It is believed that most of the discoveries that change the face of civilization are made by intellectuals, mainly solid scientists or groups of scientists, who experiment for a long time and put forward various theories that allow them to know the world, and ultimately produce many useful inventions. Is it so?
There is an opinion that the main engine of civilizational development are the intellectuals, who are often associated with the intelligentsia.
The definition of intellectuals by B. Giesen is known: “The intellectuals are the discursive communities that claim the mission of constructing the collective past, present and future, that is, the production of collective identities - national, class, gender” [1, p. 169-170].
The generally accepted definition of an intellectual is a person with a highly developed mind and analytical thinking, engaged in mental work, developing ideas, defining norms and cultural values for the rest of society.
The intelligentsia, in turn, is defined as the people of mental labor, such as engineers, technicians, managers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, representatives of culture and science, as well as educated employees of various kinds, who are characterized by rational activity of the spirit, the basis of which is the education, that allows live in harmony with others, while at the same time taking an active civic position.
In these definitions everything is lumped together, there is no historicism, conclusiveness, the appearance is piled on top of banalities. But the main thing is that it is not visible from them and does not follow how these progressive intellectuals-intelligentsia develop that very society.
In particular, intelligentsia who, as follows from the definition, strives for a harmonious life, rather, do not want to develop society, but rather to live in harmony with their surroundings. This means that they are close in behavior to the adaptive creatures that all animals are. But only animals do not have the highest education.
Unlike these conformists, the intellectuals, judging by the definition given by Giesen, are engaged in the development of various ideas, but history shows that these ideas, especially in the field of social relations, are often unreliable, superficial and temporary, and a significant part of them is simply erroneous, that is, with the exception of some natural-scientific assumptions and discoveries, their conclusions are not able to develop civilization either technologically or culturally. But they, using power or proximity to power, actually impose them on society, thereby inhibiting the development of civilization, and, moreover, managing to construct the past, present and future, of course, not disinterestedly and in such a way to please to the ruling class, which contains them, minus the informal opposition to the authorities, as well as revolutionaries and terrorists who are kept themselves going with other means.
However, nevertheless, someone develops civilization one way or another, since new technologies, various cultural values appear, the way of life changes, the general well-being of the population grows, etc.
This is unlikely to happen by itself, especially since both intellectuals and intelligentsia have appeared from somewhere at a certain time, since, for example, there were no such people in primitive communal groups. Apparently, there was no base for breeding these smart people - everyone only had to physically work from all forces in order not to die of hunger.
The conclusion follows: the mental work characteristic of these spiritual people requires, first of all, time free from physical labor.
And this time can only be provided by an unjust society, where some oppress others on the basis of proprietary relations, forcing them to work for themselves. It is then that the possibility of the appearance of slackers arises, not the untalented part of whom wants not only to live in comfort, being a little bored or engaging in intrigue, but to satisfy their nature, first by inventing tools, methods, designs and crafts that make life easier, and then begin to strive to knowledge of the environment and themselves, not only to improve the economy and their own enrichment, but simply out of curiosity, pure interest and the desire to decorate everyday life.
Some of them were smart, some not so smart, but all of them had one property, without which more or less conscious development of science, culture, technology is impossible, that is, a way out of established knowledge into new knowledge, namely, the ability to creativity.
Its lowest level comes down to combinatorics, that is, the combination of already known elements in other ways, the most popular products of which are chess, dancing, most architectural structures, household utensils and tools, most paintings and literary works.
Almost anyone, even children, is capable of such action.
It’s curious, but the vast majority of intellectuals and intelligentsia have even this kind of creativity to a very small extent.
The intelligentsia, despite their education, is more interested in order and comfort, in general, harmony; the intellectuals, especially in the field of politics, are most occupied with intrigue and the struggle for power, and scientists and specialists work, as a rule, within the framework of relevant standards, established ideas and theories, and the most prolific analysts become professors and academicians without coming up with anything particularly new, having written many articles and monographs, pouring in them from empty into unladen or, at best, presenting facts and commenting on experimental data.
