Chapter II. Atomistic picture of the world The contours of the picture are historically conditional, but what is certain is that this picture depicts an objectively existing model. IN AND.

Scientific picture of the world In the process of spiritual evolution, humanity did not receive the promised happiness, but received information, for which culture should also be grateful. What is it like in the most proven scientific form? In other words, what is the current scientific picture

2. Romantic picture of the world The romantics saw the most important goal of their artistic and philosophical creativity in the most accurate expression of the formation and development of life in all its dynamics. Romantics looked for equivalents to the organic structure of the world in “organic”

Conditional modern development methodological reflection, the problem of rationality has become the subject of close attention of many philosophers. One of the reasons for the actualization of this problem is the complication of the process and structure of cognition and the increasing role of the logical principle in scientific research. In this regard, the analysis of the formation of natural science as a science in modern times from the point of view of the rationalization of the cognitive activity of scientists is of particular interest.

Each era makes its own scientific demands on knowledge and forms of knowledge, which act in relation to knowledge in two ways: as sociocultural (external) and logical-epistemological (internal) requirements. In the XVII-XIX centuries - this is the era of the formation of science in the literal sense of the word. The problem of the emergence of science is a debatable problem. At least, two points of view can be distinguished on this issue: some believe that science arose with the emergence of philosophy itself, if not earlier, i.e. formation Pythagorean school in the V - IV centuries. BC. - this is the beginning of the emergence of genuine scientific knowledge. It is precisely this point of view that can be found in educational and methodological literature. An alternative point of view involves viewing science as a phenomenon of a later period in the development of civilization.

Many civilizations, right up to modern times, managed without scientific knowledge and did not need it. The lack of demand for elements of nascent scientific knowledge in the ancient period is the result of the underdevelopment of material production, but satisfaction with the production and application of extra-scientific knowledge. In this regard, writes V.Zh. Kelle, “for science to arise, society must reach not only a certain level socially - economic development, generating the need for scientific knowledge, but also to form a culture of a certain quality, a culture in the depths of which the emergence and development of scientific thinking is possible." Based on this, then the beginning of the emergence of the rudiments of capitalist production relations can be considered a turning point in the history of the genesis of science.

With the emergence of the latter, according to K. Marx, “for the first time such practical problems problems that can only be solved scientifically."

Summarizing both approaches to the problem under consideration, we can say that, of course, the beginnings of scientific knowledge began to emerge in culturally highly developed countries: Babylonia, Greece, China, India. Within each historical era, taking into account the level of cultural development, specifically historical forms of knowledge of the world and society are developed. However, before the emergence of the capitalist mode of production, the available elements of knowledge did not have any noticeable impact on the development of society and did not represent established theoretical systems suitable for an objective study of the surrounding world. Therefore, it is legitimate to associate the beginning of the emergence of true science with the Copernican revolution in natural science and the activities of Galileo and Newton. Mechanics comes to the fore as the science of celestial and terrestrial bodies. As for physics, chemistry, biology, geology, etc., they were just beginning to take their first independent steps. We associate the period under consideration with the formation of scientific rationality itself.

Modern philosophical and methodological literature presents a wide range of points of view and approaches to understanding scientific rationality. Separately, they reveal certain aspects of that phenomenon in science, and together they allow us to build a holistic concept of a rather complex structural formation. Rationality in science is a product of the realization by reason of its organizing, normalizing and ordering principles human activity. Reason seeks to schematize, particularly in science, intellectual operations by subordinating them to worldviews, methodological principles and cognitive requirements.

“Rationality,” writes I. Lakatos, “is something that corresponds to certain methodological principles, norms and regulations.” These manipulations of the researcher’s actions make it possible to achieve a certain harmony and logical consistency in cognitive activity, consistent with the ideas of a specific historical era about the values ​​of science and culture; bring the search product into correspondence with object reality; bring scientific knowledge under social needs. It is these features inherent in scientific research that make it possible to inscribe scientific knowledge into the cultural layers of humanity, which characterize the level of perfection of human logical thinking.

* Kelle V.Zh. science as a cultural phenomenon //science and culture. M7, 1984, p.10.

* Marx K., Engels F. Soch., T.47, P.554.

* Lakatos I. History of science and its rational reconstruction // Structure and development of science: From the Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science. M., 1978, S. 205.

* Lamarck J.B. Philosophy of Zoology T.4. M.,-L., 1935, pp. 196-197.

* See: Laplace P. Experience in the philosophy of probability theory. M., 1908, p.163.

Kasavin I.T., Sokuler Z.A. Rationality in knowledge and practice. M., 1989, p. 157.

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INTRODUCTION

The basis of the modern scientific worldview is the recognition of the fundamental nature of space and time. This tradition dates back to the times of Galileo and Newton.

So Newton based all his mechanics on laws in which, as physical quantities spatial coordinates x,y,z and time t appeared. He put forward completely new principle study of nature, according to which to deduce two or three general principles of motion from phenomena and then explain how the properties and actions of all corporeal things follow from these obvious principles - would be a very important step in philosophy, although the causes of these principles have not yet been open.

Physics, as the most developed area of ​​natural science, set the background for the development of other branches of science. The latter gravitated towards rational-methodological principles and concepts of physics and mechanics.

