowledge. The first three areas of knowledge are considered, in contrast to science, as non-scientific forms.

Scientific knowledge grew out of everyday knowledge, but at present these two forms of knowledge are quite far apart. What are their main differences?

1. Science has its own, special set of objects of knowledge, in contrast to everyday knowledge. Science is ultimately oriented towards understanding the essence of objects and processes, which is not at all characteristic of everyday knowledge.
2. Scientific knowledge requires the development of special languages of science.
3. Unlike ordinary knowledge, scientific knowledge develops its own methods and forms, its own research tools.
4. Scientific knowledge is characterized by planning, consistency, logical organization, and validity of research results.
5. Finally, the methods of substantiating the truth of knowledge are different in science and everyday knowledge.

We can say that science is the result of knowledge of the world. A system of reliable knowledge tested in practice and at the same time a special area of activity, spiritual production, the production of new knowledge with its own methods, forms, tools of knowledge, with a whole system of organizations and institutions.

All these components of science as a complex social phenomenon have been especially clearly highlighted by our time, when science has become a direct productive force. Today, as in the recent past, it is no longer possible to say that science is what is contained in thick books resting on library shelves, although scientific knowledge remains one of the most important components of science as a system. But this system today represents, firstly, the unity of knowledge and activities to obtain it, and secondly, it acts as a special social institution that in modern conditions occupies an important place in public life.

In science, its division into two large groups of sciences is clearly visible - natural and technical sciences, focused on the study and transformation of natural processes, and social sciences, exploring the change and development of social objects. Social cognition is distinguished by a number of features related both to the specifics of the objects of cognition and to the unique position of the researcher himself.

Science differs from everyday knowledge primarily in that, firstly, scientific knowledge is always of a substantive and objective nature; secondly, scientific knowledge goes beyond everyday experience; science studies objects regardless of whether there are currently opportunities for their practical development.

Let us highlight a number of other features that allow us to distinguish science from everyday cognitive activity.

Science uses methods of cognitive activity that differ significantly from ordinary cognition. In the process of everyday cognition, the objects to which it is directed, as well as the methods of their cognition, are often not realized and not recorded by the subject. This approach is unacceptable in scientific research. The selection of an object whose properties are subject to further study and the search for appropriate research methods are deliberate in nature and often represent a very complex and interconnected problem. To isolate an object, a scientist must master the methods of its isolation. The specificity of these methods lies in the fact that they are not obvious, since they are not familiar methods of cognition that are repeated many times in everyday practice. The need for awareness of the methods by which science isolates and studies its objects increases as science moves away from the familiar things of everyday experience and moves on to the study of “unusual” objects. In addition, these methods must themselves be scientifically sound. All this has led to the fact that science, along with knowledge about objects, specifically forms knowledge about the methods of scientific activity - methodology as a special branch of scientific research, designed to guide scientific research.

Science uses a special language. The specificity of scientific objects does not allow it to use only natural language. The concepts of everyday language are fuzzy and ambiguous, but science strives to fix its concepts and definitions as clearly as possible. Ordinary language is adapted to describe and foresee objects included in the daily practice of man, but science goes beyond the scope of this practice. Thus, the development, use and further development of a special language by science is a necessary condition for conducting scientific research.

Science uses special equipment. Along with the use of special language, when conducting scientific research, special equipment can be used: various measuring instruments, instruments. The direct impact of scientific equipment on the object being studied makes it possible to identify its possible states under conditions controlled by the subject. It is special equipment that allows science to experimentally study new types of objects.

Scientific knowledge as a product of scientific activity has its own characteristics. Scientific knowledge is distinguished from the products of ordinary cognitive activity by its validity and consistency. To prove the truth of scientific knowledge, its application in practice is not enough. Science substantiates the truth of its knowledge using special methods: experimental control over the acquired knowledge, the deducibility of some knowledge from others, the truth of which has already been proven. The deducibility of some knowledge from others makes them interconnected and organized into a system.

Scientific research requires special preparation of the subject conducting it. During it, the subject masters the historically established means of scientific knowledge, learns the techniques and methods of their use. In addition, the inclusion of a subject in scientific activity presupposes the assimilation of a certain system of value orientations and goals inherent in science. These attitudes include, first of all, the scientist’s attitude toward the search for objective truth as the highest value of science, and the constant desire to obtain new knowledge. The need for special training of a subject conducting scientific research has led to the emergence of special organizations and institutions that provide training for scientific personnel.

