SCIENTIFIC DEVICES AND INSTRUMENTS AS A SPECIAL KIND OF ARTIFACTS

The history of artifacts (human-made objects) is as great as the history of mankind. Among the wide variety of artifacts, tools occupied an important place from the very beginning and, somewhat later, instruments. The development of society has always been accompanied by the need to increase the capabilities of these artifacts and their complications. All artifacts of this kind are extrasomatic organs — addition to bodily and mental organs — they are tools created to increase the ability to solve certain problems. With the development of technology, their capabilities have become so great that the question has arisen whether they exceed the capabilities of the human brain. This question is especially relevant for these kinds of tools that are created to assist the brain — self-learning computer programs of artificial intelligence. To understand this, one needs to turn to the origins of science, back to the day when the foundations of methodology and general principles for obtaining a mental product were laid. This result has a peculiarity: it is often perceived anthropomorphically, transferring the properties of the experimenter to the result of his activity. This is especially true for complex devices and instruments. The article shows the nature of the relationship between a person and an instrument as his artificial extrasomatic organ.