The discovery of the principles of mechanics means a truly revolutionary revolution, which is associated with the transition from natural philosophical conjectures and hypotheses about “hidden” qualities, etc. speculative fabrications to precise experimental natural science, in which all assumptions, hypotheses and theoretical constructions were verified by observations and experience.

1. MECHANISTIC PERIOD OF NATURAL SCIENCE

1. 1 The essence and reasons for the emergence of a mechanistic picture of the world

In the 17th-19th centuries, it was the private sciences that strived for perfection, which were just beginning to acquire the status of independence and science. This was the period of their breakthrough to new horizons of truth. Classical mechanics developed different ideas about the world, matter, space and time, movement and development, marked from the previous ones, and created new categories of thinking - thing, property, relationship, element, part, whole, cause, effect, system - through the prism of which it itself became look at the world, describe and explain it. New ideas about the structure of the world led to the creation of a New Picture of the World - a mechanistic one, which was based on the idea of ​​the universe as a closed system, likened to a mechanical watch, which consists of irreplaceable, subordinate elements, the course of which strictly obeys the laws of classical mechanics. Everyone and everything that makes up the universe is subject to the laws of mechanics, and, therefore, universality is attributed to these laws. As in mechanical watch, in which the course of one element is strictly subordinate to the course of another, and in the universe, according to the mechanistic picture of the world, all processes and phenomena are strictly causally connected with each other, there is no place for chance and everything is predetermined.

In the mechanistic picture of the world, ideological orientations and methodological principles of cognition are set. Mechanism, determinism, and reductionism form a system of principles governing human research activities. By discovering the laws that describe natural phenomena and processes, man opposes himself to nature and elevates himself to the level of the master of nature. This is how a person puts his activities on a scientific basis, because, based on a mechanistic picture of the world, he is convinced of the possibility of identifying the universal laws of the functioning of the world with the help of scientific thinking. This activity is framed as rationalistic. Of course, it is assumed that such activity should be based entirely on goals, principles, norms, and methods of cognition of the object. The actions (scientific) and actions of the researcher, based on instructions of a methodological nature, acquire the features of a sustainable way of activity. During the period under review research activities in astronomy, mechanics, and physics was sufficiently rationalized, and these sciences themselves occupied a leading place in natural science.

Physics, as the most developed area of ​​natural science, set the background for the development of other branches of science. The latter gravitated towards rational-methodological principles and concepts of physics and mechanics. How this actually happened can be traced using the historical and scientific material of biology.

XVII-early XIX centuries - that is the period of dominance of the mechanical picture of the world. The laws of mechanics are considered universal and uniform for all branches of natural science. Empirical facts of biology, which are a record of isolated phenomena observed in a period, are reduced to mechanical laws. In other words, the method of forming facts in biology is based on mechanistic ideas about the world. For example, facts such as: “A bird, drawn by necessity to the water in order to find its sustenance here, spreads its toes, preparing to row and swim along water surface"; “The skin connecting the fingers at the base gets used to stretching due to these incessantly repeated spreading of the fingers. Thus, over time, those wide membranes formed between the toes of gray ducks, which we see now,” are entirely determined by the ideas of mechanistic determinism. This is clearly evident from the interpretation of these facts. “Frequent use of an organ, which has become a habit, increases the ability of that organ, develops it itself and gives it size and power of action”; “The disuse of an organ, which has become constant as a result of acquired habits, gradually weakens this organ and, in the end, leads to its disappearance and even complete destruction.” A mechanistic approach to the “animal organism-environment” adaptation system provides relevant empirical material.

1. 2 The principle of inertia and the principle of relativity of Galileo

The formation of a mechanistic picture of the world is rightly associated with the name Galileo Galilei, who established the laws of motion of freely falling bodies and formulated the mechanical principle of relativity. But Galileo's main merit is that he was the first to use experimental method together with measurements of the studied quantities and mathematical processing of measurement results. If experiments had been carried out sporadically before, it was he who began to systematically apply their mathematical analysis for the first time.

One of the first fundamental events marking the beginning of the classical period of natural science was Galileo's formulation of the principle of inertia and the principle of relativity. The principle of inertia states that any body remains in a state of rest or moves uniformly and in a straight line until the influence of other bodies takes it out of this state. The principle of relativity states that if a system moves uniformly and rectilinearly, then, without going beyond its limits, it is impossible to detect the fact of its movement or rest with any instruments, since such movement does not affect the course of processes occurring in this system. It is impossible to say unambiguously which of the bodies moving uniformly and rectilinearly is actually moving, and which is at rest. Only by specifying a point relative to which we will measure the characteristics of movement (for example, speed), can we introduce an element of certainty into the problem.

Thus, for the first time, the need arose to introduce the concept of a reference system into problems of mechanics.

The most important result of the principle of relativity was the rule for adding velocities (Fig. 1) (v"= v 0 + v, where v" is the speed of movement of a body relative to a stationary reference frame, v 0 is the speed of movement of a moving frame of reference relative to a stationary frame, v is the speed of movement of a body relative to the moving reference system) and coordinate transformation (x"= x - v 0 t, y"= y, z"= z, where x",y",z" are the coordinates of the body in the fixed coordinate system, x,y,z - coordinates of the body in a coordinate system moving relatively stationary with speed v 0 in the direction of the x axis").