The result of scientific activity can be a description of reality, explanation and prediction of processes and phenomena. This result can be expressed in the form of text, a block diagram, a graphical relationship, a formula, etc. The specific results of scientific activity can be: a single scientific fact, a scientific description, an empirical generalization, a law, a theory.

Science as objective and subject knowledge

Scientific knowledge and its specific features

Science as objective and subject matter. Scientific knowledge, like all forms of spiritual production, is ultimately necessary to guide and regulate practice. Different types of cognitive activity perform this role in different ways, and analysis of this difference is the first and necessary condition for identifying the characteristics of scientific knowledge.

In the early stages of the development of society, the subjective and objective aspects of practical activity are not separated in cognition, but are taken as a single whole. Cognition reflects methods of practical change of objects, including in the characteristics of the latter the goals, abilities and actions of a person. This idea of the objects of activity is transferred to the whole of nature, which is viewed through the prism of the practice being carried out.

It is known, for example, that in the myths of ancient peoples the forces of nature are always likened to human forces, and its processes are always likened to human actions. Primitive thinking, when explaining the phenomena of the external world, invariably resorts to comparing them with human actions and motives. Only in the process of the long evolution of society does knowledge begin to exclude anthropomorphic factors from the characteristics of objective relations. An important role in this process was played by the historical development of subject practice, and above all, the improvement of means and tools.

As tools became more complex, those operations that were directly performed by man began to “reify,” acting as the sequential influence of one tool on another and only then on the object being transformed. Thus, the properties and states of objects arising due to these operations ceased to seem caused by direct human efforts, but increasingly acted as a result of the interaction of natural objects themselves. Thus, if in the early stages of civilization the movement of goods required muscular effort, then with the invention of the lever and pulley, and then the simplest machines, it was possible to replace these efforts with mechanical ones. For example, using a system of blocks it was possible to balance a large load with a small one, and by adding a small weight to a small load, raise the large load to the desired height. Here, lifting a heavy body no longer requires human effort: one load independently moves another. This transfer of human functions to mechanisms leads to a new understanding of the forces of nature. Previously, these forces were understood only by analogy with human physical efforts, but now they are beginning to be considered as mechanical forces. The given example can serve as an analogue of the process of “objectification” of the objective relations of practice, which, apparently, began already in the era of the first urban civilizations of antiquity. During this period, cognition begins to gradually separate the objective side of practice from subjective factors and consider this side as a special, independent reality.

But the transformation of the world can bring success only when it is consistent with the objective laws of change and development of its objects. Therefore, the main task of science is to identify these laws. In relation to the processes of transformation of nature, this function is performed by the natural and technical sciences. The processes of change in social objects are studied by social sciences. Since a variety of objects can be transformed in activity - objects of nature, man (and his states of consciousness), subsystems of society, iconic objects functioning as cultural phenomena, etc. - all of them can become subjects of scientific research.

The orientation of science towards the study of objects that can be included in activity (either actually or potentially, as possible objects of its future development), and their study as subject to objective laws of functioning and development is one of the most important features of scientific knowledge. This feature distinguishes it from other forms of human cognitive activity. So, for example, in the process of artistic exploration of reality, objects included in human activity are not separated from subjective factors, but are taken in a kind of “glue” with them. Any reflection of objects of the objective world in art simultaneously expresses a person’s value attitude towards the object. An artistic image is a reflection of an object that contains the imprint of a human personality, its value orientations, as if “fused” into the characteristics of the reflected reality. To exclude this interpenetration means to destroy the artistic image. In science, the peculiarities of the life activity of the individual creating knowledge, her value judgments are not directly included in the composition of the generated knowledge (Newton’s laws do not allow us to judge what Newton loved and hated, whereas, for example, in portraits by Rembrandt the personality of Rembrandt himself is captured, his worldview and his personal attitude to the phenomena depicted. A portrait painted by a great artist also, to some extent, acts as a self-portrait). Science is focused on the substantive and objective study of reality. It does not follow from this, of course, that the personal aspects and value orientations of a scientist do not play a role in scientific creativity and do not influence its results.

Scientific knowledge reflects the objects of nature not in the form of contemplation, but in the form of practice. The process of this reflection is determined not only by the characteristics of the object being studied, but also by numerous factors of a sociocultural nature.