However, if you rummage through the people masses, you can find at all levels of society so-called creative people, who, of course, appear more in the educated and wealthy strata of society, not oppressed by the problems of survival. Apparently, due to the fact that this fact is striking, education is considered by the public to be the most important factor helping to cognize and create new things, despite the rather obvious ridiculousness of this assumption.
The fact is that every person who has free time can obtain the knowledge necessary to satisfy their interests on their own, without studying in general education institutions. And if he is also talented, he can achieve a lot.
An example of this are the classics of world literature Maxim Gorky and Jack London, as well as the great mechanic, architect and designer Ivan Kulibin, the founder of theoretical cosmonautics and rocket dynamics Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, inventor (161 patents) and organizer of a new approach to car assembly - using a conveyor belt - Henry Ford.
In itself, the property of creativity is inherent in every person due to his understanding of his own presence in time, which dictates him not only to adapt himself to the constantly changing environment like animals, but also to consciously change it in accordance with his own aspirations, needs, interests and goals.
Naturally, all this can be implemented both traditionally - in accordance with acquired skills, experience, generally accepted practices and ideas, and more or less unusually, showing one or another degree of ingenuity in different ways.
It is in the pursuit of non-standard ideas that creativity (inventiveness), as such, manifests itself.
It is clear that coming up with something original is not so easy, and most such aspirations for originality are limited to combinatorics, since identifying something fundamentally new requires certain natural abilities that do not coincide with the mind, are not given by education and accumulated experience. For example, for an artist this is the ability to sense the slightest shades of color, for musicians it is a special sensitivity to sounds and their overtones.
In addition, the effective manifestation of creativity in a person can only occur with a combination of quite numerous factors.
Namely, it requires such personality traits as not bad quick-wittedness, sensitivity, impressionability, decisiveness, an ability to pry, dominance, perseverance, and such personality traits as a high degree of curiosity; not necessarily, but preferably, a clear head; knowledge corresponding to awakened interests; strong will; some financial support; not too bad memory, as well as certain innate abilities corresponding to public interests and the current situation; free time, but formal education is not necessary, since self-education exists.
For example, Leonardo da Vinci, Lomonosov, Tesla did not graduate from universities, but this did not stop them from becoming the greatest of the great scientists and inventors. Moreover, the brilliant jeweler, sculptor and artist Benvenuto Cellini was a murderer, rogue and money-grubber without any education, the great composer Dargomyzhsky was a bitter drunkard.
However, all these human properties and the mentioned external features of the situation constitute only conditions for the manifestation of creativity.
Similar rare combination of necessary conditions, natural talents and the ability to apply them so that these creative (inventive) persons are able to express their creativity in outstanding results leads to the fact that these persons are being recruited not too much at all times, especially since the process of creativity and in the field of art, and in the field of technology, is quite labor-intensive, with low efficiency and quite unhealthy.
Therefore, the overwhelming majority of educated and intelligent intellectuals are either unable or do not strive for this kind of acquisition of new knowledge, but for the sake of a successful career they often imitate this process, and also to try join the company of the creative persons. In science, this manifests itself in attributing oneself to the authors of certain interesting proposals, inventions, analytics or discoveries; in organizational activities, this is revealed in promotion not the true authors of effective organizational solutions, but bosses, too often mediocre or even stupid.
The very aspiration to display creativity can differ significantly for individual persons, and it depends most of all on the natural, or animal component of consciousness.
In other words, in society, thanks to the specified combination of individuality and personality characteristics, there are persons who are always filled with a deep feeling of dissatisfaction in relation to their environment, which comes to them from the animal (natural) component of consciousness in its desire to create greater convenience for their own existence due to the initial egocentrism of animal consciousness. However, this feeling is combined with the altruism of their self-consciousness, the dissatisfaction of which with insufficient social comfort, the development of science and culture, reaching a high degree, requires that the achievements of civilization and culture be extended to everyone.
