Summary

Let us summarize our study.

1. The scientific picture of the world functions and develops under the influence of a whole range of cognitive, socio-cultural and institutional factors. It is a specific layer of knowledge which, on the one hand, interacts with experience and theories inside a scientific discipline ensuring interdisciplinary contacts, and, on the other correlates with the world-view and philosophical images of the world that hold within themselves the value and priority system of the technogenic culture.

Being a vision of the subject of study, the scientific picture of the world fixes boundaries (sometimes unrigidly) between scientific disciplines. Its description determines the subject of science, its basic systemic and structural characteristics, whereas the understanding of its principles is a condition of the reproduction of the subject of scientific cognition at each concrete stage of the historical development of science.

2. In the process of research the scientific picture of the world performs ontological, heuristic, systematizing and world-view functions which are interconnected having a systematic and organized character.

In the process of its functioning the scientific picture of the world as a research program within a certain discipline (its heuristic functions) integrates heterogeneous empirical and theoretical types of knowledge of the corresponding branch of science into a single system. In its turn, their conformity with the scientific picture of the world and the high degree of their systematization is one of the conditions of its success as a research program, of its advantage over other competitive pictures of the reality under study. In the dynamic development of science the appearance of new knowledge and its further integration achieved through specific procedures presuppose each other.

The world-view function of the scientific picture of the world is linked to its heuristic and systematizing function. The correlation between empirical facts and concrete theories and the scientific picture of the world is a precondition of assimilating them into culture. The objectivation of knowledge Is ensured by the ontological status of the scientific picture of the world, that very status which presupposes its conformity with the world-view structures that have settled in the

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culture of a definite historical epoch. The mutual readjustment of the world picture representations and the world-view structures appears as a condition of integrating these representations into the flow of the cultural translation of social-historical experience.

The system interaction of functions thus brought to the fore characterizes not only the dynamics of disciplinary ontologies but also the functioning of the generalized scientific picture of the world. The growing interdisciplinary interaction results in a constant exchange between different kinds of science both of separate methods and the fundamental ontological principles that alter strategies of scientific research.

The translation of paradigms, concepts and methods from one science to another proves the existance of a generalizing vision of the subjects of each of these disciplines which allows to compare different pictures of the reality under consideration (i.e. disciplinary ontologies), to find common blocs in them, to identify them regarding them as images of one and the same reality. This function is performed by the generalized scientific picture of the world. It acts as a global research program allowing to problematize interdisciplinary synthesis as well as grounding the possibility of translating knowledge from one science to another.

Due to its high degree of abstraction, the generalized scientific picture of the world has the closest relationship with the meanings of cultural universalia, possessing at the same time a distinct world-view status.

3. During the past two decades our scholarly literature was descussing the problem of relative independence of specific scientific pictures of the world (disciplinary ontologies) and their relation to the generalized scientific picture of the world. Three different approaches were formulated: 1) specific scientific pictures of the world exist as forms of systematizing scientific knowledge in concrete disciplines, whereas the generalized scientific picture of the world is a result of their synthesis; 2) specific scientific pictures of the world are fragments of the generalized scientific picture; 3) specific scientific pictures of the world do not exist at all as a special form of synthesizing knowledge. All these approaches indeliberately regarded specific scientific pictures of the world and the generalized picture as ahistorical phenomena, implying that these forms of the pictures of the world are components of the structure of science and are originally inherent in it, providing for the systematizing of knowledge and its translation in culture.

However, the analysis of the history of science has shown that its development is connected both with the appearance of new contents of knowledge and the development of the forms of this very knowledge.

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Such forms are historical. They appear at a certain stage of scientific development and can undergo radical transformation, losing their independent status

From this viewpoint the specific scientific picture of the world (or disciplinary ontology) did not always exist in science, it comes into being at the time of its disciplinary organization as a relatively autonomous form of cognitive systematization and begins to lose its independence at the stage of the interdisciplinary synthesis of knowledge. Thus, the problem of the status of specific scientific pictures of the world is furnished with an adequate resolution while accurately defining the "system of coordinates" in a historically transient process of the growth of scientific knowledge.

4. In the historical dynamics of the scientific picture of the world three major stages of its functioning can be distinguished: the picture of the world of pre-disciplinary science, that of science organized into disciplines and the modern scientific picture of the world resulting from the increasing interdisciplinary synthesis of knowledge.

Each stage of the development of the scientific picture of the world is characterized by the prevalence of a certain type with its own specificity.

