Two books of American philosopher and science historian Laura Snyder are dedicated to the study of personality and teachings of William Whewell — an outstanding British philosopher and scholar, one of the father figures of the 19th century positivism. The author shows the role of communicative structures formed around prominent philosophers and scientists of the Victorian era, among which Whewell held a special and often the leading position. The purpose of these discussions and conversations, this selected discursive space or a trade zone served not only to find the final scientific truth. Much more they led to legitimating and consolidating the place of scientific and philosophical dispute in the structure of scientific activity and to justifying the latter. In this perspective, Snyder gives the chronicle of scientific-technical revolution of the 19th century, which brought England to the top of the leading world powers.

The review discusses philosophical and interdisciplinary issues of the problem of reality in modern natural sciences as they are represented in the book. It is noted that the authors of the book managed to make some progress in the understanding of this «hard problem» in its philosophical and interdisciplinary contexts.

This article represents the review of the Russian translation of N. Lumann’s work which was published under the title «Truth, knowledge, science as a system». In article N. Lumann’s approach to consideration of science as one of the communicative systems of society performing function on development of knowledge is reconstructed. Within this approach we consider in a separate way the the truthconditional perspective which is expressed by means of terms of language of the theory symbolically the generalized of media of communications. Special attention is paid to the potential of the reconstructed theory in the analysis of modern scientific community and to the relation of scientific system to other communicative systems (its differentiation from them and the possibility of interaction).

This paper is a reflection on number of statements and ideas presented in the monograph by Academician Vladislav A. Lektorsky “Humanity and Culture. Selected Papers”. The authors suggest their interpretations on his ideas regarding the characteristics of classical and non-classical epistemology, as well as the further development of epistemology in the light of its enrichment with the humanitarian and “citizen” component.

This article represents the review of the collective monograph “Social Philosophy of Science. Russian Prospects” (ed. by I. T. Kasavin). The article deals with the crisis in philosophy of science by the end of the XX century which has become prerequisite for the emergence of the project of social philosophy of science. The author analyzes this project and proves the necessity of its implementation in connection with the realities of the global world. The author also analyzes the structure of the book and discusses a number of key issues (attitude of knowledge and sociality, role of science in society, methodological aspects of case-study, etc.).

This is a review of the book “Poiski ponimaniya. Izbrannye trudy po istorii i filosofii nauki” by N. F. Ovchinnikov. The author argues that the main topic of the reviewed book is the problem of knowledge. She pays special attention to the idea of invariance in its connection with the phenomena of scientific revolutions. The author also discusses the relationships between fundamental science and science as social technology.