Publication Details

Abstract

The author points out in his paper that in comtemporary times great demands are claimed for the approach of science to social practice. He himself, when investigating this relation, starts from Marx's ideas on science that is successfully applied in the practice of production, developed by Marx when he studied the industrial revolution of the late 18Lh and the early 19‘h centuries and which we can come across for the first time in his manuscripts from the years 1857—1858. Science itself is transformed into a force of production namely in two ways. On the one hand it is materialized in various means of labour and instruments of production (in this case we can speak of a relative stagnation of materialized science), on the other hand it becomes a component of the consciousness of the producers, who are activized in material production Of course, the man in the process of production fulfills logical, controlling-managing, technological, energetical and transport functions, while in the development of science just the intellectual human functions come forward. Actually, this was how not only the producer's hand was liberated in the genesis of production, but gradually also the human intellect has been liberated from solving some tasks. As far as the logical function is concerned, it asserts itself from the process of building up a certain model about the possible course of the process of production, through the generalization of experiences verified and rectified by practice, to a choice of new decisions. Not all sciences can be spoken of as changing to the same extent into a social force of production. This feature can be met mostly in applied sciences — they find out and point out the ways of practical usage of the results of theoretical sciences, in practice —and in technical sciences; these discover and construct appropriate constructions and mechanisms, elaborate technological ways of those processes of production that are bound with the use of theoretical sciences, that investigate and recognize the laws of objects and processes of differentiated spheres of reality and that, in contrast to applied sciences, do not bring any momentary practical effect. This research covers the actual and technical needs of production. But it is especially in the development that new scientific knowledge is directly bound with technology and technology again with production. Still, it is necessary to say that a lot of the characteristics mentioned do not concern the natural sciences only, but also the social sciences, even though the relation here between the theoretical and applied research is differentiated in dependence upon the character of the social sciences themselves. At the same time it is political economy and its applied branches that are most closely bound with production. Of course, the majority of social sciences are only intermediately changed into a force of production.