Rice. 1. Galileo’s rule for adding velocities

Galileo's approach to the study of nature was fundamentally different from earlier the existing natural philosophical method, in which a priori, not related to experience and observations, purely speculative schemes were invented to explain natural phenomena.

Natural philosophy, as its name suggests, is an attempt to use general philosophical principles to explain nature. Such attempts have been made since ancient times, when philosophers sought to compensate for the lack of specific data with general philosophical reasoning. Sometimes brilliant guesses were made that were many centuries ahead of the results of specific research. It is enough to recall at least the atomistic hypothesis of the structure of matter, which was put forward by the ancient Greek philosopher Leucippus (V BC) and substantiated in more detail by his student Democritus (ca. 460 BC - year of death not known), as well as about the idea of ​​evolution expressed by Empedocles (c. 490-c. 430 BC) and his followers. However, after concrete sciences gradually emerged and separated from undifferentiated philosophical knowledge, natural philosophical explanations became a brake on the development of science.

This can be seen by comparing the views on motion of Aristotle and Galileo. Based on an a priori natural philosophical idea, Aristotle considered circular motion to be “perfect,” and Galileo, based on observations and experiment, introduced the concept of inertial motion. In his opinion, a body that is not subject to the influence of any external forces will not move in a circle, but uniformly along a straight path or remain at rest. This idea, of course, is an abstraction and idealization, since in reality it is impossible to observe such a situation without any forces acting on the body. However, this abstraction is fruitful, because it mentally continues the experiment that can be approximately carried out in reality, when, isolating itself from the action of a number of external forces, it can be established that the body will continue its movement as the influence of extraneous forces on it decreases.

The transition to the experimental study of nature and mathematical processing of experimental results allowed Galileo to discover the laws of motion of freely falling bodies. The fundamental difference between the new method of studying nature and the natural philosophical one was, therefore, that in it hypotheses were systematically tested by experience. The experiment can be seen as a question addressed to nature. To get a definite answer to it, it is necessary to formulate the question in such a way that the answer to it is unambiguous. To do this, the experiment should be structured in such a way as to isolate as much as possible from the influence of extraneous factors that interfere with the observation of the phenomenon being studied in its “pure form.” In turn, a hypothesis, which is a question to nature, must allow empirical verification of certain consequences derived from it. For these purposes, starting with Galileo, mathematics began to be widely used to quantify the results of experiments.

Thus, the new experimental natural science, in contrast to the natural philosophical guesses and speculations of the past, began to develop in close interaction between theory and experience, when each hypothesis or theoretical assumption is systematically tested by experience and measurements. It was thanks to this that Galileo was able to refute the previous assumption, made by Aristotle, that the path of a falling body is proportional to its speed. Having undertaken experiments with the fall of heavy bodies (cannonballs), Galileo became convinced that this path was proportional to their acceleration, equal to 9.81 m/s 2 . Among Galileo's astronomical achievements, noteworthy was the discovery of the satellites of Jupiter, as well as the discovery of spots on the Sun and mountains on the Moon, which undermined the previous belief in the perfection of the celestial cosmos.

1. 3 Structure of the solar system

One of the most significant successes of classical natural science, based on Newtonian mechanics, was an almost exhaustive description of the observed motion of celestial bodies.

Initially, it was believed that the Earth was motionless, and the movement of some celestial bodies (planets) seemed very complex. A new major step in the development of natural science was marked by the discovery of the laws of planetary motion. Galileo was one of the first to suggest that our planet is no exception and also moves around the Sun. This concept (heliocentric) was met with quite hostility. Tycho Brahe decided not to take part in the discussions, but to take direct measurements of the coordinates of bodies on the celestial sphere.

If Galileo dealt with the study of the movement of terrestrial bodies, then the German astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) dared to study the movements of celestial bodies, intruding into an area that had previously been considered forbidden to science.

In addition, for his research he could not turn to experiment and therefore was forced to use many years of systematic observations of the movements of the planet Mars carried out by the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546-1601). After trying many options, Kepler settled on the hypothesis that the trajectory of Mars, like other planets, is not a circle, but an ellipse. The results of Tycho Brahe's observations were consistent with this hypothesis and thereby confirmed it.

Kepler's discovery of the laws of planetary motion was invaluable for the development of natural science. It testified, firstly, that there is no insurmountable gap between the movements of earthly and celestial bodies, since they all obey certain natural laws; secondly, the very path to discovering the laws of motion of celestial bodies is, in principle, no different from the discovery of the laws of terrestrial bodies. True, due to the impossibility of carrying out experiments with celestial bodies, it was necessary to turn to observations to study the laws of their motion.

Nevertheless, here too the research was carried out in close interaction between theory and observation, with careful testing of the hypotheses put forward by measurements of the movements of celestial bodies.

1. 4 Newton's laws of mechanicstheir place in the mechanistic picture of the world

The formation of classical mechanics and the mechanistic picture of the world based on it occurred in two directions:

1) generalization of previously obtained results and, first of all, the laws of motion of freely falling bodies discovered by Galileo, as well as the laws of planetary motion formulated by Kepler;

2) creation of methods for quantitative analysis of mechanical motion in general.

