The new imperatives of economic knowledge: on the way to socionomics

The article considers the current state of economic science and the methodological contradictions accumulated in its depths. The central thesis is the paradox of science, according to which meeting all the strict criteria of scientificity does not allow the current economic knowledge to give an effective response to the challenges of modernity. In order to substantiate this paradox, four attributes of the scientific nature of economics have been considered: theoretical, observational, inductive (historical) and experimental. Seven groups of objective causes provoking the decline in the practical relevance of economics were investigated in parallel. The emergence of the paradox of science against the background of long-term failures of economic science in explaining and predicting the key events of modernity indicates that for over 30 years it has been in a global methodological deadlock, in which one can stay indefinitely, rather than in a crisis that is resolved sooner or later. Therefore, a new social science - socionomics - needs to be created. Such attempts have been repeatedly made, but failed. Consideration of the methodological features of tectology, cybernetics, general systems theory and synergetics allows us to understand the reasons for these failures: identifying systems of different nature and assuming the universality of the laws to which they obey. The article shows new attempts of interdisciplinary research in Russia aimed at revealing deep analogies between structural patterns in physics, chemistry, biology and informatics and spatio-temporal archetypes (hexagrams) in the Chinese “Book of Changes” (“I Ching”). The author has revealed the reasons why these studies do not lead to final success in spite of their obvious fruitfulness: “The Book of Changes” operates with content and form of the phenomenon, but not with its scale, which gives the illusion of accuracy, but does not allow to make practically significant calculations. The contours of a new science - socionomics - are outlined.