Scientific School

Scientific school (school of scientific traditions) is an established system of scientific views, as well as a scientific community adhering to these views. The formation of a scientific school occurs under the influence of a leader, whose erudition, range of interests, and working style are decisive for attracting new collaborators. Relationships within such a scientific team facilitate the exchange of information at the level of ideas (rather than final research results), which significantly increases the efficiency of creative scientific work.[1]

Views within a school can vary, creating preconditions for the emergence of factions and schisms, leading to the formation and development of new scientific schools. Scientific schools are formed within departments, institutes, countries, and associations of scientists at any level.

Concept

The Dokuchaev school of soil science

The term scientific school is used in two cases:

  • Common views, ideas, and interests unite scientists and lead to close cooperation. This attracts new young talents and determines the paths and pace of development of new scientific fields for many years. The birth of such a school is associated with a fortunate confluence of circumstances and requires external support.
  • A small scientific team, organizationally united by a specific topic, a common system of views, interests, and traditions, which are preserved and developed through changes in scientific generations.

Signs of a scientific school:

  • Commonality of scientific interests and significance of the research
  • High level of scientific results and recognition of the school
  • Continuity, the defining role of the leader, and good prospects for the school

In the theory of science, the following concepts are distinguished:

History

At the stage of protoscience, the schools that existed at that time could act as independent centers or institutes. Later, scientific schools came to be understood as real informal collectives of scientists.

In antiquity, schools of arts and philosophical thought arose, such as the Aristotelian Peripatetics.[2]

In the Middle Ages, the printing press created an important technical prerequisite for the emergence of schools of thought spanning several geographical centers. This facilitated the process of learning and disseminating the ideas of different schools. Each of them acquired a propaganda tool - periodically published collections, journals, bulletins, and other scientific periodicals. Its own printed organ is a significant feature of a school of scientific thought. It is reflected in the history of science and facilitates the search for scientific results of its activities.

Michael Polanyi is considered one of the founders of Western sociology of knowledge, having explored the problems of scientific traditions, scientific schools, and issues of intrascientific communication.[3]

Modern scientific schools are often universities. Their structural units, departments, are analogues of creative workshops, and the scientists heading them (usually professors) are the masters themselves, the "first persons" of the schools, who often subsequently lend their famous names to them. No less significant in scientific terms, schools arise in different countries around academic research centers and research institutes.

Distinguished two meanings:[4]

  1. a hierarchical and self-reproducing scientific community that has made a major contribution to world science;
  2. a community occupying a certain niche in national science, reproducing itself in new generations of specialists, and distinguished by a certain methodology.

According to biochemist Garry Abelev, if in the mid-20th century a clear division of scientists into schools was visible, this rather referred to the pre-paradigm period, whereas now, when paradigms have been established,[5]

There are fewer and fewer schools because all our knowledge is becoming more structured. Schools perhaps remain as organizational associations - laboratories, departments where, due to low staff turnover, stable groups of employees are maintained for many years. They develop a certain similarity in views, in criteria, and this, in my opinion, is more like schools. But in general, in my opinion, in immunology and virology, schools are blurring, dissolving in the general structure of knowledge of a given field.

Characteristics

A school implies the presence of a scientific leader (a teacher or an idea, after his death) and followers (students).[6]

Several scientific schools can simultaneously solve the same scientific tasks, yet differ in their theoretical foundations (principles) and practical approaches to solving them, programs, methods, and tools. This explains the diversity of results achieved by scientists from different schools.

Scientific schools become centers of the most intensive concentration of creative energy, most actively influencing scientific progress.[7]

Schools are a symptom of the immaturity of a science. With the establishment of a paradigm and the transition to "normal" science, schools leave the stage. A commonality of theoretical and methodological positions of all representatives of a given science is established.[8]

A scientific school is characterized by common

  • Scientific language (accepted original scientific terms and definitions)
  • System of views
  • Research methods
  • Scientific values.

A scientific school strives to propagate its scientific tradition and its results. Its self-identification and distinctiveness are achieved by defining the boundaries of research.

Stages through which scientific schools pass:

  • A research program unites scientists.
  • The research team turns into a school.
  • The emergence of a new scientific direction, section, or discipline.
  • A scientific-educational school for new generations of scientists.
  • The emergence of new schools from previous ones.
  • Competition between schools in developed sciences.
  • Exhaustion of the research program. Fading and disintegration of the school.

The issue of the life cycles of scientific schools is the least developed in the scientific literature. Sometimes they cease to exist simply due to lack of funding. However, when determining leading schools, their life cycle is often not taken into account, so often renowned but stagnant schools receive support, rather than emerging and highly promising scientific schools.[9]

The degeneration of scientific schools (their decline) occurs in two main forms: bureaucratization and commercialization. Both of these forms are associated with the modernization and modification of existing results, and boil down to project management instead of scientific search, which kills creativity, and consequently the scientific school itself.[10]

Certificate of a Leading Scientific School of the Russian Federation

.