Considering science in its historical development, one can find that as the type of culture changes, the standards for presenting scientific knowledge, ways of seeing reality in science, and styles of thinking that are formed in the context of culture and are influenced by its most diverse phenomena change. This impact can be represented as the inclusion of various sociocultural factors in the process of generating scientific knowledge itself. However, the statement of the connections between the objective and the subjective in any cognitive process and the need for a comprehensive study of science in its interaction with other forms of human spiritual activity do not remove the question of the differences between science and these forms (ordinary knowledge, artistic thinking, etc.). The first and necessary among them is the objectivity and subjectivity of scientific knowledge.

But, studying objects transformed in activity, science is not limited to the knowledge of only those subject connections that can be mastered within the framework of the existing forms and stereotypes of activity that have historically developed at a given stage of social development. Science also strives to create a foundation of knowledge for future forms of practical change in the world.

Therefore, science carries out not only research that serves today’s practice, but also research whose results can only be used in the future. The movement of knowledge as a whole is determined not only by the immediate demands of today's practice, but also by cognitive interests, through which the needs of society in predicting future methods and forms of practical exploration of the world are manifested. For example, the formulation of intrascientific problems and their solution within the framework of fundamental theoretical research in physics led to the discovery of the laws of the electromagnetic field and the prediction of electromagnetic waves, to the discovery of the laws of fission of atomic nuclei, quantum laws of radiation of atoms during the transition of electrons from one energy level to another, etc. All these theoretical discoveries laid the foundation for future applied engineering research and development. The introduction of the latter into production, in turn, revolutionized equipment and technology - radio-electronic equipment, nuclear power plants, laser systems, etc. appeared.

The focus of science on studying not only objects that are transformed in today's practice, but also those that may become the subject of mass practical development in the future, is the second distinctive feature of scientific knowledge. This feature allows us to distinguish between scientific and everyday spontaneous-empirical knowledge and derive a number of specific definitions that characterize the nature of scientific research.

The main differences between science and everyday knowledge. The embryonic forms of scientific knowledge arose in the depths and on the basis of everyday knowledge, and then branched off from it. As science develops and becomes one of the most important factors in the development of civilization, its way of thinking has an increasingly active impact on everyday consciousness. This influence develops the elements of objective reflection of the world contained in ordinary spontaneous-empirical knowledge.

However, there are significant differences between the ability of spontaneous empirical knowledge to generate objective and objective knowledge about the world and the objectivity and objectivity of scientific knowledge.

First of all, science deals with a special set of objects of reality that are not reducible to objects of everyday experience.

The peculiarities of scientific objects make those means that are used in everyday cognition insufficient for their mastery. Although science uses natural language, it cannot describe and study its objects only on its basis. Firstly, ordinary language is adapted to describe and foresee objects woven into the existing practice of man (science goes beyond its scope); secondly, the concepts of ordinary language are vague and ambiguous, their exact meaning is most often discovered only in the context of linguistic communication, controlled by everyday experience. Science cannot rely on such control, since it primarily deals with objects that have not been mastered in everyday practical activity. To describe the phenomena being studied, she strives to record her concepts and definitions as clearly as possible.

The development by science of a special language suitable for its description of objects that are unusual from the point of view of common sense is a necessary condition for scientific research. The language of science is constantly evolving as it penetrates into ever new areas of the objective world. Moreover, it has the opposite effect on everyday, natural language. For example, the words “electricity” and “cloning” were once specific scientific terms, and then became firmly established in everyday language.

Along with an artificial, specialized language, scientific research requires a special system of special tools, which, by directly influencing the object being studied, make it possible to identify its possible states under conditions controlled by the subject. Hence the need for special scientific equipment (measuring instruments, instrument installations), which allow science to experimentally study new types of objects.

Scientific equipment and the language of science are, first of all, a product of already acquired knowledge. But just as in practice the products of labor are transformed into means of labor, so in scientific research its products - scientific knowledge expressed in language or objectified in instruments - become a means of further research, obtaining new knowledge.

The characteristics of the objects of scientific research can also explain the main features of scientific knowledge as a product of scientific activity. Their reliability can no longer be justified only by their use in production and everyday experience. Science forms specific ways of substantiating the truth of knowledge: experimental control over acquired knowledge, the deducibility of some knowledge from others, the truth of which has already been proven. Derivability procedures ensure not only the transfer of truth from one piece of knowledge to another, but also make them interconnected and organized into a system. The consistency and validity of scientific knowledge is another significant feature that distinguishes it from the products of ordinary cognitive activity of people.

