КЛАССИФИКАЦИЯ НАУК

Classification of Sciences

The interconnection of the sciences, their place in the system of knowledge determined by definite principles which reflect the properties of and the connection between the objects studied by different sciences. Epistemologically, the principles of classification of sciences can be objective, conforming to the nature of the subject-matter of the sciences, or subjective, depending on man's requirements.

In his Dialectics of Nature Engels elaborated the dialectical materialist principles of a classification of sciences. He developed a classification which removes the one-sidedness of earlier attempts at classifying the sciences (Saint-Simon and Comte, on the one hand, and Hegel, on the other). Engels understood the interconnection and transitions of the sciences as a reflection of the interconnections and transitions of the forms of motion of matter studied by the particular sciences. For the natural sciences Engels suggested the following series: mechanics—physics—chemistry—biology.

Further, the labour theory of anthropogenesis, elaborated by Engels, opens the transition from nature to man and, correspondingly, from the natural to the social sciences (history) and sciences of thought. Engels devoted his attention chiefly to transitions between the separate sciences (corresponding to the forms of motion), acting on the principle that the essence of a higher form of motion is revealed through cognition of its connection with the lower forms from which it historically arose and which it contains as subordinated ones.

The further development of the sciences proceeded so that their differentiation made for their increasing integration, their combination into a single whole through the appearance of intermediate sciences between the formerly disunited sciences and sciences of a more general nature. The technical sciences (including agricultural and medical) stand between the natural and social sciences; mathematics stands between the natural sciences and philosophy, with mathematical logic on the boundary between them. Psychology is linked with all the three spheres of knowledge (with nature, through zoopsychology and the theory of higher nervous activity; with society, through linguistics, pedagogy, social psychology, etc.; with thinking, through logic and the theory of knowledge).

Cybernetics holds a special place. First of all, it is part of the technical and mathematical sciences, and at the same time deeply penetrates other sciences as well; the natural sciences (biology and physiology) and the social sciences (linguistics, law, and economics) and logic, especially mathematical.

The contemporary development of science has introduced radical changes in Engels' original scheme of classification of sciences: an entirely new science of the microworld has emerged (subatomic physics—nuclear, quantum mechanics, etc.); intermediary sciences (biochemistry, biophysics, geochemistry, and others) have been formed; old sciences have divided (for example, into sciences which study the macro- and microworld). As a result the classification of sciences can no longer be uniserial but must be extremely detailed and ramified. The need has arisen for dividing the sciences into the more general, abstract, and the more particular which study the forms of motion having a specific material substratum (carrier).