Publication Details

Abstract

The paper is the first part of a more comprehensive work which will be published in the journal successively. In the introductory part the substance of differentiational and integrative processes in science, their internal connection and interaction are viewed. Attention is paid to the general typology of synthetic processes in natural sciences, developed by В. M. Kedrov and possibilities of its application to the sphere of social sciences are studied. The main stress in the paper is laid on the analysis of the principle of reduction and its relation to integrative processes. The questions of reductionism require the analysis of three aspects of reduction: ontological, gnoseological and methodological. Only ontological aspect is inquired into in three variants in this part: a) the alternative of absolute reductionism, b) the alternative excluding any reduction, c) the alternative of limited reduction. The three basic theses of materialist dialectics: a) the thesis on material unity of the world, b) on forms of motion of matter and c) on the possibility of knowing the world, are considered by the author as the starting point of adequate interpretation and application of the idea of reduction.