Наука. Культура. Общество (Jun 2022)
Risks of the future: the demand for non-linear humanistic knowledge
Abstract
The article gives a comparative analysis of the ideas about the future contained in classical and modern sociology, and also con- siders the latest approaches to the study of alternative futures that were proposed at the 3-rd Forum of the World Sociological Association (Austria, Vienna, July 10-14, 2016). The position about two great "rediscoveries" of the future is grounded: the first is connected with the transition from religious knowledge to institutional scientific knowledge; the second — with the formation of complex risk-based socio-natural realities that demanded nonlinear knowledge, theoretical innovations expressed in the transition from linear ideas about the "bright" future burdened with ideological predilections, to nonlinear theories, more realistic, but alarmist in nature. There particularly analyzed the role of humanism factors for a potentially better world, the contours of which are now being actively developed by global sociology. The author believes that the future is determined not only by the objective realities of complex risks, but is to a great extent determined by the nature of the scientific knowledge that needs a humanistic turn.
