Ideas and Ideals

Abstract

The Academy of Sciences has been remaining the main scientific organization of the country since the date of its foundation by the decree of the Governing Senate in 1724. Over the past three centuries, it experienced many turning points. The article is devoted to the adaptation of the Academy of Sciences to the realities caused by the First World War, the February and October revolutions and the transformation of the political and public life of the country. This adaptation is related to the activities of the Commission for the Study of Natural Productive Forces which was established in 1915 for the purpose of a comprehensive study of the country's natural resources. In 1930, during the reorganization of the Academy of Sciences, the Commission was transformed to the Council for the Study of Productive Forces. At the time of its inception, the Council was divided into the thematic and territorial departments. The thematic department was engaged in the organization, management and planning of the research work on the study of productive forces in laboratories and institutes of the Academy of Sciences. The territorial department worked on the organization and conduct of scientific expeditions in various regions of the USSR. In the 1930s the Council was the main instrument for the adaptation of the Academy of Sciences to the demands of the government. The article is based on the documents of the Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the St. Petersburg branch of the Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Russian State Archive of the Economy as well as the materials presented in scientific periodicals.

The article is devoted to the content of the terms “philosophical urban studies”, “pedagogical urban studies”, “pedagogical Petersburg studies”, which are simultaneously the names of university academic disciplines. Philosophical urbanism claims to become a general theory of the city, generalizing the sections and directions of modern urbanistics, including aesthetic, economic, sociological urbanism. At the same time, it is proposed to understand pedagogical urbanism not only as a methodology that makes it possible to identify and use for educational purposes the results of studies of philosophical urbanism, but also as a way of organizing the urban environment, and as specific everyday practices that organize the behavior of citizens, and as an educational technique, that is as an opportunity to use the historical space of the city for educational and educational purposes, since the city landscape has an educational function, forming moral and aesthetic coordinates of a person’s value self-determination.

It is the identification of the educational opportunities of St. Petersburg that causes the greatest difficulties, since everyone is aware of its historical and cultural significance, which results in the attitude to our city primarily as a monument, and not as a space intended for life and work. The article presents the results of sociological and pedagogical studies, which show that the inhabitants of St. Petersburg perceive their city precisely as a space for life, and in these assessments they can abstract from its beauties and historical significance and focus on everyday life. This means that when studying the “cultural capital”, one cannot limit oneself only to aesthetic analysis (taking into account how important the identity of its inhabitants is to the modern city), but to take into account the specifics of St. Petersburg as a modern city in its entirety.

Moreover, modern studies in the field of urban studies show that the mythologization of cities and urban space today can be carried out not only on a cultural and historical basis; the reasons for mythologization are numerous: the presence of large-scale production; mention in literature and in cinema. Philosophical urbanism allows you to identify and summarize such features of the existence of the city that represent it as an integrated system, functioning according to its own rules and laws.

In recent years the reforms of the HAC system have been taking place. The main direction of these reforms is toughening of the requirements for dissertations, members of the dissertation council, organizations, where these councils are opened. Initially, the reason for the reform was a lot of abuse and the first stages of the reform were justified. However, at a certain stage of the reforms, positive feedback was launched. The existence of a dissertation board was made dependent on the number of dissertations defended. The reduction in defenses resulted in a reduction of the number of dissertation boards and vice versa. Technically more complex specialties suffered much more than the others since it was difficult to defend those dissertations even before the reform.

The author analyzes the materials of dissertation defense statistics and compares the indicators with the “pre-reform” period (2000 is taken as a reference year).

The article discusses the main stages of the reform in chronological order. So in 2011, the requirement to have 19 members of the board instead of 17 was introduced. Statistics show that in several years after the reform, the number of defenses for doctoral theses has decreased by almost three times, and the number of candidate theses has decreased by two times compared to the pre-reform years. Further, there appeared the requirement limiting a minimal number of publications in peer-reviewed journals for the applicants. Those who apply for the Candidate degree have to submit at least 3 publications in peer-reviewed journals, while applicants for the Doctor degree in social sciences and Humanities have to submit not less than 15 articles. But the most dramatic decline in the number of defenses resulted from the reforms of 2017, when the so-called “road map” came into being, imposing strict requirements on both the organizations opening the dissertation councils and members of the dissertation board themselves. So in 2017, the number of doctoral dissertations defenses is only 13% of the pre-reform number of defenses. Such a reduction in the long run can lead to the destruction of the system of reproduction of scientific personnel, especially the most significant scientific schools, which have adopted high criteria for evaluating scientific work.