The first scientific picture of the world (the mechanical one) took shape at the time of pre-disciplinary science and was prepared by the transformation of world-view structures during the transition from medieval culture to that of the Renaissance and the Modern times - i.e. by the change of the representations of the human being, his activity, those of knowledge and scientific rationality, of nature, its causality and regularity, as well as those of space and time

The whole complex of socio-cultural factors was necessary but insufficient for the development of the scientific picture of the world. These facts overlapped with the inner logic of the progress of scientific ideas (grounds provided by natural science for the image of homogeneous space, for the notions of empty space and the movement of atoms in it; the elaboration of the concepts of force and "long-range" action; the discovery of laws common to earthly and celestial mechanics etc.).

The mechanical picture of the world was formed as a generalized scientific picture of the world, it oriented research in various fields of knowledge (chemistry, biology, social cognition), contributing to the unity of scientific cognition. The synthesis of knowledge performed within its framework was connected with the reduction of various processes to mechanical ones, a procedure which was justified by the system of philosophical and world-view foundations with the notions of mechanicism at its core.

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The second stage in the development of the scientific picture of the world is connected with the mechanical picture losing its generalized scientific status as well as the development of specific scientific pictures of the world that eventually acquired an independent status of disciplinary ontologies.

This process was conditioned by the gradual emergence of disciplinary science formed in a new socio-cultural atmosphere created by the transformation of the institutional structure of science, the appearance of new academic institutions, scientific associations, of new forms of communication in science and also by the discovery of the practical value of scientific knowledge, the growth of scientific information which required new forms of knowledge translation and of a special system of the reproduction of the subject of science, and, finally, by the differentiation of science into respective subjects in the process of teaching.

The altered socio-cultural context where science was acquiring new characteristics was produced by transformations within scientific knowledge. The assimilation of new types of objects into scientific investigation and an expanding body of knowledge about these objects would not fit into the narrow limits of the mechanical picture of the world and would not receive an adequate explanation on its part. In the process of translating the principles of the mechanical picture of the world to sciences adjacent to mechanics, they were compared with new data concerning quite a different field, which gradually resulted in the development of special pictures of reality, irreducible to the mechanical one, those that were acquiring a distinct nature of disciplinary ontologies.

An important characteristic of the functioning» of the scientific picture of the world at the stage of science organized into disciplines is the differentiation of both scientific pictures of the world and scientific ideals and norms, which leads to a greater heterogeneity of scientific knowledge.

The search for the bases of its unity as well as the elaboration of an integral scientific picture of the world become the major methodological problem of this stage of scientific development.

The third stage in the evolvenient of the scientific picture of the world is its functioning at the present stage of the evolution of science characterized by a greatly increased interdisciplinary synthesis of knowledge and the expansion of interdisciplinary research. This stage is marked by lesser autonomy of specific scientific pictures of the world along with the reconstitution of the generalized scientific picture of the world as integral systematic image of the Universe. But as opposed to the pre-disciplinary stage, this picture is formed not on the basis of the

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unification of all the fields of knowledge and their reduction to the ontological principles of a given science, but on the unity in the diversity of various disciplinary ontologies. The principles of global evolutionism including the principle of evolution proper and also the system-forming principle serve as the fundamental basis and strategy for the development of the generalized scientific picture of the world. These principles characterize the interrelations between self-organizing systems of various degrees of complexity and bind the basic levels of the structure of the world together into a single chain of evolutionary transformations.

The focus of modern science on historically developing objects having an "anthropo-dimesion" shows the limitations of disciplinary ontologies. In order to acquaint oneself with new objects of an integral character interdisciplinary studies are required, their basis being the generalized scientific picture of the world. It gives a preliminary vision of the object contributing to the formulation of problems and determining the initial strategy of research.

The modern stage of scientific knowledge is characterized by the increasing rule of interdisciplinary investigations which affects not only the cognitive but the institutional aspects of modern science as well. The latter appears more and more as an analog of large-scale production, and the priority of scientific problems is beginning to be determined both by internal scientific factors and social goals. Social goals and values changing science as a social institution and inherently scientific, cognitive factors start to act in one direction - they effectuate interdisciplinary relations and this, in its turn, increases the role of the generalized scientific picture of the world ensuring an integral vision of complex developing systems.

5. The general cultural meaning of the modern scientific picture of the world is determined by its participation in the solution of global problems a d the selection of humanities' vital strategies. The scientific picture of the world embodies the ideals of an "open rationality". It takes an active part in the search for world-view points of reference that determine strategies of modern civilization, at the same time revealing the congruity of new values and priorities formed within the science of the technogenic culture with philosophical and world-view ideas developed by different, sometimes clashing cultural traditions (the world-view ideas of traditional Oriental cultures and with the philosophy of the Russian "cosmists").

The modern scientific picture of the world based on the principles of global evolutionism harmoniously participates in the establishment of planetary thinking, of the dialogue of cultures, being one of the crucial factors of cross-cultural interaction between the West and the East.

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