But in this case, the properties of individuality, determined by the animal form of human consciousness, dominate, since the activity of these people manifests itself mostly instinctively, without much thought, giving, nevertheless, the most creatively active persons of all living.
Although, of course, a significant role in the effectiveness of creativity is played by a kind of resonant coincidence of the interests of a given subject of activity with his natural abilities, reflected in the design of the brain, as well as the ability to use the insight procedure, which provides a break from known ideas to new knowledge and approaches.
Nevertheless, the noted combination of characteristics of individuality and personality of persons, which is based on a pronounced egocentrism of animal consciousness in the combination with a level of altruism of self-consciousness close to it, regardless of the presence of talents or even certain abilities, invariably attracts them to creative activity, although it does not always give a positive result, that is, new effective devices and systems, the discovery of previously unknown patterns, the invention of convenient life support systems, the creation of high examples of culture, etc.
Be that as it may, the creative persons are precisely that relatively small group of the population that ensures the accelerated development of technological civilization, but only in conditions of private property relations due to the fact that they provide the opportunity to separate some of the people from solving the problem of survival, which boils down to a larger partly to the adaptive activity, characteristic, in contrast to communities divided into classes in relation to property, for archaic communities, and depriving everyone in these archaic communities of time for the creative activity.
That is, the process of technological and cultural development of civilization is ensured by creative individuals, and not by any other forces, groups or relationships. And during this process, such individuals are increasingly revealed and increase in number. Therefore, the creative people play the role of a driver of technology and culture, but, again, their creative properties are based on the peculiarities of their consciousness, and not on extraneous influences.
It turns out that the process of technological and cultural development, in which the creative people play a leading role, is ensured by unfair private property relations, which are also based on the counteraction of the egocentrism of the animal component of a person and the altruistic component of his self-consciousness.
This counteraction is reflected in public life by the struggle of the power elite, guided mostly by selfish interests of their own benefit, the basis of which is in the animal (natural) component of the consciousness of this elite, with the informal oppositionists to it in the person of radical individuals who oppose it, due to their interest in improving society, which is based on the altruism of their self-consciousness, which prevails over the egoism of self-consciousness and the egocentrism of the animal component of their consciousness.
The struggle of these strata of society, who hate each other, due to the radical divergence of their interests and intentions, leads to a gradual change in social relations, since the rest of the people cannot help but be involved in one way or another in this struggle, gradually benefiting from it for themselves in the form of improved conditions own existence, despite the cruel forms of resolving contradictions between different groups of the population in the form of wars, uprisings, coups and even genocide, which are constant companions of any antagonistic social formation, nevertheless, avoiding a state of stagnation precisely due to its own inconsistency in the form of the struggle of the power elite with the informal opposition to it.
In particular, this kind of struggle, which was based on the counteraction of the egocentric natural consciousness and the growing altruistic self-consciousness in their individual and collective forms, led to a turn from feudal relations, characterized by the manual labor, to the industrial production, characterized by the massive use of machines, quite quickly destroyed the Middle Ages in Europe. At this, the industrial revolution began in the 16th century in the Netherlands, and then continued in England - the Protestant countries of Europe, but not in another or other countries of the world, which ultimately made Europe the dominant force of the world for several centuries.
The cause for this turn to industrial production, expressed in mass invention and the introduction of new machines and mechanisms in the production of goods, is not directly related to technology and industrialization.
It was the duality of consciousness in the form of the struggle between its animal (natural) component and the highest extra-natural (self-consciousness) that led to the formation of religious social consciousness, in which an attempt was initially made to completely eliminate the natural egocentric consciousness of a person, having replaced it with only one gift from God - self-consciousness, that is conquer the flesh for the sake of the spiritual.