In the history of science, two stages of its development can be distinguished: nascent science (pre-science) and science in the proper sense of the word. At the stage of pre-science, cognition primarily reflects those things and ways of changing them that a person repeatedly encounters in production and everyday experience. These things, properties and relationships were recorded in the form of ideal objects, with which thinking operated as specific objects that replaced objects of the real world. By connecting the original ideal objects with the corresponding operations of their transformation, early science built in this way models of those changes in objects that could be carried out in practice. An example of such models is knowledge of the operations of addition and subtraction of integers. This knowledge represents an ideal scheme for practical transformations carried out on subject collections.

However, as knowledge and practice develop, along with what has been noted, a new way of constructing knowledge is formed. It consists in constructing schemes of subject relations by transferring already created ideal objects from other areas of knowledge and combining them into a new system without direct reference to practice. In this way, hypothetical schemes of objective connections of reality are created, which are then directly or indirectly substantiated by practice.

Initially, this method of research was established in mathematics. Thus, having discovered the class of negative numbers, mathematics extends to them all those operations that were accepted for positive numbers, and in this way creates new knowledge that characterizes previously unexplored structures of the objective world. Subsequently, a new expansion of the class of numbers occurs: the application of root extraction operations to negative numbers forms a new abstraction - an “imaginary number”. And all those operations that were applied to natural numbers again apply to this class of ideal objects.

The described method of constructing knowledge is established not only in mathematics. Following it, it extends to the sphere of natural sciences. In natural science, it is known as a method of putting forward hypothetical models of reality (hypotheses) with their subsequent substantiation by experience.

Thanks to the method of hypotheses, scientific knowledge seems to free itself from the rigid connection with existing practice and begins to predict ways of changing objects that, in principle, could be mastered in the future. From this moment the stage of pre-science ends and science in the proper sense of the word begins. In it, along with empirical laws (which pre-science also knew), a special type of knowledge is formed - theory.

Another significant difference between scientific research and everyday knowledge is the differences in methods of cognitive activity. The objects to which ordinary cognition is directed are formed in everyday practice. The techniques by which each such object is isolated and fixed as an object of cognition are, as a rule, not recognized by the subject as a specific method of cognition. The situation is different in scientific research. Here, the very detection of an object, the properties of which are subject to further study, is a very labor-intensive task.

For example, to detect short-lived particles - resonances, modern physics conducts experiments on the scattering of particle beams and then applies complex calculations. Ordinary particles leave traces - tracks - in photographic emulsions or in a cloud chamber, but resonances do not leave such tracks. They live for a very short time (10 (to the -22nd degree) - 10 (to the -24th degree) s) and during this period of time they travel a distance less than the size of an atom. Because of this, resonance cannot cause ionization of photoemulsion molecules (or gas in a cloud chamber) and leave an observable trace. However, when the resonance decays, the resulting particles are capable of leaving traces of the indicated type. In the photograph they look like a set of dash rays emanating from one center. Based on the nature of these rays, using mathematical calculations, the physicist determines the presence of resonance. Thus, in order to deal with the same type of resonances, the researcher needs to know the conditions under which the corresponding object appears. He must clearly define the method by which a particle can be detected in an experiment. Outside of the method, he will not at all distinguish the object being studied from the numerous connections and relationships of natural objects.

To fix an object, a scientist must know the methods of such fixation. Therefore, in science, the study of objects, the identification of their properties and connections is always accompanied by an awareness of the methods by which objects are studied. Objects are always given to a person in a system of certain techniques and methods of his activity. But these techniques in science are no longer obvious, they are not techniques repeated many times in everyday practice. And the further science moves away from the usual things of everyday experience, delving into the study of “unusual” objects, the clearer and more clearly manifested is the need to understand the methods by which science isolates and studies these objects. Along with knowledge about objects, science generates knowledge about methods of scientific activity. The need to develop and systematize knowledge of the second type leads, at the highest stages of the development of science, to the formation of methodology as a special branch of scientific research, recognized as guiding scientific research.

