This chapter is devoted to the study of the scientific picture of the physical world as a part of objective mental reality. The author demonstrates that scientific knowledge, notions, entities, facts, hypotheses, theories, and even the laws of nature are not so much discovered as constructed in human consciousness through language, thinking, and collective experience. Notions such as mass, energy, or force are represented through concepts. In other words, they are stable verbal constructions that are designated by words. These are created within the scientific community, undergo verification, become legitimized, and are then integrated into the structure of objective mental reality as elements of the shared understanding of the world. The author stresses that science is not a mirror of reality: it creates a cognitively and linguistically mediated representational system with the help of which people structure both sensually perceptible and hidden aspects of the world. Many scientific “objects” have no direct physical analogs, yet persist within the scientific worldview as the externalized mental constructions of their creators. Thus, scientific knowledge is not just a tool for description but also a means of shaping reality—one that is transmitted through culture and language. Science does not simply explain the physical world; it completes it, adding new elements, and imparting to it structure, meaning, and internal coherence.

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The Scientific Picture of the Physical World as a Part of Objective Mental Reality

  • Sergey Ernestovich Polyakov

摘要

This chapter is devoted to the study of the scientific picture of the physical world as a part of objective mental reality. The author demonstrates that scientific knowledge, notions, entities, facts, hypotheses, theories, and even the laws of nature are not so much discovered as constructed in human consciousness through language, thinking, and collective experience. Notions such as mass, energy, or force are represented through concepts. In other words, they are stable verbal constructions that are designated by words. These are created within the scientific community, undergo verification, become legitimized, and are then integrated into the structure of objective mental reality as elements of the shared understanding of the world. The author stresses that science is not a mirror of reality: it creates a cognitively and linguistically mediated representational system with the help of which people structure both sensually perceptible and hidden aspects of the world. Many scientific “objects” have no direct physical analogs, yet persist within the scientific worldview as the externalized mental constructions of their creators. Thus, scientific knowledge is not just a tool for description but also a means of shaping reality—one that is transmitted through culture and language. Science does not simply explain the physical world; it completes it, adding new elements, and imparting to it structure, meaning, and internal coherence.