Similar estrangement from the natural essence of a person could not but lead the official dominant church, in particular, Catholicism, to defeat, due to the increasing hypocrisy of its ministers, who are unable to replace the animal essence of a person with one spiritual one, despite all efforts.
Such decomposition of Christian church in a person of her most powerful wing – Catholicism - to the middle of the second millennium of our era reached the latest edge – sale of indulgences the, that is, documents from the church power, which are temporarily saving Catholic from punishment for committed sins.
To tolerate further such profanation of faith was impossible.
Therefore, Luther has suggested removing the discredited Catholic Church as an intermediary between parishioners and God, and restoring the balance between secular and spiritual, having recognized the main maintenance of life the wordly labor for the benefit of society.
That is, Luther also has ejected the juxtaposition between the worldly and the spiritual, stating that God's grace is being exercised also in worldly life on the professional endeavors, since God intends people to one or another type of activity, investing in them various talents and abilities, and the duty of a person to work diligently, fulfilling his calling [2].
As a result, there was a split of the Catholic Church with the formation of several areas of Protestantism.
The idea of Luther that the main vocation of man is diligent labor, has liberated Protestant public, who appeared, allowing it to take a different attitude not only to labor, but also to its fruits, especially new ones.
In all Protestant countries the prohibition on novelties of the technology and their use was removed.
Therefore, the reason for Reformation that took place in Europe was the progressiveness of Christianity, in which, unlike other religious directions, initially in the Christ's Mount Preaching was laid the contradiction between the existing beingness and the "world" other – the best. Naturally, sooner or later the idea of “faithful” participation in this better “world” through the improvement of the existing world through effective labor efforts and their fruits for the common good had to appear, which God could not help but notice directly.
Thereby, from the Protestants in the person of Luther and the liberal government of the country of the concentration at that time of Protestantism (the Netherlands), have appeared some kind of the permission to receiving any "fruits" of labor and their use for the greater benefit of society, despite possible violations of the established traditions, having opened the road to discoveries and innovations.
On the other hand, the duality of consciousness in the form of the struggle of the natural (animal) component of it and the highest - extra-natural (self-consciousness) led not only to the Reformation, but also to the appearance of a significant number of the creative people.
Dissatisfaction with self-consciousness by the present demands all time of the extension of information flows, which it receives for the account of the conscious transformation by people by surrounding space in the form of the change of the existing artificial and natural environment, and this transformation is got that better, than more a person knows and understands how the world surrounding him functions. Cognition demands the education. Schools and universities are being emerged.
In Europe, to the time of Luther's appeal, a layer of fairly literate people with broad interests and considerable creativity who were not given developing, forcing them to engage exclusively in theology, had formed in large cities.
Having received the appropriate "permission" from the reformed Church, these creative persons did not slow down to intensify scientific research, offering as a result a lot of technical and organizational innovations.
The machine production arose, ships and navigation improved, trade revived, mail and newspapers appeared, communications between the continents expanded.
To support of our theses should be noted that at the beginning of the first Millennium ad in China were invented mills, pumps, new technologies of agricultural production, as well as were invented compass, seismograph, gunpowder, paper, silk manufacturing technology, multi-tiered buildings.
However, the turn towards the industrial production there did not happen precisely because of forced labor and slavery in the Chinese community of that time. That is, in itself the manifestation of self-awareness in the form of creativity is not enough to turn towards the industry. A manifestation of self-consciousness in the form of the liberation of labor for the main population of the country is also required.
Therefore, the turn towards the industrial production took place not in China, but in Europe after one and a half thousand years. The accumulated dissatisfaction of an educated person in his self-consciousness requires more than a comfortable existence, high position in society: it pushes him through the struggle of self-consciousness and the animal component of consciousness with its primitive requirements, to a high, in this case, to a certain liberation of labor and its creative use.
And this turn transferred the slow development of civilization into the accelerated consistently in Protestant countries, and then, by their example, in many others, which led to such large-scale and impressive achievements of the human civilization by now precisely because of a certain liberation of labor.