Finally, doing science requires special training of the cognitive subject, during which he masters the historically established means of scientific research and learns the techniques and methods of operating with these means. The inclusion of a subject in scientific activity presupposes, along with the mastery of special means and methods, also the assimilation of a certain system of value orientations and goals specific to science. As one of the main goals of scientific activity, a scientist is guided by the search for truth, perceiving the latter as the highest value of science. This attitude is embodied in a number of ideals and standards of scientific knowledge, expressing its specificity: in certain standards for the organization of knowledge (for example, the requirements for the logical consistency of a theory and its experimental confirmation), in the search for an explanation of phenomena based on laws and principles reflecting the essential connections of the objects under study , etc. An equally important role in scientific research is played by the focus on the constant growth of knowledge and the acquisition of new knowledge. This attitude is also expressed in the system of regulatory requirements for scientific creativity (for example, prohibitions on plagiarism, the admissibility of a critical revision of the foundations of scientific research as conditions for the development of ever new types of objects, etc.).

The presence of norms and goals of cognitive activity specific to science, as well as specific means and methods that ensure the comprehension of ever new objects, requires the purposeful formation of scientific specialists. This need leads to the emergence of a “university component of science” - special organizations and institutions that provide training for scientific personnel. Thus, when characterizing the nature of scientific knowledge, we can identify a system of distinctive features of science, among which the main ones are: a) subjectivity and objectivity of scientific knowledge; b) science going beyond the framework of everyday experience and studying objects relatively independently of today’s possibilities for their practical development (scientific knowledge always refers to a wide class of practical situations of the present and future, which is never predetermined). All other necessary features that distinguish science from other forms of cognitive activity are derived from the indicated main characteristics and are conditioned by them.

People have always considered themselves the crown of creation. It is the ability to think that has elevated humanity to this honorable pedestal. Mastery of speech, active knowledge of the world and its laws and, as the highest form of mental activity, are the scientific achievements of human civilization.

Behind all these fruitful possibilities lies everyday human cognition as the main form of processing information coming from the outside.

In the language of philosophy, such knowledge means a system of processes, procedures and methods by which a person observes the phenomena of the surrounding world and extracts useful knowledge from the observed processes and phenomena.

Forms of knowledge

This is just one of several forms of human cognitive activity. It is believed that the progenitor of all existing forms was everyday knowledge.

The following knowledge has been developed into independent forms:

ordinary;
scientific;
philosophical;
artistic,
religious.

The difference between these forms of cognition lies in the objects that they study:

Ordinary research is limited to practical human problems and is aimed at studying phenomena from a utilitarian position.
Scientific – insight into the essence of things, the discovery of laws and theories of the existence of certain phenomena of objective reality.

Presentation: "Knowledge of the world around us"

Philosophical – the study of methods of cognition available to humans.
Artistic - the study of patterns that allow you to convey information using signs and symbols.
Religious knowledge is knowledge of God.

Signs

Despite a very clear categorization, people in their daily lives are often confused in determining the cognitive processes involved, and this leads to errors in the application of cognitive methods and procedures.

Confusion between scientific and everyday knowledge occurs especially often.

Science has become so deeply and universally part of modern human life that any reflections on pseudo-scientific topics are perceived as inclusion in a scientific discussion, although in fact the reasoning does not go beyond the scope of everyday knowledge.

Characteristics of everyday cognition

It can be characterized as common sense. Based on common sense, a person makes decisions regarding current reality and predicts future events. The entire process has a logical structure consisting of the following categories:

Statement of the problem

Due to the fact that ordinary knowledge does not go beyond the practical tasks of human survival, the main problems that are raised by the knower are the solution to short-term everyday problems. Science, in principle, is not interested in how humanity lives today.

The use of scientific achievements in everyday life is just a pleasant bonus from scientists. The main interests of scientific activity lie in a completely different area.

Tools

The main cognitive tools are concepts, elaborate judgments and connectives, with the help of which the knower receives certain conclusions about the object of study.

Such knowledge is built on:

random and uncontrolled observations, often based on one’s own everyday experience and on the experience of loved ones, whose judgments the knower trusts;
redundant concepts that do not have clear boundaries and can characterize several phenomena of objective reality;
imprecise instruments and subjective measurements;
putting forward hypotheses that cannot be tested to obtain predicted conclusions.

Drawing conclusions

The conclusions that the cognizer formulates to address the problem posed have a number of limitations of application:

conclusions are random and based on individual cases;
the limits of application of conclusions are almost impossible to justify; they are established intuitively;
It is impossible to predict the application of conclusions for general cases; each conclusion is individual.

