Iracionalumas ir mokslinio pažinimo ribos

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Pažinimas; Iracionalumas; Mokslas; Religija; Misticizmas; Knowledge; Irrationality; Science; Religion; Mysticism.

ENThe authors of the collective monograph represent a variety of different specializations: philosophers, logicians, physicists, mathematicians, informologists, sociologists, psychologists, psychiatrists and journalists. They are all consolidated by the problem of the irrationality development in modern society. This development manifests in different forms and the most conspicuous is noticed in mass media. Nowadays newspapers, magazines, commercial TV channels pay special attention to different manifestations of occultism, magic, astrological prophesies and other kinds of mantic. Specialized magazines on occultism and magic are published, special bookshops are established, and schools of parapsychology are opened. Since the restoring of independence in Lithuania, different mystical movements like “New Age”, scientology, schools of transcendental meditation, etc., have been penetrating into the country. Mysticism has even started to influence political life of the country. This alarms politicians, scientists, pedagogues, psychologists, medical practitioners, sociologists and legal specialists. On the other hand, irrationalism is immanent to religious belief. The problem of rational and irrational cognition is questioned in philosophy, logic and psychology. Some elements of irrationality can be traced in modern management, information management and e-communication. Due to W. James, A. Maslow and other originators of humanistic psychology, mystical religious experiences have been estimated as positive ones. Transpersonal psychology has even consolidated rational cognitivism that looks like scientific ideology with irrational Eastern psychological philosophy. The problem of irrationality and rationality is analysed in non-linear mathematics and synergetic.According to J. F. Lyotard, the apologist of postmodernism, the old principle saying that acquiring knowledge is indispensable from the mind or even from the development of a personality’s will and fall into oblivion while convergence of irrationality and rationality becomes the distinctive feature of postmodern society. Consequently, the development of irrationality is impossible to evaluate just as a negative phenomenon. Even rather conservative philosophy has been trying to revisit the problems of order and chaos, complexity and simplicity, evolution and revolution, truth and falsehood. It is important to speculate the relation of irrationality and rationality in scientific cognition as well as in social processes and define the boundaries of scientific cognition. Only such revisiting of global processes of information society development holds forth a hope to create a knowledge society that is able to give meaning to information. However, such revisiting requires an extensive public discussion of the mentioned problems as well as tolerance. The outlined problems are discussed in the monograph. The monograph is aimed at rethinking the relation of rational and irrational in science and social processes taking into consideration the contexts of contemporary global informational processes and postmodern cognition. The central problem which is brought forward might be formulated questioning whether the rational alone determines the development of society and science; whether irrationality is just a subsidiary product of mental development; finally, what are rationality and irrationality, what rationality and irrationality are acceptable or at least tolerated by modern society. Although on the global scale the mentioned questions have not been properly researched, the variety of viewpoints is broad. Lithuanian literature on scientific and philosophical problems has attached little importance to these questions.However, it became evident that elements of irrationality might become the object of political debates or even influence the judgements of certain politicians. An unequivocal and qualified attitude to the so called ‘untraditional religious movements’ and ‘untraditional medicine’ has not been formulated yet. The absence of an unambiguous attitude depends upon different reasons, among which is the lack of competence. The cause of it is the informational void in the sphere of irrationality in post-communist countries. The most obvious manifestation of this might be seen in the mass media. Sensational information about real and assumed paranormal phenomena, as a rule, is presented incompetently, unilaterally and without critical analysis. However, it is difficult to imagine being otherwise because, as it was mentioned before, so far there has not been any scientific, philosophical analysis of these phenomena. Therefore, the second goal of the monograph is though partial but fulfilment of this informational void analysing the expression and spread of irrationality and its further research guidelines. Aiming at the analysis of irrationality, the authors have set the following tasks: a) to analyse the problem of relation of rationality and irrationality in philosophical, logical and psychological aspects; b) to investigate the deep surface (ontological and gnoseological) assumptions of confrontation between the rational and the irrational; c) to investigate the expression of irrationality in the contexts of postmodern social and economic processes; d) to highlight the essence of tolerance to irrationality problem and particular manifestations of tolerance or intolerance. [...]. [From the publication]