Types

Main types of scientific schools:

  • Scientific direction
  • Research (scientific incubator)
  • Scientific-educational
  • Scientific-industrial

Official status

Since 1995 to the present, in Russia, the status of "Leading Scientific School of the Russian Federation"[11][12] is awarded to scientific teams (which have gained fame for their high level of research in a recognized and sufficiently broad scientific direction, stability of traditions, continuity of generations in the training of highly qualified scientific personnel) based on the results of a competitive selection by the Council for Grants of the President of the Russian Federation and the Russian Ministry of Education and Science.

In some countries, for example, Finland and Norway, a close analogue is the status of Center of Excellence (CoE).

See also

References

  1. ^ Leading Scientific Schools of Russia: A Reference Guide. Moscow: Yanus-K, 1998. 624 p.
  2. ^ From the names of both the premises (gymnasium) and the temple of Apollo Lyceus (Lyceum, Λύκειον) located at a distance, the names of individual types of educational institutions were subsequently formed.
  3. ^ Polanyi M. The Tacit Dimension. New York: Doubleday and Co., 1966. 108 p.
  4. ^ Sociology on Trial of History Archived 2014-10-18 at the Wayback Machine Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 1995, vol. 65, No. 1, pp. 52-64.
  5. ^ "Autobiographical Essay". garriabelev.narod.ru. Archived from the original on 2022-01-29. Retrieved 2022-01-29.
  6. ^ "SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL is". National Philosophical Encyclopedia (in Russian). Archived from the original on 2022-01-29. Retrieved 2022-01-29.
  7. ^ Yaroshevsky M. G. The Logic of the Development of Science and the Scientific School // Schools in Science. Moscow: Nauka, 1977. P. 7-97.
  8. ^ T. Kuhn. (1977). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. M.: Progress. p. 304. Archived from the original on 2019-03-05.
  9. ^ Pavelyeva T. Yu. Scientific Schools in the System of Science: A Philosophical Analysis. Dissertation of Doctor of Philosophical Sciences. Moscow, 2012.
  10. ^ Ustyuzhanina E. V., Evsyukov S. G., Petrov A. G. et al. Conclusion // Scientific School as a Structural Unit of Scientific Activity. Moscow: CEMI RAS, 2011. P. 72-73.
  11. ^ Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation of September 26, 1995 N 957 On State Support of Leading Scientific Schools of the Russian Federation
  12. ^ Newspaper "Poisk" No. 28 (374) July 6–12, 1996

Literature

  • Polanyi M. Personal Knowledge. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1962 (First published 1958)
  • Polanyi M. The Tacit Dimension. New York: Doubleday & Company, inc. Garden city, 1966. 108 p.
  • Gruzevich D. Yu. Scientific School as a Form of Activity // Questions of the History of Natural Science and Technology. 2003. No. 1. P. 64–93.
  • Rapatsevich E. S. Pedagogy // Large Modern Encyclopedia. Minsk: Sovremennoe Slovo, 2005. P. 667–668.
  • Onoprienko V. I. Scientific School as a Sociological Phenomenon // Bulletin of the National Aviation University. Philosophy. Culturology. 2009. Issue 2. P. 33–37.
  • Onoprienko V. I. Scientific Schools: Science Studies Context // Science and Science of Science. 2009. No. 4. P. 123–126.
  • Onoprienko V. I. Scientific Schools: Problems of Traditions and Innovations // Almanac of Theory and History of Historical Science. Issue 4. Kyiv: IIU. NASU, 2009. P. 138–152.
  • Krivotruchenko V. K. Scientific Schools // Znanie. Ponimanie. Umenie|Knowledge. Understanding. Skill. 2011. No. 2 (March — April).
  • Ustyuzhanina E. V., Evsyukov S. G., Petrov A. G. et al. Scientific School as a Structural Unit of Scientific Activity. Moscow: Central Economics and Mathematics Institute RAS, 2011. 73 p.
  • Schools in Science. Moscow: Nauka, 1977. 523 p. (Science of Science: Problems and Research)
  • Vtorov I. P. Dokuchaev school of soil science: Origins and Development // 21st Annual Conference of the IIET RAS. Vol. 2. Moscow: LENAND, 2015. P. 241–245.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Scientific schools.
  • Kupershtokh N. A. Scientific Schools of Russia and Siberia: Problems of Study. Scientific Schools in the Siberian Branch of the RAS.
  • Bibliography on Problems of Scientific Schools. Novosibirsk Scientific Center.
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