“Is the truth possible in humanities?”. Papers of the “round table”. Part 2

Abstract

The publication provides the full papers of the “round table” discussion that was organized by the journal “Philosophy of science and technology” in March 2017 at the RAS Institute of Philosophy. The participant are some of the leading Russian researchers in the field of epistemology and philosophy of science: V.A. Lektorsky, I.T. Kassavin, A.L. Nikiforov, N.S. Avtonomova, N.M. Smirnova, V.P. Filatov, G.D. Levin, E.L. Chertkova, A.V. Rodin, S.V. Pirozhkova, E.O. Trufanova. The following questions are discussed: is there a principle difference between natural scientific knowledge and knowledge in humanities, is there a difference between humanities and social sciences and between humanities and human sciences? Do the humanities gain knowledge about the reality or they just construct it? Do experiments in humanities and humanitarian technologies exist? What is the correspondence between knowledge in humanities and social-cultural mythologies and can we separate them from one another? During the discussion different answers to these questions are provided.