Chapter 21: Enhancing Active Citizenship in Self-developing Poly-subject Environments (Ontological Approach)

From the dominant causal approach in science in the 20th century, in the 21st century, humanity has moved to the dominant teleological (target) approach, in which the problem of subjectness is at the centre of attention. This problem is becoming key in the development of the systemic approach and many areas of knowledge, including cybernetics. The philosophical and methodological foundations of the development of science are set through the development of ontologies of the existence of subjects of knowledge, through the expansion of their involvement in the processes of interaction with research objects, tools of knowledge, scientific communities, culture, and humanity as a whole. This approach was proposed by V. S. Stepin (2005) through the assignment of three types of scientific rationality (classical, non-classical, and post-non-classical), in fact through the assignment of three paradigms of science. Subject-ness acts in this approach as the basis for the evolution of scientific paradigms. This approach ensures the implementation of N. Bohr’s (1976) principle of correspondence, and satisfies the basic ideas of scientific revolutions of T. Kuhn (1962). As a consequence, this approach ensures the continuity of knowledge and experience accumulated in previous scientific paradigms. A fundamentally important conclusion for the development of areas of knowledge, including cybernetics, is that if it is possible to correlate the evolution of paradigms of any area of knowledge with the evolution of scientific paradigms (classical, non-classical, and post-non-classical), then the principle of correspondence of N. Bohr will also be fulfilled for the paradigms of these areas of knowledge.