It is known that Newton created his own version of differential and integral calculus directly to solve the basic problems of mechanics: the definition instantaneous speed as a derivative of the path with respect to the time of motion and acceleration as a derivative of the speed with respect to time or the second derivative of the path with respect to time. Thanks to this, he was able to accurately formulate the basic laws of dynamics and the law of universal gravitation. Nowadays, a quantitative approach to the description of movement seems to be something taken for granted, but in the 18th century. this was the greatest achievement of scientific thought. For comparison, it is enough to note that Chinese science, despite its undoubted achievements in empirical fields (the invention of gunpowder, paper, the compass and other discoveries), was never able to rise to the establishment of quantitative laws of motion. The decisive role in the development of mechanics was played, as already noted, by the experimental method, which provided the opportunity to test all guesses, assumptions and hypotheses with the help of carefully thought out experiments.

Newton, like his predecessors, attached great importance to observations and experiment, seeing them as the most important criterion for separating false hypotheses from true ones. Therefore, he sharply opposed the assumption of so-called hidden qualities, with the help of which Aristotle’s followers tried to explain many phenomena and processes of nature.

To say that each kind of thing is endowed with a special hidden quality with the help of which it acts and produces an effect, Newton pointed out, means to say nothing.

In this regard, he puts forward a completely new principle for the study of nature, according to which to derive two or three general principles of motion from phenomena and then set out how the properties and actions of all corporeal things follow from these obvious principles would be a very important step in philosophy , although the reasons for these beginnings have not yet been discovered.

These principles of motion represent the fundamental laws of mechanics, which Newton precisely formulated in his main work, “The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy,” published in 1687.

In order to clearly evaluate the revolutionary revolution carried out by Newton in mechanics and exact natural science in general, it is necessary first of all to contrast his method of principles with the purely speculative constructions of the previous natural philosophy and the widespread hypotheses of his time about “hidden” qualities. We have already spoken about the natural philosophical approach to the study of nature, noting that in the overwhelming majority such views were unsupported speculations and speculations. And although the title of Newton’s book also contains the term “natural philosophy,” in the 17th and 18th centuries. it meant the study of nature, i.e. natural science. Newton's assertion that hypotheses should not be considered in experimental philosophy was directed against hypotheses about “hidden” qualities, while genuine hypotheses, capable of experimental verification, constitute the basis and starting point of all research in natural science. As you might guess, the principles themselves are also hypotheses of a deep and very general nature.

When developing his method of principles, Newton was guided by the axiomatic method, brilliantly applied by Euclid in the construction of elementary geometry. However, instead of axioms, he relied on principles, and distinguished mathematical proofs from experimental ones, since the latter are not strictly reliable, but only probabilistic. It is also important to note that knowledge of the principles or laws that govern phenomena does not imply the discovery of their causes. This can be seen from Newton's assessment of the law of universal gravitation. He always emphasized that this law establishes only the quantitative dependence of the force of gravity on the gravitating masses and the square of the distance between them.

As for the cause of gravity, he considered its discovery a matter of further research.

It is enough that gravity actually exists and acts according to the laws we have set forth and is quite sufficient to explain all the movements of the celestial bodies and the sea, wrote Newton.

1. 5 Concept of biological evolution

The principle of entropy growth was in direct conflict with the achievements of another natural science discipline - biology, where at about the same time the principle was formulated biological evolution, the driving force of which, according to Darwin, is natural selection . In the process of evolution, new species of living organisms are formed, which, subject to the requirements of the environment, turn out to be more and more complex and perfect compared to their predecessors. Thus, natural science for the first time reached the level of formulating fundamental laws describing the living world. And immediately a paradox of disagreement with the data of physics arises, where the principle of entropy growth is already firmly established. It is no coincidence that Boltzmann believed that life is a consequence of a global accident, which has an extremely low probability of occurrence. From the point of view of physics of the 19th century, once it has arisen, any ordered system (for example, a living organism or life in general) can only collapse and degrade. At the same time, we can observe with our own eyes, for example, how the child’s body forms itself, organizing the scattered environment elements.

Paradoxes of this kind are generally typical of the mechanistic picture of the world. Their reason became clear only in the 20th century.

1.6 The significance of the discoveries of the mechanistic period of natural science

The discovery of the principles of mechanics really means a truly revolutionary revolution, which is associated with the transition from natural philosophical conjectures and hypotheses about “hidden” qualities, etc. speculative fabrications to precise experimental natural science, in which all assumptions, hypotheses and theoretical constructions were verified by observations and experience. Since in mechanics we abstract from qualitative changes in bodies, for its analysis it was possible to widely use mathematical abstractions and the analysis of infinitesimals created by Newton himself and at the same time by Leibniz (1646-1716). Thanks to this, the study of mechanical processes was reduced to their exact mathematical description.

For such a description, it was necessary and sufficient to specify the coordinates of the body and its speed (or momentum mv), as well as derive the equation of its motion. All subsequent states of a moving body were accurately and unambiguously determined by its initial state. Thus, by defining this state, it was possible to determine any other state of it, both in the future and in the past. It turns out that time has no effect on the change of moving bodies, so that in the equations of motion the sign of time could be reversed. Obviously, such a representation was an idealization of real processes, since it abstracts from actual changes that occur over time.

Consequently, classical mechanics and the mechanistic picture of the world as a whole are characterized by the symmetry of processes in time, which is expressed in the reversibility of time. This easily gives the impression that no real changes occur during the mechanical movement of bodies.

