Groundlessness as a constitutive problem of “big science”

The article deals with the problem of the groundlessness of modern scientific knowledge. This problem is investigated in a broad historical and philosophical context: starting from the transcendentalist philosophy of I. Kant, which establishes a fixed boundarybetween the cognizable object and the cognizing subject, then through the absolute idealism of G. Hegel dialectically removing the line between the finite forms of human thinking and the infinite being of the absolute spirit, and up to the phenomenology of E. Husserl, looking for a solid support of rational knowledge in the a priori structures of human consciousness. The authors also pay attention to other philosophical attempts to solve the problem of the foundation of knowledge. The authors refer to the ontological epistemologies developed by M. Heidegger and S.L. Frank. The researchers emphasize that the principle of transrational unity of opposites developed by Frank allows him to overcome the long-standing epistemological dualism of intuitively irrational and rational principles and not detract from the importance of private scientific knowledge. The article reflects the authors’ opinion, that the combination of holistic and personalistic methodological approaches opens up a theoretical possibility not to dissolve a free and creative human personalityin the whole being. Raising the question of the correlation of scientific knowledge and religious-metaphysical experience, the only one capable of giving science a solid foundation, the authors turn to the project of “sacred” science by R. Guenon, in which science finds its grounds in a metaphysical doctrine containing absolute intuitively comprehended principles. The concept of “spiritual science” by Guenon is compared with the concept of “living experience” of cognition, developed in the space of the Russian religious-metaphysical paradigm. The essential difference between the two concepts is seen in the interpretation of intellectual intuition. As evidence of the deep crisis of the modern scientific paradigm, which has lost its religious and metaphysical basis, the authors turn to the meta-scientific discourse of modern Western scientists, which is a kind of hybrid of science and theology. It is concluded that nothing else can save the scientific mind from groundlessness, but faith in the revealed Truth, which is not justified by reason.