Picture of world and picture of social reality: from positions of social constructivism

The ''picture of the world'' became the object of scientific and philosophical researches since 1970s and is actively used nowadays. The literature review has shown that in most cases there is an identification of the picture of the world with the scientific picture of the world. However, studying of the picture of the world only in the light of development of scientific knowledge, in our opinion, does not promote its comprehensive and detailed analysis. As for the picture of the social reality we can see a similar situation. Thus, the main thing escapes from our attention, namely, identification of the ontological bases of understanding the world and the social reality as a picture and also the description of the characteristic features of the whole picture of the world and the whole picture of the social reality instead of their separate types researches. That confirms the necessity of further philosophical investigation of such a phenomenon as the "picture" vision of the world and of the social reality. We agree with Heidegger that the ontological basis of understanding the world and the social reality as a picture is the result of transformation the person into the subject who takes a detached view of the universe, making its image, model, picture. If the person does not isolate oneself from the world and is inseparably linked with it, is situated inside the world as it was, for example, in Antiquity and in the Middle Ages then we should speak about outlook, not about the "picture". Thus, we depart from Heidegger's conception according to which the outlook and the picture of the world are the products of only new European science of the 17th century. The notion "picture" always fixes the opposition of the person to the world, that is why the evolution of such notions as ''picture of the world'' and ''picture of the social reality'' became possible: over time the learning subject starts to fix space between the world and its picture. It happens because of the acceptance of the constructive function of human consciousness. Such function fixes social constructivism - the new approach to investigation of human being and society. From the positions of social constructivism the person is understood not as reflecting the existing world, looking at the nature from the outside and acting in the role of the "uninterested observer'', but as the participant in making the world, the creator of the social reality. Application of the social constructivist approach does not only allow to form a specific picture of the world in the centre of which there is a creative communicative person, who creates the social reality in the process of cognition and is created by it, but also helps to fill the picture of the world and the picture of the social reality with special content. The picture of the world and the picture of the social reality are understood as ideal constructs, which are necessary for schematization of understanding of the world and the social reality. These constructs are created by people and then define their lives, influence their behaviour becoming, therefore, not only a simple picture, but an actual reality.

Keywords

Authors

References