The Gift in the Scientific Community: On the Issue of Producing Diversity

The article focuses on the analysis of the phenomena of scientific vocation and gift. Using the concept of vocation and gift allows presenting communication among scientists as distributed by hierarchical positions in a specific field of exchange of gifts. Interacting, scientists master both norms of behavior and a set of knowledge explicitly presented in the scientific community, as well as norms of behavior and practice associated with tacit knowledge characteristic of the scientific community. Orientation to the realization of one’s own vocation and exchange of gifts is a mechanism that allows the scientific community to maintain its functioning. As a result, a special social structure of the scientific community is formed. It is based on following the rules of preservation and transfer of gifts. At the same time, the initial acceptance of a gift in the social game of exchanging gifts is an agreement to master a certain set of tacit knowledge, use it in the activities on cognizing the world, and follow the rules of forming hierarchies. The communities of “shamans” and “priests” in their activities, like the community of scientists, are guided by the concepts of vocation and gift. In the communities of “shamans” and “priests” these concepts suggest the formation of a practice of sharing gifts, aimed at maintaining the community’s unity. In them, only existing knowledge can be brought as a gift. In the community of scientists, following a vocation and the practice of sharing gifts continually cast doubt on the community’s unity. Inclusion in the practice of exchange of gifts requires the acceptance of a gift, but only new knowledge can be a return gift. As a result, solidarity in the communities of “shamans” and “priests” implies agreement within the framework of one common position. In the community of scientists, solidarity is associated with the formation of a space of interaction between diverse approaches to the knowledge of nature, social and historical reality.

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