“Pure” or “useful”: the cultural status of science and the prospects for its change

The article analyzes the evolution of the cultural status of science by considering its history through the prism of the opposition to the ideal of pure and useful science. The purpose of the study is not to propose a new periodization of the development of the scientific tradition, but to identify the dynamics of its relationship with the cultural whole and to correct on this basis the previously obtained scenarios of the development of science as a cultural phenomenon. It is shown that science arises as a separate social practice, opposed to another type of normalized activity. The way out from under such rationing is fixed by the idea of scientific leisure as a necessary condition for scientific and philosophical knowledge. This is a model of pure science, the practical usefulness of which is not questioned. However, the very fact of the appearance of a new type of activity entails its socialization, transformation into a profession and the gradual emergence of the principle of the social utility of science. The accumulated historical experience leads to the formation in modern times of a strategy for justifying science as both existentially and ideologically valuable (through its integration into religious discourse) and practically useful. Secularization, scientific and technological progress and economic development lead to a non-religious interpretation of human history. This interpretation is characterized by the dominance of two socio-cultural myths – technological and economic. The future of science depends on whether it will be absorbed by these myths (largely generated by itself) or will be able to offer, primarily through the efforts of socio-humanitarian disciplines, an alternative project for the development of culture.