By specifying the equation of motion of a body, its coordinates and speed at some point in time, which is often called its initial state, we can accurately and unambiguously determine its state at any other point in time in the future or past. Let us formulate the characteristic features of the mechanistic picture of the world.

1. All states of mechanical motion of bodies in relation to time turn out to be basically the same, since time is considered reversible.

2. All mechanical processes are subject to the principle of strict or hard determinism, the essence of which is the recognition of the possibility of an accurate and unambiguous determination of the state of a mechanical system by its previous state.

According to this principle, chance is completely excluded from nature. Everything in the world is strictly determined (or determined) by previous states, events and phenomena. When this principle is extended to the actions and behavior of people, one inevitably comes to fatalism. In a mechanistic picture, the world around us itself turns into a grandiose machine, all subsequent states of which are precisely and unambiguously determined by its previous states. This point of view on nature was most clearly and figuratively expressed by the outstanding French scientist of the 18th century. Pierre Simon Laplace (1749-1827):

A mind which, for any given moment, knew all the forces that animate nature, if in addition it were vast enough to subject all data to analysis, would embrace in one formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the Universe on a par with the movements of the lightest atoms; there would be nothing left that would be unreliable for him, and the future, as well as the past, would appear before his gaze.

3. Space and time are in no way connected with the movements of bodies; they are absolute.

In this regard, Newton introduces the concepts of absolute, or mathematical, space and time. This picture is reminiscent of the ideas about the world of the ancient atomists, who believed that atoms move in empty space. Similarly, in Newtonian mechanics, space turns out to be a simple container of bodies moving in it, which do not have any influence on it.

4. The tendency to reduce the laws of higher forms of motion of matter to the laws of its simplest form - mechanical movement.

This desire met criticism from biologists, doctors and some chemists already in the 18th century. Outstanding materialist philosophers Denis Diderot (1713-1784) and Paul Holbach (1723-1789) also opposed it, not to mention the vitalists, who attributed to living organisms a special “vital force”, the presence of which allegedly distinguishes them from inanimate bodies. From the philosophy course you already know that mechanism, which tried to approach all processes without exception from the point of view of the principles and scope of mechanics, was one of the prerequisites for the emergence of the metaphysical method of thinking.

5. The connection between mechanism and the principle of long-range action, according to which actions and signals can be transmitted in empty space at any speed.

In particular, it was assumed that gravitational forces, or forces of attraction, act without any intermediate medium, but their strength decreases with the square of the distance between the bodies. Newton himself, as we have seen, left the question of the nature of these forces to be decided by future generations.

All of the above and some other features predetermined the limitations of the mechanistic picture of the world, which were overcome in the course of the subsequent development of natural science.

2 . ANDCHANGES IN THE MECHANISTIC PICTURE OF THE WORLD AS CHANGES IN THE PRINCIPLES OF RATIONALITY IN PHYSICSXIXCENTURIES

Some properties of the mechanistic paradigm remained unchanged in the last decades of the 19th century. The idea of ​​absolute time and absolute space, independent of each other, was preserved; it was still assumed that it was always possible to construct, find, and intuitively guess a certain function (which no longer depended only on coordinates, but which could also include velocities), this function provided all observable information about the system, in particular, it made it possible to determine the trajectory of any part of this system. From these properties followed Laplaceian determinism, which remained unchanged even after the appearance of the first works on statistical physics and classical thermodynamics, since the uncertainties arising there and the probabilities associated with them were explained not by the fundamental impossibility of determining the trajectory of each of the particles, but only by the laboriousness of the process of determining all these trajectories and ignorance of initial conditions. As V.A. Fock noted on this occasion, “...the centuries-long development of physics, including the 19th century, led to the fact that the absolute nature of physical processes, the possibility of their unlimited detail and their unambiguous determinism began to be considered the basis of physical science. These principles were usually not formulated explicitly, but were considered to be the a priori foundations of science and scientific philosophy.”

However, reducing the description physical system to the equations of analytical mechanics, which was also interpreted as a mechanical explanation, did not provide a sufficiently clear model picture of the behavior of the system, and therefore there remained some dissatisfaction with such a reduction. One of the attempts to get out of this situation can be considered modifications of the traditional mechanistic approach proposed by G. Hertz in the 90s (the book was published posthumously in 1894). Hertz’s book testifies to how strong the ideals of mechanistic explanation were, and at the very end of the 19th century, Hertz begins his work “Principles of Mechanics”: “All physicists agree that the task of physics is to reduce natural phenomena to the simple laws of mechanics. However, opinions differ on the question of what these simple laws are. Most understand these laws to be simply Newton's laws of motion. In fact, the latter receive their inner meaning and physical significance only thanks to the unspoken thought that the forces about which these laws speak have a simple nature and simple properties.

And within mechanics itself, the demands for mechanical reduction were also not universal, and one of the most influential thinkers of the end of the century, E. Mach, in his “Mechanics”, already in the part that refers to the first edition of 1883, speaks unequivocally about such reductionism: “The view that mechanics should be considered as the basis of all other branches of physics and that all physical processes should be explained mechanically is, in my opinion, a prejudice. What is historically more ancient should not always remain the basis for understanding what is later discovered.” But noting that this approach is justified by the ability to describe “an abstract quantitative expression of the factual” and the desire to do “without unnecessary unnecessary ideas,” Mach states in a later addition that in 1883 this point of view did not yet have support among physicists.