Thus, dissatisfaction of both components of consciousness in the form of the struggle of the natural of its component and the highest extra-natural (self-consciousness) through Christianity in the person of Luther, and through the Protestant country (Netherlands), which was determined by the high degree of development of culture and science in it, have led to a kind of resonance of the reformed Christianity and creative minds, containing in their potency technological culture.
Both of these forces - the creative people who act as drivers of technology, and the struggle of the power elite with the informal opposition to it, ensure the process of creation both in social relations and in technology, significantly influencing each other so that when they intersect, turns can occur that replace one way of life of a community or state to another - more perfect and convenient for the population in its ever-increasing scope, which, in fact, is the process of development of civilization within the framework of property relations - from the slave system to capitalism [3].
However, the confrontation between the power elite and the informal opposition in various form has not yet been noticed by the social sciences, which is replacing it in the eyes of the public with the struggle or the interaction between the working people and exploiters, although in a number of countries it is already difficult to separate the working people and exploiters. In addition, if an exploited worker suddenly becomes rich or becomes an entrepreneur, he in the same way begins to take care of himself first of all, and not of the offended and oppressed, without experiencing strong moral problems. The explanation of this phenomenon is again in the sphere of consciousness, since the vast majority of the exploited and exploiters have quite low level of self-consciousness in its altruistic component, and the level of egocentrism in his animal component of consciousness is quite high [4].
Therefore, the action of both of these forces with their interests and needs can manifest itself intensively only with comparatively high level of culture in society, including the appropriate level of education, thanks to which the development of self-consciousness of at least a part of the population is being ensured. This is confirmed by the practical lack of development of archaic societies that still exist in certain parts of the planet, although there are certain productive forces based on the use of sometimes not so primitive tools.
That is, any motion in society, including turns and upheavals in the social order, especially cardinal ones, occurs only at sufficiently high level of culture, if not of the entire population, then of its key strata. The main contribution to the achievement of this level is introduced by the third group of the creative persons, which is manifesting itself in that sphere of development of society, which is closest to the inner world of a person, that is, to his self-consciousness.
This group of the creative persons, who are interested more in the inner world of a person and his communities, tries to penetrate it in different ways, correlating some people with others, comparing a person with nature and society, and also finding out the ability of a person to reflect these relationships in artificial forms.
It is these creative people, to varying degrees, but still, that produce cultural values in various forms, and directly affect the minds and feelings of the population, touching the most sensitive strings of the self-consciousness of each person, due to which both individual and collective self-consciousness is gradually changing: mores are softened, the population's craving for knowledge is growing, the number of intellectually and emotionally developed people is increasing.
Such cultural development affects the growth of the altruistic component of the self-consciousness of the population, thereby expanding the layer of the informal opposition to the authorities, who want to harmonize social relations.
The result of this cultural development of society, seemingly far from the political struggle, is, however, the growing confrontation of the informal opposition to the ruling elite due to the spread of altruism among the masses. In addition, the growth of culture and education of the population makes it possible to increase the percentage of the creative people who are, in fact, the only effective lever for the acceleration of the technological and cultural development of society.
Thereby, the actions of the creative figures of the sphere of culture have a decisive influence on the growth of the altruistic component of the self-consciousness of the population, creating conditions for the development of the social way of life.
Therefore, the cardinal coups in the life of society occur against this cultural and educational background in the case of the dissatisfaction with a significant part of society with the existing system of life in the presence of a certain level of technological development that allows to change the economic management.
Thus, the absence or weak manifestation of all three of these external forces in society, in basis of which are and interact both components of consciousness - natural (animal) and self-consciousness - makes it accordingly archaic or stagnating, an example of which is currently a number of third world countries where nothing happens, and no active personalities or groups are manifested.
