The movement towards the establishment of scientific facts is in many ways a subconscious process, but even in its conscious component it is obvious: the perception of the surrounding reality, phenomena, processes and objects occurs exclusively through existing knowledge and experience.
Man is not a program. A person does not have memory and a processor in the form in which the corresponding knowledge exists. A person operates solely with his own knowledge and experience, which for the most part he is not aware of, but uses: new knowledge or existing knowledge is not essential, it is important that all of them are one system.
Simple formal model: computer
Why scientific knowledge is a system has been known since time immemorial. Perhaps ancient thinkers did not attach particular importance to this, but the works and other traces of their activity indicate that they assigned a crucial role to the systematization of ideas about reality and a close analysis of phenomena, processes, objects.
Programming and computers have appeared recently, but you cannot give them the palm in the questions of knowledge and systematization of information. Science itself is a system of systems. Every object - a system, in any case, to the extent to which imagination and the level of knowledge of reality have come - these are the features of scientific knowledge that are probably known from the time of Pythagoras, and most likely, much earlier.
It is very important that computers have given man the perfect tool for cognition. It doesn’t matter that while this tool is just a toy in inept hands, the number of scientists and specialists clearly representing the situation is growing and new knowledge gives them the opportunity to consider information technology in general (programming in particular) as a mirror of intelligence.
Complex system - man
It cannot be said that man is the best system of systems of all existing, it is the same as all other natural formations. Nature has no chosen ones and nothing and no one can separate from it. A person can dream for an arbitrarily long time and think of everything he wants about himself, but scientific is knowledge of the real laws of the universe, knowledge of the objective laws of systems, and not dreams and fantastic ideas.
Man has always considered all areas of scientific knowledge as a source of his imagination and a way to extract something useful. In this context, dreams and fiction often took on reality, and sometimes directed the process of cognition into the desired direction, but always only the direction that was objective and justified was obtained.
Probably, intuition and something subconscious, acting together and systematically, do not allow a person to go beyond the limits of what is permissible.
- Icarus did not reach the Sun, but gave an idea and people began to fly, although in a completely different way.
- Judging by the friendly opinion of historians, the apple still fell on Newton, but the bump on his forehead is not the laws of gravity that he invented. It is very doubtful that it was at that time that this man understood something new. Why is scientific knowledge a system? Is it because it comes in the understanding of the author and those who are ready to hear his ideas and accept them?
- The predictions of Nostradamus are not science at all, but can objectivity in planetary motion be denied? Astrology is not a myth. Myths do not live for so long, and if they live, then they do not develop like that. Scientific knowledge can continue to deny astrology for the time being, but nothing prevents scientific knowledge from using the development of knowledge in astrology.
Man is the same system as everyone else from a “technological” point of view, but unlike other, especially living systems, man is able to think, perceive and act on the basis of consciously made decisions. The fundamental part of the unconscious component in this decision-making is new knowledge that has not yet been known.
Objects and Systems
Every object is a system to the limit reached by scientific knowledge and intuition. You can even say that systematized knowledge is that foundation over which it hovers in the clouds and goes into uncharted intuition.
A system can always be represented as an object. This is convenient when you need to work at a specific level. Analyzing the operation of airports in order to optimize the schedule, passenger comfort, and the economic component, it is not at all necessary to consider aircraft as systems. In this context, an airplane is an object, such as a cafe in the lobby, a lounge, a dispatcher with its monitors and other airport infrastructure.
If you work at the level of an airplane, it is a system in which other subsystems are interconnected into a single whole, but in the context of an airplane they represent complete, fully functional objects: fuselage, wings, engines, tail.
The question of why scientific knowledge is a system, meanwhile, should be asked in each case. Yes, a lot is obvious. Airport, airplane, engine, fuel, flight - all these are both systems and objects.
It can probably be argued that an ideal system is a system of systems. However, this is a controversial statement. Surely we can say: there is always an object that has a certain functionality, which is interconnected with everything that surrounds it.
Scientific knowledge
There are many definitions of scientific knowledge, from which it follows that there is no one universally recognized. It is commonly claimed that scientific knowledge:
- system of knowledge about the laws of nature, society, thinking;
- the basis of the scientific picture of the world;
- reflection of the laws of the development of the world;
- It is built and organized according to certain laws;
- systematization and validity (distinctive qualities);
- the result of the reflection of material and ideal reality in human consciousness.
In this context, the question of why scientific knowledge is a system is not so difficult to answer. A large number of scientists agree on one thing, but express it in their own way. So we are dealing with a system. Knowledge is a system that is interconnected with others, just like airports with airplanes and passengers, and airplanes with wings and fuel that operate through engines.
Intelligence Stages
Man came to understanding how knowledge is formed and how it becomes a system a long time ago, but the last known approach developed in the 80s of the last century, although time here does not have much significance.
According to many scientists, intelligence develops through three stages to the fourth:
- Situational.
- Reproducing.
- Contextual.
- Transformational.
The first stage of intelligence is the accumulation of primary knowledge. The behavior of a person cannot be understood outside the situation in which he is. This is the level of the child at the initial stage of his development.
The reproduction of knowledge is the beginning of generalization, the beginning of the formation of the relationship between what is already and the incoming information.
The contextual stage is the solution of problems, that is, the application and improvement of knowledge. The system of a particular person allows him to become himself, to learn how to manage the acquired knowledge and to be guided in the incoming.
Transformational intelligence
The highest stage in the development of intelligence is the ability to apply knowledge in situations where there is no “ready-made solution template”. This is from the series when a UFO flew up and asked how to get to the nearest cafe. Or the classic formulation of the task of cybernetics, who in the last century believed that artificial intelligence could be created before 2000: what will an intelligent robot do when its oil dries in the desert, for example, only in its right knee?
The essence of knowledge is, first of all, in knowledge itself. This system or object is not the essence of how to name it and what is meant by it, it is important that all knowledge is active, it is based on information and develops in the direction and in the way that knowledge itself defines.