The article considers ethical, ontological and cultural implications of time travel. The author analyzes paradoxes of such travelling as well as physical and philosophical possibilities of creating a time machine. The paper shows that the creation of a time machine, if implemented in practice, will entail rethinking of most ethical norms. The theory of relativity and quantum theory give the conceptual possibility of having different ways of transferring information and physical objects to the past. This article is devoted to the philosophical (ethical and ontological) and cultural studies of the prospects for travels in time, and the author makes an attempt to analyze the paradoxes which mankind will inevitably encounter in such travels. In 1949, the great mathematician and Einstein’s friend, Kurt Gödel, constructed the first mathematical models of the universe, in which a journey into the past, at least in theory, is possible. Within the framework of Einstein's general theory of relativity, Gödel found an exact cosmological solution to the Einstein field equations, which contains closed time-like curves, i.e. curves in space-time, which, in spite of the fact that they are closed, represent possible trajectories of objects. An object moving along such a trajectory would have gone back to its own past to the very moment in which it began its travel. The author comes to the conclusion, that theoretically time travel is valid. Humankind is trying to model the situations it will face if the time machine is ever built and to resolve the potential paradoxes of displacements in time.

The author considers productivity, possible consequences and the scope of the Gödel approach to the solution of the Einstein equation. The latter is a system of partial differential equations and the number of its solutions is very limited. There are literally several solutions for the simplest cases. Therefore, Gödel’s solution is a valuable one, as it is the solution to a very difficult problem. As a consequence of Gödel’s solution of the Einstein’s equation, the concept of cyclic time arises, which contradicts the European tradition of understanding time as a linear sequence. However, science hasn’t developed a satisfactory concept of time yet, and the one used in the theory of relativity is absolutization in the spirit of Newton. The thing is that Einstein, developing his theory of relativity, considered timepiece in space-time parameters as ideal, not real device. The assumption of a timepiece as a material device introduces a quantum uncertainty into the process of measuring time. If a timepiece is considered to be material, then it will be affected by gravitational fields, which will result in the readings change of the device. According to the uncertainty principle, the quantum system in the relativistic context will require the imposition of a measurability limit, which is in complete agreement with the requirements of quantum gravity. The idea of cyclic time may be consonant with the notion of space-time rotation in a multidimensional space. This idea was used by P. Dirac to describe the concept of spin by means of quaternions, which is equivalent to a double cyclic rotation in a multidimensional space. In addition, the cyclic time accords with the model of the cyclic universe, this approach was suggested for solving the problem of fine-tuning the parameters. The notion of cyclic time is considered to be unnatural and the possibility of its adoption in the socio-cultural context is rather vague, though the idea of cyclicity is close to Eastern Philosophy. Actually, the idea of cyclic time is reflected in the eastern calendars, therefore the issue of public awareness is a matter of changing the already established paradigm to another.

The author considers the problems of the opportunity to travel in time in the historical context and at the conceptual level. Though all living beings travel in time in a certain sense, this paper discusses the possibility of free movement in time in any direction. It is noted that in the Universe of Newton the time flowed uniformly and rectilinearly in one direction, which precluded the possibility of traveling through time. A special theory of relativity indicated the possibility of slowing down the time at speeds approaching the speed of light. At the same time, the body weight grows to infinity, the speed of light is unattainable. The fantasy sought some opportunities to overcome this light barrier, believing that in this case it is possible to get into the past, and considered emerging paradoxes. In a number of solutions of the equations of the general theory of relativity, certain time-like loops have been found for various models of the medium. Moving along such a closed curve, you can return from the trip earlier than go to it. Corridor in time form black holes, space strings, wormhole tunnels, etc., in which you can "accelerate" to near-light velocity on at speeds approaching the speed of light. These possibilities of time travel are divided into four groups: displacement by means of velocities close to the speed of light; the use of closed trajectories of curved space-time near massive rotating bodies or a rotating universe; “piercing” a black hole through the “tunnel of time”; parallel quantum universes. The author considers each of these mathematical possibilities. A time traveler is on the horizon of events, where the equations of the Einstein theory must work together with the laws of quantum mechanics. But still there isn’t a universal theory and therefore in the “time machine” something prevents from travelling into the past. The models and assumptions of the theory are associated with the problem of matching free will with the rigor of physical laws.

