System Approach for Cosmology: a Version of a High-Potential Philosophical Research
System Approach for Cosmology: a Version of a High-Potential Philosophical Research

Summary/Abstract: The author invokes issues (integrity of the Universe, epistemological status of its nature, system approach specifics) prompting to discuss once again the nature of the system approach in cosmology. For this purpose, he reviews the genesis of the system approach. The author considers Plato’s representations concerning synthesis of many knowledge and introduction of the concept “system” in Condillac’s and Kant’s works. The opposition identified by them — a system is an organized scientific knowledge and a system as an object of this knowledge — may be found later in many system concepts. However George Shchedrovitsky additionally claims and shows that a system approach has to be specific to the developed subject domain. Therefore, in particular, when creating a system approach for a methodology, he interprets it as a section of methodology, and builds the latter upon this approach. Besides, Shchedrovitsky maintains that activity which was a subject matter in methodology acts as an intermediary between the methodology and the “system language”. The author assumes that there is good reason for creating intermediaries in all similar cases. Agreeing with the division of the history of cosmology into two stages: “prescientific” (mythological and philosophical) and scientific proper, the author suggests calling them “protocosmology” and cosmology proper, claiming that in the first case the whole — Space, Universe — were set by means of mythological or philosophical schemes. The author explains his understanding of the concept of “scheme” and particularities of mythological and philosophical schemes of the Universe. Unlike with protocosmology, in cosmological doctrines Universe models are created on the basis of natural science schemes. But outside natural sciences — in philosophy and human sciences — philosophical schemes still contest these models. Proceeding from Vadim Kazyutinsky’s works, the author asserts that in terms of key parameters Cosmology has to be referred to a humanitarian scientific discipline, and its object cannot be described within one scientific discipline; that “the cosmological reality” is a multi-level one, and each level is characterised by its own patterns which shall be described by different cosmological theories. Based on the above considerations, the author concludes that the system approach has to differ significantly from classical and synergetic approaches.

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