If we analyze all of these components, then scientific and everyday knowledge are to a certain extent opposites, since everything that is characteristic of the ordinary prevents scientific progress in solving those problems of studying objective reality that are part of the subject of science.

Forms

Forms of everyday knowledge are characterized by the methods that knowers use when studying certain phenomena of the surrounding world.

Main methods:

trial and error method;
inductive generalization;
everyday observations;
broad analogies;
unification of the rational and the irrational.

Some of the listed methods are used not only by everyday, but also by scientific knowledge. For example, induction is one of the main forms of constructing inferences for deriving new hypotheses in the study of scientific problems.

The conclusions that the cognizer receives by processing incoming information with the specified tools are quite viable and provide people not only with safety and survival in different conditions, but also with relative independence and alternative when choosing different means to achieve certain utilitarian goals.

Trial and error

The very first of the methods of everyday acquisition of knowledge mastered by man. Thanks to him, our primitive ancestors determined which actions had positive results and which had negative results.

Over the centuries, the fact has not changed that the trial and error method gives only relative results that can be used by a limited number of people in limited circumstances.

Inductive generalization

The principle of induction, which consists in following from private experience to the derivation of general rules and patterns, is one of the most common in the ordinary way of obtaining knowledge. After all, it is not difficult to make a generalized conclusion that if a lit match burns your fingers, then any contact with fire will cause burns to a person.

Science also actively uses induction. But if we consider a specific example with matches, it is obvious that science will not be interested in deducing rules for how a person handles fire; it will study the processes of interaction of biological tissue with hot fiery plasma.

Everyday observations

Everyday observations have always carried a positive cognitive charge, and at all stages of the history of the development of human thought they have served as food for a person’s active interest in the surrounding reality.

The history of the development of knowledge knows a lot of facts when ordinary observations became the cause of fateful scientific discoveries:

Archimedes and his body immersed in a vessel;
Newton, who looked at falling apples;
Becquerel's discovery of the phenomenon of radioactivity from photographic plates accidentally left in a safe, which were illuminated by radioactive material.

Broad analogies and syncretism

These methods are widely used in the formation of conclusions and conclusions in everyday knowledge. Those phenomena of objective reality that ordinary cognition is not able to process are replaced by irrational categories when drawing conclusions or used by analogy with well-studied phenomena in everyday life.

Myths were built on broad analogies, when unexplored natural phenomena were endowed with the traits and characteristics of people, animals or plants.

Despite the fact that many natural phenomena have already been sufficiently studied by science, many ordinary people continue to use broad analogies and irrational explanations to obtain conclusions that can protect their daily life and make it more meaningful.

The desire to study objects of the real world and, on this basis, to foresee the results of its practical transformation is characteristic of both science and everyday knowledge, which is woven into practice and develops on its basis. In everyday knowledge, certain types of knowledge about reality appear, similar to those that characterize science.

The ability of everyday (spontaneous-empirical) knowledge to generate substantive and objective knowledge about the world raises the question of the difference between it and scientific knowledge. The characteristics that distinguish science from everyday knowledge are classified according to a categorical scheme that characterizes the structure of activity (by subject, means, product, methods and subject of activity).

The main function of all types of cognition is the regulation of human activity. Different types of cognition perform this function in different ways. Analysis of these differences is a condition for identifying the characteristics of scientific knowledge.

At an early stage of development of society, cognition reflects ways of practically changing objects. A person's goals, abilities and actions are understood as characteristics of these objects. All nature is viewed through the prism of practice. Primitive thinking, when explaining the phenomena of the external world, resorts to comparing them with human actions and motives.

As the tools became more complex, the operations performed began to “reify”. The properties of objects no longer seem to be caused by human efforts. The forces of nature begin to be viewed as mechanical forces. Cognition begins to separate the objective side of practice from subjective factors. Such consideration of practice is a condition for the emergence of scientific research.

The ultimate goal of science is to foresee the process of transformation of objects of practical activity. The task is to identify the laws in accordance with which objects change and develop.

Characteristics that distinguish science from ordinary knowledge:

1. Science is focused on the study of objects that can be included in activities; their study is subject to objective laws of functioning and development. Science is aimed at studying not only objects that are transformed in today's practice, but also those objects that may become the subject of practical development in the future.

In the process of everyday assimilation of reality, objects included in human activity are not separated from subjective factors, but are “glued together” with them. Any reflection of objects of the objective world in everyday knowledge simultaneously expresses a person’s value attitude towards the object. However, this does not mean that the personal aspects and value orientations of a scientist do not play a role in scientific creativity and do not influence its results.

