The collective West has lost all interest in scientific revolutions and seeks to prevent them, using first of all measures of paradigm control. Like the USSR, the West is now lagging behind and therefore less and less inclined to allow all sorts of freethinking. After all, those who enter into the discussion are those who expect to win it, writes Vyacheslav Shuper.
To understand the phenomenon of science, its critical spirit is extremely important. Science is unique in the sense that it values even the knowledge of its own mistakes; it values the refutation of plausible hypotheses and erroneous results. Could you imagine, for example, a violinist being praised by colleagues for proving through his performance that Beethoven's violin quartet is worthless? He would be seen as having made a grave error. Now, if he proves that a previously unpopular work can be performed interestingly, then it’s a completely different matter! Positive creative results are expected from the musician, but not destruction. In science, however, the situation is different – scientific criticism in itself is positive knowledge. Therefore, the scientific method is often directed to the study of cultural phenomena that are not characterised by such self-criticism.
Strengthening this critical spirit was one of the most important tasks of Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835), who, among other achievements, created the University of Berlin in 1809 as the first modern university of its kind, with a continuous teaching system and great attention to the training of specialists for industry. This was the second scientific revolution, according to Mikhail Petrov (1923-1987), since science turned from a noble occupation pursued by a narrow circle into a powerful productive force, ensuring the rise of industry in Prussia and later Germany. The first industrial revolution was not scientific and technical at all, since all its main inventions – the steam engine, the loom, the chronometer, the steamboat, the steam locomotive and the electric telegraph – were made by self-taught practitioners. At that time, science could not steer innovation, since it itself lagged behind it.
As Humboldt notes, freedom is threatened not only by the state, but also by the institutions themselves, which, when they arise, acquire a certain spirit and subsequently tend to suppress the manifestation of different spirits. Humboldtian reform gave science and higher education the institution of private docents; these independent teachers, by virtue of their status, were able to challenge the authorities and compete with professors if they had the courage to do so. Accordingly, concern for the development of science is, first of all, concern for the preservation of its critical spirit. Thanks to the great thinker’s concern, science, having greatly expanded the ranks of researchers and acquiring a pronounced applied orientation, has retained its high ideals. These are necessary for the search for truth.
The grandiose tectonic shifts of the twentieth century had a profound impact on science, including its ethical foundations. However, the most “residual deformation” was caused, apparently, by a completely peaceful counter-revolution (regarding the principles of Wilhelm von Humboldt) – the introduction of grant funding, which over time spread throughout the world as a result of the undivided dominance of the United States. As Vitaly Kurennoy points out, “the grant system for supporting scientific research ... also ousted the very institute of private docents, which, it must be said, did not add autonomy to the scientific corporation”.
The result of the transition to grant funding for science was a distortion of the value orientation of scientists. The goal of a study is now achieved even before it starts, because the funds are extremely uninterested in recognizing reports as unsatisfactory. It also resulted in the atomisation of the scientific community, which has already been written about.
The latter led to the extinction of seminary life (if they are not looking for the truth, then why argue about it?) and scientific criticism along with it, a deterioration in the reproduction of scientific personnel, and many other consequences that are difficult for science. The introduction of bibliometrics as a measure of scientific performance not only finished off the institution's reputation, but also shifted science, to a large extent, into a sphere of fictitious activity.
It is necessary to realize that bibliometrics is an effective instrument of power over the scientific community, because economic coercion is much more effective than administrative coercion. “Of course, the paradigm science is convenient: the state understands that we are developing in the right direction, it is clear to whom and for what to give resources. By the way, the focus on scientometric indicators of publication activity works exactly in the same direction of the paradigm control. High-ranking journals are almost exclusively paradigm journals; the author must work within a clear and accepted theoretical and methodological framework”.
