The science. Social functions of science

Human activity to develop and systematize knowledge is called science, and can be considered only in the case of carefully checked and grounded knowledge.

This type of human activity is aimed at studying and comprehending various laws, including the law of being, which include the laws of thinking, society, nature. Science is a collection of disciplinary knowledge and a social institution.

Science begins with the study of facts, events, phenomena, their patterns, fixation of verifiable statements.

Science involves the process of obtaining an absolutely new knowledge of the subject (phenomenon, event), and the systematization of this knowledge. Also, science relies on a social institution and is a special sphere of culture that provides an interface with other forms of social consciousness.

The tasks of any science, including the functions of political science, include purposeful activities in the production of absolutely new, thoroughly tested and based knowledge. Knowledge obtained by scientific means differs from everyday (or unscientific forms of knowledge) precisely by the presence of specific methods, means and categories of knowledge.

Modern science, interacting with other areas of human life, performs certain functions. The social functions of science are as follows:

- cultural and philosophical social functions of science arose during the crisis of feudalism, and developed at the stage of the emergence of bourgeois relations, which later developed into capitalist ones. During this period of development of social relations, the function of science was revealed in the sphere of world outlook, in the arena of the struggle between science and theology.

- In the Middle Ages, social functions of science consisted in the formation of directly productive forces, when theology tried to win the place of supreme authority, and in the barely emerging science there were problems of "earthly", private, character.

- science as a social force is increasingly used to solve problems in various spheres of social development. For example, thanks to the discovery of Copernicus, science received the right to monopolize the formation of the worldview, challenging it from theology. This is one of the vivid examples of how the social functions of science through its penetration into the sphere of human activity, demonstrated the first signs of infusion into the social sphere.

The social functions of science are constantly changing, historically developing in accordance with the science itself. It is the development of social functions that represents one of the basic aspects of any science.

The subject "philosophy of science" is a fairly young discipline of philosophical knowledge, experiencing its rise at present due to the rapid development of scientific and technological progress.

The subject and functions of the philosophy of science are represented by different concepts. As a matter of philosophy, one can consider the general laws of human activity in the production of scientific knowledge. This process is studied in its continuous historical development. The philosophy of science denotes fundamental problems of a different nature: technical, natural, social and humanitarian, and also finds confirmation in philosophy.

For any science, the fact of regularity is important, since the revealed regularity makes it possible to predict and explain phenomena in different spheres of life. Any science inherent in continuity from everyday knowledge to science, from common sense to criticism or rational thinking, because scientific thinking can arise only on the basis of assumptions, built in accordance with common sense.