But the examples discussed above with books on mechanics of two outstanding XIX scientists centuries - Hertz and Mach - allow us to obtain the first confirmation of the existence of a connection between the ideas and ideals of classical science and the problem of mechanistic reductionism, or, in other words, the requirement that the mechanistic picture of the world be accepted as fundamental. Namely, having objectively contributed to the formation of classical physics and, above all, electromagnetic theory, with the equations of which he gave a modern form, Hertz, who demanded a reduction to mechanics, is a supporter of one single possible interpretation, defending the classical ideal scientific theory. While Mach, who denied mechanism that it serves as the basis of the physical picture of the world, was, as is known, one of the creators of the modern methodology of non-classical science, or rather, created the prerequisites for its emergence.

By the last quarter of the 19th century, a change in the concept of mechanical interpretation occurred, since the Laplace-Newtonian system of classical mechanics was clearly no longer used as a model for explanation, however, it was ideally that the final explanation was still reduced to mechanical models physical phenomena. Models often did not explain the mechanism of this phenomenon, but only pointed to the possibility of a formal analogy with mathematical correspondence. They tried to ultimately reduce any interpretation to mechanical models. This was also noted by F. Klein in 1926, highlighting “a process that gradually subordinated more and more distant areas of application to the formal method of classical mechanics, as a result of which a satisfactory mastery of the observed phenomena was achieved without any true insight into the true properties underlying them.” Indeed, reduction to a mechanical interpretation did not define or decipher physical laws interaction, however, it helped to organize the available empirical material and mathematically strictly describe it within the framework of the Hamiltonian-Lagrangian formalism. By the last quarter of the 19th century, the process that is usually identified with the emergence of classical physics, obvious examples of which were Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory, Fourier’s heat equation, statistical physics, etc., was directly related to the process of strengthening a somewhat modified, but mechanical, paradigm.

The very concept of classical mechanics was modified, moving into the concept of classical physics, but the mechanistic model rationalism that underlay this approach remained unchanged, as well as the strict certainty of the established operating laws.

Reduction to mechanical models was not the main task of the working theoretical physicists, and the presence of phenomenological laws that did not receive a mechanical interpretation confirms this fact, but the intention to obtain a picture of the phenomenon interpreted in terms of modified classical mechanics remained unchanged throughout the 19th century. The transition from the discrete corpuscular approach characteristic of classical mechanics to the continuum wave picture, which was part of the foundation of classical physics, again at the level of Galmitonic formalism and optical-geometric analogy, made it possible to expand the concepts included in the sets of classical mechanical interpretation. A completely different (and not discussed here) question is the problem of the complexity and real achievability of such an interpretation. The fundamental possibility of mechanically modeling, using sets with an infinite number of classical “mechanical” oscillators, the Maxwellian electromagnetic field confirms this. Among the main characteristics of classical mechanics, I. Prigogine names determinism, highlighting another feature of both mechanics and classical physics as such - its static nature, as Prigogine defines this property, which actually means that the physics and mechanics of steady-state processes, all present in it, are considered the equations have the property of integration, and space and time are independent variables.

The main changes, which can be called a transition to a different paradigm and a rejection of the classics, are associated with the fact that, firstly, spatial and temporal characteristics turned out to be connected, i.e. strictly speaking, could no longer appear as independent variables in absolute space-time, secondly, the systems under consideration were no longer deterministically defined, and probability was included as a main component in the theory and, thirdly, that physics ceased to be static and became science and about irreversible processes, i.e. time acquired direction, occurred with the gradual abandonment of mechanistic reductionism and its replacement with a reduction to the emerging classical physics. But at the same time, the attitude towards the model mechanism changed, while the appeal to its mathematical form, i.e. to the equations of analytical mechanics continued to be encountered more and more often, but to a large extent they could no longer be directly identified with mechanics proper. Rather, they were evidence of the ever-increasing role of mathematical formalism in the content of physical theories.

At the transitional stage from the ideals of classical science to the emergence of ideas of non-classical science and from the mechanistic paradigm to the paradigm (however, as it follows from what was said above, it did not last long) of classical physics, in this work we highlight the significance of the works of L. Boltzmann, which is largely underestimated precisely from the point of view an epistemological revolution in science that occurred with the significant assistance of a scientist. The paradox of the situation lies in the fact that throughout almost his entire career, Boltzmann acted, and repeatedly, primarily as a supporter of mechanistic reductionism, objectively contributing to its destruction.

In what physics was after the work of Boltzmann, fundamentally indeterministic systems already existed; systems appeared in it whose trajectories could not be unambiguously determined (which, however, became clear only half a century later), and where time was connected with space. All this can be understood as an actual recognition of the unsatisfactory nature of the mechanical interpretation.

Boltzmann took a special interest in philosophical and methodological grounds Sciences. The innovation of Boltzmann's epistemological position and his connection with the new view of science are already reflected in the fact that he considers the pluralism of physical theories to be fundamentally acceptable. Thus, in 1899, in a popular report read at a meeting of natural scientists, he directly spoke of what could be interpreted as a plurality of interpretations: “... our task is to find not an absolutely correct theory, but only the simplest theory that gives the best representation of phenomena. In principle, it is conceivable that there could be two completely different theories, both equally simple and equally well consistent with the phenomena: although these theories are completely different, they both turn out to be equally correct. The statement that only one theory is the only correct one expresses only our subjective conviction that there cannot be another theory that would be as simple and would give such a well-consistent picture.