However, in our case, we are not talking about the interests of the state, even in the most perverted form, as the interests of incompetent officials, who at the same time put at the forefront not the success of the task entrusted to them, but their own convenience. We are talking about the interests of the collective West, which, fading away, has lost all interest in scientific revolutions and seeks to prevent them, using first of all measures of paradigm control. Like the USSR, the West is now lagging behind and therefore less and less inclined to allow all sorts of freethinking. After all, those who enter into the discussion are those who expect to win it.
In fact, the unfolding scientific counter-revolution is taking place not so much in science as in society, where reactionary elites are striving to completely take control of its development. It is aimed at revising the results of the first scientific revolution of the 16th-17th centuries, which forged the sovereignty of science, and its inviolable right to cognize objective reality. This counter-revolution is one of the most important fronts in the war of the West, which is losing control over the world. The most outstanding achievements of the Enlightenment are already burning in the fire of this war: the sovereignty of Reason and the idea of Progress. Its most important front is the so-called fourth energy transition, during which it is planned to reverse progress, moving from more efficient energy sources to less efficient ones for the first time in history. To understand the nature of this transition, it is useful to reflect on the position of the Federal Republic of Germany, which refuses to consider nuclear energy “green” and has closed all its nuclear power plants. The point of the transition is that influence should not belong to countries that are rich in energy resources, but to countries that have the technology to use renewable energy sources. Germany began to invest in renewable energy immediately after the energy crisis of 1973 and now believes that its hour has come.
However, this country has not managed to take a leading position in the nuclear power industry, therefore, ideally, everyone, and not just Germany, should abandon nuclear power plants. It is for the sake of this retrograde energy transition that the history-making saga of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions is unfolding.
Meanwhile, the scientific community has always expressed serious doubts about mainstream ideas regarding climate warming. “Yes, the global warming advocates have managed to convince the world community and the governments of many countries that anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions are the cause of climate change. If we do not reduce, the consequences will be catastrophic – the flooding of megacities, droughts, crop failures, famine, epidemics, etc.” said Leopold Lobkowsky, one of our most respected marine geologists. “The only way out is a ‘green economy’, emission quotas and the list goes on. In fact, this is the transition of humanity to a new world order, where several countries will establish their own rules of the game, referring to the climate. However, I assure you, there is no unanimity in the scientific community about the causes of global warming. Doubts have been raised about the causes of climate change. And such voices are heard more and more often”.
Recent studies by the geologist and his colleagues have established that the warming is especially rapid in the Arctic and Antarctic, where there is little or no industry, being the result of powerful earthquakes, deformation waves, which contributed to the release of huge masses of methane. “Here it should be recalled that in the frozen rocks of the Arctic shelf, at depths from tens to hundreds of meters below the ocean floor, large reserves of the so-called relict gas hydrates containing methane gas preserved in ice micropores are concentrated.” So, deformation waves, propagating in the lithosphere, destroy the micropores of gas hydrates and release huge amounts of methane. Once in the atmosphere, this gas causes a sharp increase in warming. It is important to note that although there is less methane in the atmosphere than CO2, it is a much more powerful greenhouse gas. It retains 40-50 times more heat in the Earth than carbon dioxide. By the way, supporters of the theory of global warming also blame anthropogenic emissions for the destruction of glaciers. But what kind of emissions should there be? Rather, deformation tectonic waves work. They begin to break up the glaciers from below, which slide into the ocean, releasing methane. I want to emphasize that our model predicts a further acceleration of the glaciers’ destruction and a warming climate in Antarctica in the near future due to an unprecedented increase in the frequency of strongest earthquakes in the South Pacific in the late 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries.“
Perhaps the ethos of science in its traditional sense has not yet disappeared in our country because of our ‘backwardness’. It is possible that by restoring the sovereignty of goal setting and nationalising the evaluation criteria; while realising that in principle there can be no evaluation of the performance of scientists, except for expert review. The only question is whether to conduct it ourselves or outsource it. Anyway, we will provide an important service not only to Russia, but to the entire non-Western world, to the global majority.