2. Scientific knowledge requires the development of special languages of science. Although science uses natural language, it cannot describe and study its objects only on its basis. Firstly, ordinary language is adapted to describe and foresee objects woven into the existing practice of man (science goes beyond its scope); secondly, the concepts of ordinary language are vague and ambiguous, their exact meaning is most often discovered only in the context of linguistic communication, controlled by everyday experience. To describe the phenomena being studied, she strives to record her concepts and definitions as clearly as possible. It is the operation of concepts that allows science to perform the main cognitive functions: description, explanation and prediction of phenomena in a certain subject area.

3. The means of everyday cognition are limited by the natural cognitive abilities that a person has: sense organs, thinking, forms of natural language, based on common sense, elementary generalizations, simple cognitive techniques. Scientific knowledge also uses scientific equipment, special research methods, creates and uses artificial languages, and special scientific terminology.

4. The objects to which ordinary cognition is directed are formed in everyday practice. The techniques by which each such object is isolated and fixed as an object of knowledge are woven into everyday experience. The set of such techniques, as a rule, is not recognized by the subject as a method of cognition. In science, the very discovery of an object whose properties are subject to further study is a labor-intensive task. Therefore, in science, the study of objects, the identification of their properties and connections is always accompanied by an awareness of the method by which the object is studied. Along with knowledge about objects, science generates knowledge about methods. At the highest stages of the development of science, the formation of methodology as a special branch of knowledge occurs.

5. The purpose of ordinary knowledge is limited to immediate practical tasks; it does not seek to penetrate into the essence of phenomena, discover laws, or form theories. Scientific knowledge poses and solves fundamental problems, puts forward well-founded hypotheses, and develops long-term forecasts. Its goal is the discovery of the laws of nature, society, thinking, knowledge of the essence of phenomena, and the creation of scientific theories.

6. Scientific activity requires special preparation of the cognitive subject. It includes the assimilation not only of relevant scientific knowledge, but also the construction of a certain system of values and goals that stimulate scientific search and study of new objects, regardless of the relevance of the practical effect of the knowledge obtained. Two main principles of science: the intrinsic value of truth and the value of novelty. From here follow the standards of scientific knowledge (requirements for the logical consistency of theory, the prohibition of plagiarism, the inadmissibility of falsification, etc.) For everyday knowledge such preparation is not necessary, it is carried out automatically, in the process of socialization of the individual, when his thinking is formed and developed in the process of communication with culture and the inclusion of the individual in various fields of activity.

Therefore, the main distinguishing features of science are:

A) an orientation toward the study of the laws of transformation of objects and the objectivity and objectivity of scientific knowledge that implements this orientation;

b) the movement of science beyond the boundaries of everyday experience and its study of objects relatively independently of today’s possibilities for their practical development.

All other necessary characteristics can be presented as depending on and conditioned by the indicated main characteristics.

The specific form of ordinary knowledge is common sense. Traditionally, this knowledge was understood as primitive, philistine. Recently, there has been a revaluation of the role of common sense and ordinary knowledge, since it is the main regulator of human behavior, on its basis a picture of reality is formed.

The embryonic forms of scientific knowledge arose in the depths and on the basis of everyday knowledge, and then branched off from it. As science develops and becomes one of the most important factors in the development of civilization, its way of thinking has an increasingly active impact on everyday consciousness. This influence develops the elements of objective reflection of the world contained in ordinary spontaneous-empirical knowledge.

First of all, science deals with a special set of objects of reality that are not reducible to objects of everyday experience.

To fix an object, a scientist must know the methods of such fixation. Therefore, in science, the study of objects, the identification of their properties and connections is always accompanied by an awareness of the methods by which objects are studied. Objects are always given to a person in a system of certain techniques and methods of his activity. But these techniques in science are no longer obvious, they are not techniques repeated many times in everyday practice. And the further science moves away from the usual things of everyday experience, delving into the study of “unusual” objects, the clearer and more distinctly is the need to understand the methods by which science isolates and studies these objects. Along with knowledge about objects, science generates knowledge about methods of scientific activity. The need to develop and systematize knowledge of the second type leads, at the highest stages of the development of science, to the formation of methodology as a special branch of scientific research, recognized as guiding scientific research.