The picture of changes in the understanding of the mechanical interpretation of physical phenomena discussed above indicates that the mechanical picture of the world was fundamental until the very end of the 19th century. Due to the appearance a decade later special theory In relation to A. Einstein’s relativity, it is still necessary to highlight the fundamental novelty of Boltzmann’s approach. It manifested itself in the following: when Boltzmann considered the entropy of a system, connecting it with the probability of the state of the system, he defined the arrow of time as directed towards an increase in entropy. But the very probability of the state of the system was expressed by Boltzmann through the totality of its spatial coordinates and coordinates in momentum space, and then, in accordance with Boltzmann’s definition, a kind of limitation was imposed on time, setting the direction of its change. Of course, this is not a complete interdependence of spatial and temporal variables, as in Einstein’s theory, and similar types of dependence in one form or another were encountered before, but Boltzmann was the first to directly connect in one formula the spatial coordinates of the system and the direction of its development, that is, the time vector . This direction of time, it seems, is precisely connected with the genetic conditionality of the concepts of Boltzmann's theory: Boltzmann chooses and builds the theory that contains the genesis of the system, hence the initial special semantic dependence on the concept of time, which previously played the role of a parameter in mechanics.

In the above-considered history of the transition from mechanics as the only possible language and method of explanation to the direct violation of the provisions underlying the mechanical picture of the world, the part that is directly related to the concept of the field as physical object, which has a force interaction that is not Newtonian in nature, as a special space where the interaction is not necessarily transmitted in a straight line, where the forces are not central, and the propagation of the interaction occurs at a finite speed. This circumstance is motivated by the fact that field theory lay somewhat apart from the concepts of mechanical explanation discussed above, since the concept of ether had a central place in its formation. But here it is important to note the following: before a certain synthesis of electrodynamics and mechanics was obtained in the works of A. Einstein in 1905, the concept of the field as an independent concept was formulated in 1895 by G. Lorentz. Although for Lorentz the field was not yet an ontologically independent concept, like for Einstein, Lorentz had already clearly formulated the non-Newtonian nature of this concept and, therefore, its irreducibility to mechanical models. And for the analyzed specifics of changes in the concept of understanding and explanation, it is important to note that Lorenz, as a prerequisite for constructing a theory, names the inapplicability, unsuitability of visualization, “recourse to pictures” as a component of a scientific theory. In his work, he avoided “pictures” in every possible way and declared this behavior as a principle: “However, there can be an excess of good things... by making everything too visual, we can fly over the target, and attach too much importance to what should serve only as an illustration, so that we take the illustration for the very essence... We must be especially careful with an excess of clarity when we are talking about forces in physics.” Lorentz's use of the original field concept, non-Newtonian in nature, combined with the rejection of the visual concepts of the theory, makes the connection of the mechanical interpretation with the visual model approach especially obvious. Especially if we consider that such an understanding of the field was not the result of a special methodological reflection of the scientist, who carefully avoided any appeal to general issues, limiting itself to solving purely physical problems. This allows us to conclude that such an introduction of a non-Newtonian non-mechanical object is always directly related to an orientation towards mathematical apparatus theory, as opposed to the search for visual interpretative illustrations.

Mechanics regained its rights with the emergence of the special theory of relativity, when electrodynamics, i.e. the concept of field and mechanics began to be considered as equal physical concepts that are not reducible to each other.

CONCLUSION

The 19th century is often defined as the Age of Progress or the Age of Science. It was in the 19th century, and largely thanks to the further spread of the ideology of the Enlightenment, that the very concept of “rational” increasingly began to coincide with the concept of “scientific”.

Having begun to take shape with the beginning of the scientific revolution of the New Time, the ideal of classical natural science did not undergo significant changes both over the past centuries and by the beginning of the 19th century, and indeed throughout its entire duration. Any value ideas or historical characteristics were excluded from classical science - scientific truth was timeless and eternal.

Nature itself is unchangeable and therefore natural science, including physics, deals with static objects, its objects of study, in turn, do not change, do not develop.

Finally, classical natural science assumed the existence of fixed cause-and-effect relationships. It was the deterministic nature of classical natural science that made it possible to predict the outcomes of experiments and a complete description of reality. Any uncertainty was naturally interpreted as evidence of incompleteness and insufficient truth of the theory. The ideal conclusion to the theoretical description was, starting with late XVIII century, reducing the picture of the phenomenon to a system of a mechanical nature.

In the 19th century and, above all, in its last quarter, a paradigm shift occurred, which was expressed in the fact that instead of reduction to a mechanical picture of the world, reduction to the theories of classical physics, which emerged as a new paradigmatic science towards the end of the century, began to be used.

LIST OF REFERENCES USED

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2) Bochkarev A.I. Concepts of modern natural science. - Tolyatti, 2007.

3) Hertz G. Principles of mechanics set out in a new connection. M., 2006.

4) Goethe I. Selected works on natural science. - M.: 2006.

5) Gorelov A.A. Concepts of modern natural science. - M.: 2006.

