The times we live in require that
fundamental changes be made in sociological knowledge. The
launching of the first Soviet sputnik ushered in an era of social
transitivity, which has gradually extended to the subjective
direction of sociological knowledge.
Until today sociology has undergone several
stages in its focus of cognitive interest. Beginning with the study
of the nature of society, it has gone on to the latter's historical
characteristics, and, through empirical sociology, has turned to
description of the present, the concrete "here" and
"now".
Tendencies to focusing on future
perspectives also arose. Thus, the general theory of society has
begun to turn into social futurology. All components in the latter
assume the aspect of transformed past situations.
In the present day, society demands
knowledge mostly about the future situation of humankind; society
requires and necessarily asserts certain prospections.
Insights into the future of society,
insofar as they are, or strive to be, scientific prospection,
should serve as guiding principles in the study of the present as
well.
The extension of social praxis to outer
space requires a transition towards purposeful self-adaptation.
Thus, cultural science, as a theoretical paradigm of creative
transformation, gradually turns into anthropology.
Man's adaption needs require that
anthropology encompasses biology as well (for anthropology becomes
not only social, but biological…).
The depths
of animal adaptive
experience contain in
potential form nearly
the whole capacity
of the human
species to survive,
at least for a
certain time, in
the cosmic macro
and micro
world.
As human
knowledge encounters these
spheres, it is
obliged to view
itself and society
beyond the confines
of the usual
world view.
Until now, the
anthropocentric approach did
not permit thinking
about what lies
beyond society and
human thought, and
it was unable to do so even in arbitrary
imagination.
Today,
knowledge must free
itself of the
paradigm of
"Man as the
measure of all
things" and,
uniting the cognitive
potential of past
and present
humanity, must
focus on what
lies beyond the
human, and even
beyond the existent
in general…
In other words, cognition must overcome the
primeval, organic focus on the ego and seek a new paradigm of
knowledge…
But what might this paradigm
be?!