Problematization of the legitimation of scientific knowledge in the modern society

The purpose of the study is to consider the problem of legitimizing scientific knowledge in the present-day society. The research seeks to clarify the meaning of legitimation, reveal the social and intellectual contexts of this problem, and conduct a comparative analysis of the strategies for legitimizing science in modern and postmodern societies. It is concluded that the problematization of the legitimation of scientific knowledge as its public acceptance and justification is associated with the social and intellectual circumstances and therefore is determined by both changes in the conditions and consequences of science performance in society and the epistemological characteristics of contemporary scientific knowledge. The crisis of the legitimation of science caused by the distrust in metanarratives in postmodern culture is treated as another significant factor in problematization. The author assumes that the search for strategies to legitimize science in the modern society involves the substantiation of new mechanisms of social consensus.