Apie mokslo pažangos ekonomines ir etines kliūtis bei ribas
LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Moklsinio tyrimo etika; Mokslinio progreso kliūtys; Mokslinio tyrimo ekonomika; Mokslinio tyrimo laisvė; Mokslo ekonomika; Mokslo pažangos kliūtys; Nicholas Rescher; Nicolas Rescheris; Tyrimo etika; Tyrimo laisvė; Economy of research; Freedom of research; Nicholas Rescher; Research ethics; Retardants of scientific progress.
ENThree main forecasts of the future of scientific progress are (1) objectivistic limitism (the progress will end because the finite nature will be exhausted by science), (2) subjectivistic limitism (the progress will end because human cognitive capacities are limited), and (3) infinitism (the progress will go indefinitely). There are different versions of infinitism: the progress will be (a) steady; (b) accelerate; (c) slow down. The paper provides a critical discussion of the forecast of unlimited scientific progress that, however, will be logarithmically retarded by economic causes defended by American philosopher Nicholas Rescher. While not disputing Rescher’s forecast of the deceleration, the author proposes the following corrections to his analysis: (1) Rescher’s assumption of zero growth of research inputs is unfounded. Instead, one should assume exponential growth of inputs equal or slightly behind the growth of GDP; (2) The effects of economy of human inputs produced by the increasing global academic mobility and concentration of the best human resources in a small number of centers of academic excellence should be taken into consideration; (3) given new communication technologies (Internet), the radical revolution in the present intellectual property right regime could expand the supply of human resources for science through a more efficient use of the academic potential of less developed countries. The paper supplements N. Rescher’s analysis of the economic retardants of scientific progress with a discussion of its ethical obstacles. In the near future, the increasingly severe ethical restrictions on the freedom of research promoted by the movement of animal liberation and moral conservatives will have more severe retarding effect on scientific progress in the life sciences and the sciences about complexity in general than economic causes.While economic retardants are critical for the scientific progress in the research of fundamental physical laws, ethical obstacles are more important than economic ones for the progress in the research of the complex outcomes of those laws in the life and human worlds. [From the publication]
