UDC: 101.16
https://doi.org/10.25198/2077-7175-2025-5-87


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STRUCTURALIST CONCEPTION OF THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE

N. V. Bryanik
Ural Federal University named after the First President of Russia B. N. Yeltsin, Yekaterinburg, Russia
e-mail: n.v.brianik@urfu.ru

Abstract. Since the 60-70s of the twentieth century in the philosophy of science there has been an active search for new approaches to understanding the nature of science, since the claim of logical positivism (as the dominant current in this area of philosophy) to create a real image of science has not justified itself. Appeal to the history of science is seen as the most promising direction in modern science research – the philosophy of science becomes the history of science. The aim of the article is to substantiate the existence in structuralism of an original concept of the history of science, in which the structural method of studying statics/synchrony in the development of science is complemented by the historical analysis of dynamics, including situations of discontinuity/mutations. In order to reveal this concept, it is necessary to overcome the prejudice that even specialists have about anti-historicism/ non-historicism of structuralism. The article substantiates the idea of the organicity of the principle of historicism to structuralism, which is concretised by involving the material on the use and evaluation of the historical method in the studies of F. de Saussure (linguistics), V. Propp (folkloristics), M. Foucault (living and human sciences). Structuralist methodology includes two stages. At the first stage, the object under study is considered in its internal relations and interrelations and its regularities are revealed with the abstraction of the temporal parameter. What is revealed is essentially the internal form of the object, which gave rise to accusations of formalism in structuralism; whereas structuralists present this aspect as statics, synchronicity. The second stage is historical analysis, which takes into account the temporal sequence, dynamics, diachronic aspect. But unlike other historical-scientific concepts, the dynamics of the studied object does not appear as a linear and sequential change of states in time, but as situations of discontinuity, as mutations separating one layer of synchrony from another. Therefore, the historian of science is likened to a geologist (V. Propp) or an archaeologist (M. Foucault) excavating geological or cultural strata. The significance of such a concept of the history of science is that it allows us to address such areas of knowledge, which were clearly underestimated in the positivist tradition of the philosophy of science – the humanities and the sciences of living things, and to raise them to the theoretical level of research.

The main methods of the research were: comparative analysis to find out the similarity of structuralist attitudes of domestic and foreign scientists and at different stages of this trend, as well as common features of structuralism in different areas of humanitarian knowledge; on the basis of the logical method the sequence of structural and historical analysis was identified and justified; the critical approach allowed us to overcome the established assessment of non-historicity and formalism of structuralism.

The novelty of the findings lies in the identification of the possibilities of structuralist interpretation of the history of science (and not only of the humanities), which is particularly important in the context of the priority focus of modern philosophy of science on the history of science.

Key words: structuralism, history of science, structural method, historical method, synchronicity/diachrony, V. Propp, F. de Saussure, M. Foucault.

Cite as: Bryanik, N. V. (2025) [Structuralist conception of the history of science]. Intellekt. Innovacii. Investicii [Intellect. Innovations. Investments]. Vol. 5, pp. 87–95. – https://doi.org/10.25198/2077-7175-2025-5-87.


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