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Naira Danielyan - PhD, Associate Professor
Moscow, Russia

Transformation of Scientific Rationality Conception
from the Position of Transition Process from «Information Society» to «Knowledge Society»

With the introduction of «information society» conception as the definition of the new social order at the second half of the ХХ^th century social structures are concerned not about the material production, but in the first place about producing, storing, recycling and realizing the information. Using computer systems and the Internet as reliable sources of information, the society provides a high level of automation for processing the information in production and social spheres. Information becomes the most important product of human activity in comparison with all others for the mankind in the XXI^st century. It becomes the global premise of education for all social groups.

Thus, there are changes not only in the production field and its purpose, but mankind’s lifestyle. Forms of communication gain new features. There appears a new system of values in comparison with material ones.

The most important changes are taking place in the field of education. This process doesn’t depend on traditions and educational systems of different countries. Prevalence of activity forms which are based on mastering, using and transferring information has led to the necessity to form «a learning society». All its members continue learning all their lives and they have to renew documents concerning their education regularly. Their education which was for life earlier is going out of date for a decade now. It requires new models of knowledge itself. The diploma is to be considered like «a social qualification» which has its period of validity.

An essential distinction of «knowledge society» forming nowadays is changing the type of thinking and the role of formal information or «human knowledge» in it. Pedagogues, organizers of the education process, psychologists and philosophers working in the education sphere don’t always realize this distinction clearly.

Russian community being in the situation of «phase delay» and introducing all ideals and principles of «information society» persistently bases its educational system on principles of maximal formalization, development of technologies and programming products, presentation of information in modules, estimation of students’ knowledge in competences. Many qualitative and substantive disciplines like literature, ethics, aesthetics and others are excluded from school and high school programs or represented in schemes, tables, etc. Conceptual definitions are being changed significantly in all humanitarian and social disciplines because of introduction of «technical» terminology. For example, philosophical and psychological articles widely use such terms as «artificial intelligence», «artificial life», «technology», «standardizing technology», «assembly of the reality», «assembly of the epistemological subject», «educational space» and a lot of other computer and information technology terms.

However, the situation will change in «knowledge society» in essence. «Living knowledge» will shift the instrumental intelligence. It’s not impersonal and formal information, but an individual’s definite knowledge. It’s a practical and non-systematized everyday knowledge or a skill realized in a daily routine. It often exists in the form of «implicit knowledge», «inexplicable intellect». There are tasks to study nature and properties of «living knowledge» today. People begin to understand education as a self-training process on the basis of cooperation and communication. Subjectivity as «investing in your personality» is becoming a positive characteristic of knowledge productivity. The most important principle of education is everyday and lifelong reproduction of a personality as a professional in different spheres of life activity. There appear terms with prefix «self-» in articles concerning education in «knowledge society», for example, self-creation, self-enterprise and even self-exploitation.

We can assume that forming a new rationality is taking place. This process includes sciences and means that highly developed information technologies will involve «living everyday knowledge», ethics, aesthetics, humanitarian values in general, definite people’s creative potential, imagination and emotions with their non-formal knowledge. Scientific rationality in the new educational paradigm has to be understood in context of transition from «information society» to «knowledge society» as a dynamic system consisting of elements and subsystems possessing some autonomy of human cognition as scientific rationality models. Both the whole system of scientific rationality and its subsystems being considered as models are changeable, dynamic and adaptable to any radical changes of forms and dynamics of the scientific knowledge development.  These are the characteristics that can connect scientific rationality models with changes in science and its methodological conceptions.