6) Grigoryan A.T., Fradlin B.N., Sotnikov V.S. Axiomatics of classical mechanics // Research... M., 2007. P. 5-37.

7) Dubnischeva T.Ya. Concepts of modern natural science. - Novosibirsk, 2007.

8) Dynin B.S. The logic of the development of ideas about science among physicists of the 19th century. (1800-1870) // Problems of the development of science in the works of natural scientists of the 19th century. M., 2007. pp. 29-49.

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The formation of a mechanical picture of the world occurred under the influence of metaphysical materialistic ideas about matter and the forms of its existence. The basis of this picture was the ideas and laws of mechanics, which in the 17th century. formed the most developed branch of physics. In fact, it was mechanics that was the first fundamental physical theory. The ideas, principles and theories of mechanics represented the body of the most essential knowledge about physical laws and most fully reflected the physical processes in nature.

In a broad sense, mechanics studies the mechanical movement of matter, bodies and the interaction that occurs between them. Mechanical motion is understood as a change in the relative position of bodies or particles in space over time. Examples of mechanical motion in nature are the movement of celestial bodies, vibrations earth's crust, air and sea currents, etc. The interactions that occur in the process of mechanical motion represent actions of bodies on each other, the result of which is a change in the speed of movement of these bodies in space or their deformation.

The basis of the mechanical picture of the world was the theory of atoms, according to which matter has a discrete (discontinuous) structure. The whole world, including man, was considered by the mechanical picture as a collection of a huge number of indivisible material particles - atoms. They move in space and time in accordance with a few laws of mechanics. Matter is a substance consisting of tiny, indivisible, absolutely solid moving corpuscles (atoms); This is the essence of corpuscular ideas about matter.

The laws of mechanics, which regulate the movement of atoms and any material bodies, were considered the fundamental laws of the universe. Therefore, the key concept of the mechanical picture of the world was the concept of movement, which was understood as mechanical movement in space. Bodies have an internal “innate” property of moving uniformly and rectilinearly, and deviations from this movement are associated with the action of an external force (inertia) on the body. The only form of movement is mechanical movement, i.e. change in body position in space over time; any movement can be represented as a sum of spatial movements. The movement was explained on the basis of Newton's three laws. All states of mechanical motion of bodies in relation to time turn out to be basically the same, since time is considered reversible. The laws of higher forms of motion of matter must be reduced to the laws of its simplest form - mechanical motion.

The mechanical picture of the world reduced all the variety of interactions in nature only to gravitational, which meant the presence of attractive forces between any bodies; the magnitude of these forces was determined by the law of universal gravitation. Therefore, knowing the mass of one body and the force of gravity, it is possible to determine the mass of another body. Gravitational forces are universal, i.e. they act always and between any bodies, imparting the same acceleration to any bodies.

Thus, the mechanical picture represented the world as a giant wind-up toy. All bodies interact only mechanically through collision or instantaneous action gravitational force. Since each body is determined by the parameters of position and state, and the forces acting on them are added up, accurate prediction of events is possible based on the calculation of the characteristics of movement and interaction.

In accordance with the mechanical picture of the world, the Universe was a well-oiled mechanism operating according to the laws of strict necessity, in which all objects and phenomena are interconnected by strict cause-and-effect relationships. In such a world there are no accidents; they are completely excluded. The only thing that was random was the reason for which remained unknown. But since the world is rational, and man is endowed with reason, then in the end he will be able to obtain complete and comprehensive knowledge about existence. Such rigid determinism found its expression in the form of dynamic laws.

Life and mind in the mechanical picture of the world did not have any qualitative specificity. Man in this picture of the world was considered as a natural body among other bodies and therefore remained inexplicable in his “immaterial” qualities. Thus, the presence of a person in the world did not change anything. If a person one day disappeared from the face of the earth, the world would continue to exist as if nothing had happened. In fact, classical natural science did not seek to understand man. The implication was that the natural world, in which there is nothing “human,” could be described objectively, and such a description would be an exact copy of reality. Considering a person as one of the cogs of a well-oiled machine automatically eliminated him from this picture of the world.

Based on the mechanical picture of the world in the 18th - early 19th centuries. terrestrial, celestial and molecular mechanics were developed. Technology was developing at a rapid pace. This led to the absolutization of the mechanical picture of the world, and it began to be considered universal.

The development of the mechanical picture of the world was mainly due to the development of mechanics. The success of Newtonian mechanics greatly contributed to the absolutization of Newtonian concepts, which was expressed in attempts to reduce the entire diversity of natural phenomena to the mechanical form of the movement of matter. This point of view is called “mechanistic materialism” (mechanism). However, the development of physics has shown the inconsistency of such a methodology. This became clear during futile attempts to describe thermal, electrical and magnetic phenomena(movement of atoms and molecules). As a result, in the 19th century. a crisis occurred in physics, which indicated that physics needed a significant change in its views on the world.

When assessing the mechanical picture of the world as one of the stages in the development of the physical picture of the world, it is necessary to keep in mind that with the development of science, the main provisions of the mechanical picture of the world were not simply discarded. The development of science has only revealed the relative nature of the mechanical picture of the world. It was not the mechanical picture of the world itself that turned out to be untenable, but its original philosophical idea - mechanism. In the depths of the mechanical picture of the world, elements of a new - continual (electromagnetic) picture of the world began to take shape.