Variations on the theme of time travel, which K. Sharov unfolds in his article, refer to three interrelated, but methodologically very different areas: to the fi eld of mathematical models of the universe, philosophical culturology and science fi ction. In his opinion, the opportunity of time travel originates from the solution of Einstein’s equations, implemented by K. Gödel. This creates problems in interpretation of ontological concepts and their correlation as “causality”, “action”, and “time arrow”. In the 1980s, after Gödel’s death an outstanding astrophysicist and cosmologist I. D. Novikov formulated the fundamental difficulty in evaluation of the time travel context. The principle of self-consistency removes such paradoxes of travel into the past, as the violation of causality and the “butterfl y effect”. This principle states that attempts to change the present by local intervention in the past do not stand a chance of success, because there are many variants of the development of events, and only those, which are globally self-consistent on all parts of space and time, with the exception of singularities, are implemented. Most likely, physical journeys in time do not threaten us either in the near or the distant future. Then why is the humankind wandering in their thoughts through the dark depths of the unknown past or future? The humankind needs to determine itself in the present, so it is necessary to fi nd or construct  a refl ective position, allowing us to see our position clearly. Temporality is the most important characteristic of human existence. We support the connection of times with the help of our memory and hope; we know that we are mortal, and we hope to bring a recipe for salvation from the journey into the future or to change our destiny by traveling into the past.  

The closed-time hypothesis generates many nontrivial problems of conceptual nature. Models with closed timelike curves exist in several theoretically possible spaces: in the Gödel, de Sitter, Tipler cylinder, in the wormhole, etc. In the de Sitter universe, closed timelike curves exist under two important conditions: the homogeneity of the universe and the rotation of particles of dust-like matter. The author considers the issue of speed of movement in time and infl uence of the past changes on the present. He also discusses the hypothesis of the existence of a multi-world universe, the meaning of time loop, the Gödel concept of time. The author analyzes the nature of time and two basic concepts of time: substantive and relational.

The book is regarded as an important step in studying the history of Russian state statistics. The authors identify three stages of history: pre-revolutionary, Soviet and post-Soviet. With all their specifics, common features are also found in the stages. The level of statistics is assessed by the reviewer as an indicator of the civilizational level of the country. The authors carefully study the pre-revolutionary period. After a very dull period in the first half of the 19th century, from the beginning of the 60s, under the conditions of emerging capitalism and growing democratization, a period of relatively successful development began, which still did not reach the level of developed countries. The State Statistical Service remained weak. The Soviet authorities realized the dream of Russian statisticians about the creation of a powerful state statistical service. Some valuable statistical work was carried out during the Civil War and NEP. But the successful development of Soviet statistics was interrupted in the late 1920s because of the increased political pressure. In a number of areas, some studies were discontinued, the others were falsified. Many statisticians were repressed. With the transition to a command economy, Statistics was largely replaced by Accounting and for a long time it was deprived of administrative independence.

The reviewer argues with the authors on a number of results of statistical studies of the NEP and post-NEP periods, evaluating them more critically. He notes that the 1948 reform of the status of statistics was fruitless, and criticizes the authors' poor use of the archives of the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. The reviewer supports the positive evaluation of many transformations in the post-Soviet period, which returned the original content to statistics, but at the same time he admits that a significant part of the statistical data of this period was unreliable. The material and personnel situation in modern Russian statistics is far from what is necessary, and it is still far from the level in the developed countries