Epistemology & Philosophy of Science

Volume 58, Issue 2, 2021

Cultural-Historical Epistemology and Individual Methodological Attitudes of a Scientist
(On the Autobiographical Narrative of A.A. Ukhtomsky)

In this article, the author proceeds from the conceptual reversal of cultural-historical epistemology to the personal, historical, and social experience of a representative of an intellectual culture (scientist, philosopher) and his understanding and rethinking of his methodological attitudes. The idea of the article is that cultural-historical epistemology makes it possible to present natural-scientific and philosophical individual reflection as a specific component of the development of special tools, which are capable of recording and assessing the methodological effectiveness of research activities taking into account individual cognitive experience. For this purpose, the author turns to the issue of an autobiographical narrative – a narrative containing the personal experience of working scientists rethinking their own methodological attitudes. The specific character of ego-documents, and moreover, ego-texts of a natural scientific kind in this case is corroborated by the ideas of cultural-histori - cal epistemology. A scientist is turned to Other, whether in himself or in the narrative. Here scientific methodology and autobiographical narrative are conceptually mixed. As the main material reveals the meaning of the above idea, ego-texts by A.A. Ukhtomsky (his notes in notebooks, correspondence, and memoirs) were selected. While comprehending the fate of domestic and foreign science and also perfectly imagining the further development of multiple “systems of knowledge”, Ukhtomsky still saw a living person – the Interlocutor – behind this process. The need to preserve this image in front of oneself, to preserve the Dominant on the face of Other, this internal orientation, are brought by Ukhtomsky to a conceptually higher level. In this case, the narrative is viewed as a type of reflection that allows one to explicate and give a personal assessment of the effectiveness of the methodological guidelines, based on which the scientist chooses certain areas of research.