Ethos of communication and understanding in project activity (an editorial)

Nowadays, the problematization of a person as an unfinished project takes place as a cross-cutting thematization of the interdisciplinary approach, which presupposes a holistic, complex study that «throws light on both the meaning of all scientific activity and the unified basis of the mechanisms of imagination operating here» (G. Holton). The article draws attention to the peculiarities of project activity, its aspiration for the possible embodiment of a community of interests in solving urgent problems. The creative complementarity of the personal and the collective as well as internal and external factors in the changing norms and values of the scientific community is reshaping the ethos of communication and understanding. The agenda includes the need to address the current ambivalence of scientific communication taking into account the response to the demands of society to work out the updated principles of assembling scientific teams based on trust and solidarity. The procreative, generative function of scientific activity is prescribed in the context of team building. The problematization of the academic community assembly is growing as it is becoming more open and accountable to society. The culture of skills of critical but empathic mutual trust in communication is actualized, this trust including the heuristics of the scientific dispute of the interest-based ethos. Repetitive successful practices of pro-creative communication can, over time, acquire the character of an institutionally formed tradition, a conventionally fixed norm of creative co-operation. The authors suggest the possibility of achieving this goal grounded not only on the primary impulse of the community of interest but on prolonged communication strategies. The basis for such an outcome is the symmetrical contribution of participants in problem-oriented scientific communication to the achievement of the collective good in the form of innovative approaches to solving fundamental problems of our time which have confirmed practical application in multiple specific cases. Convergence of expectations resulting from the emergence of trust in the ethos of the scientific community can be built «in between» behavioral choice options in the ternary matrix of «loyalty-voice-exit». The preadaptive academic activity of the group can be sustainable in the presence of «protective valves» channeling dissatisfaction with the parameters of order, renewed understanding and communication patterns in the project activity of the group.