The Classical Mode of Thinking in the Modern Age

Abstract

The paper provides an analysis of an important topic in present-day epistemology, that is, the classical mode of thinking (15th–20th centuries) and its relation to culture of the Modern Age. It was within the framework of this mode that science in the modern sense of the word has been formed. Already in the past century the classical thinking came to be replaced by the nonclassical and then postnonclassical modes of thinking. After a description of the general notion of a “mode of thinking” and the way it is related to culture, the author gives an analysis of the general traits of the cassical mode of thinking. These include anti-authoritarianism, fundamentalism, cumulativism, reduction of the validity and objectivity of knowledge to verity; an exclusively classical interpretation of truth as correspondence to reality; the renunciation of any non-universal modes of justification such as appeals to tradition or common sense, authority, intuition, belief, fashion, taste and other similar reference points without which social and human sciences would be impossible; the universal requirement of mathematization of knowledge and usage of strict definitions and so on.