Lunkov A.S. On the Ontological Status of Observations // Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy.– 2020.– Vol. 16. No. 1.– P. 380-390.
The problem of observations is one of the cornerstones of science. It connects with several ontological, epistemological and methodological questions. The nature of science depends on how we answer these questions. Modern science is at the stage of a new revision of its fundamental basis. In addition to science, the problems of the essence of observations and the status of an observer are actively discussed in modern philosophy. Such philosophical trends as speculative realism, etc., tend to resume the old discussion about the role of the observer in the study of natural phenomena. This is done based on modern scientific discoveries and theories. The solution to the problem of observation is important for the further development of quantum physics and other branches of natural science. However, there are several difficulties in achieving this goal. One of them is the inadequacy of the concepts of scientific language to describe the ontological specifics of observations. The concepts of a scientific language tend to reduce or to simplify a complex phenomenon to a monosemantic description. At the same time, there is an aspiration to connect the ontological nature of observations with the functioning of human senses. We study this situation with the example of one of the new articles devoted to the problem of the essence of observations and their role in the construction of a scientific model of the world.