If we return to the role of intellectuals in social development, then, as we showed above, their wide ranks are not made up of only the creative people, of whom there are quite a little. Therefore, the view that it is intellectuals who organize the technological and cultural development of society is erroneous. They, of course, contribute to this, but more often, no matter how amazing it is, they slow down this development.
Similar braking is explained by the fact that creativity, in essence, goes beyond the scope of their interests, which, first of all, are focused on obtaining specific benefits for themselves due to the predominance of the egocentricity of the animal component of consciousness in their consciousness.
In particular, the politicians are rarely able to contribute to technological and cultural progress, since they are usually corrupt on their kind of activity, and are ready to give everything for power and a profitable place. And this interests them most of all.
The personnel serving the powers that be in the face of highly educated officials, as well as managers and businessmen cooperating with or subordinate to officials, representatives of law enforcement agencies are obedient to the authorities, because they are dependent on them and are also interested in maintaining their privileged position.
What remains are the intellectuals represented by doctors, teachers, engineers, technicians, lawyers, teachers, representatives of culture and science.
However, practically all of them, due to their direct dependence on the state and fully regulated activities, which very rarely allow one to rise above combinatorics, are not too often able to demonstrate the independence and nonconformism necessary both in creativity and in promoting its fruits into life.
Only the creative people are capable of this, for which, by the way, none of the other intellectuals and intelligentsia mentioned above, who are very mediocre in terms of creativity, dislike them. They also envy to them.
Thus, the creative people, whose characteristics were given above, are scattered across all strata of society, but are sufficiently educated in their field. They always find free time for creativity, have the will to overcome continuously arising difficulties and some abilities for creativity, which attracts them, despite all the difficulties of this process, because it is dictated to them not by external circumstances, but by an internal need in the form of constant dissatisfaction both the egocentric animal component of consciousness and the altruistic component of their self-consciousness.
As for the official scientific estate, - and it is considered the most creative in its mission, which consists in obtaining new knowledge, - then it actually has made and is making not contribute too much to epoch-making discoveries and inventions, what is easy to see by looking at the history of the most outstanding discoveries in terms of knowledge of the world, as well as inventions that have made the most inclusive and useful contribution to improving life comfort and the development of civilization in scientific, technical and cultural relations.
For example, Archimedes, who was on his own, has discovered the hydrostatic lifting force.
An independent researcher of everything, the Italian Galileo, while in church, deduced the law of pendulum oscillation from the swing of a lamp. He also turned out to be the founder of experimental physics and laid the foundation of classical mechanics.
The ship's doctor Robert Mayer has formulated the law of conservation of mechanical energy during one of his voyages.
The German jeweler Gutenberg invented the printing press, thereby laying the foundation for the book printing.
The Italian Leonardo da Vinci, who had never studied anywhere, was the first to invent a robot and many other inventions, including a parachute, a tank, a bicycle and a car.
The modern meaning of the term evolution was discovered more than two hundred years ago by the Frenchman Charles Bonnet, who argued that when the rudiments of life were created, the ability to develop was invested in them.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the French mechanical engineer Charles Bursel was the first to outline the principle of operation of the phone, which was later implemented by the English teacher Alexander Bell in the USA, having managed to convert the sound signal to analog electric, and then transmit it to a certain distance and convert it again to sound.
French independent inventor and former civil servant Joseph Nieps was the first to invent photography.
Belgian inventor Pierre Lenoir was the first to invent an internal combustion engine in the mid-19th century.
American inventor - telegraph operator and self-taught - Edison proposed an electric lamp with a carbon filament.
The manager of French artists, Louis Leprince, was the first to lay the foundations of cinematography by inventing the first chronophotographic camera with a single lens and a flexible roll media (the prototype of the motion picture camera) for recording moving images.
Belgian priest Georges Lemaitre proposed a new cosmological theory, calling it the Big Bang, at the end of the 19th century.
Serbian Nikola Tesla, having independently discovered the phenomenon of a rotating magnetic field, immediately proposed using it to produce alternating current, thereby laying the foundations of all electrical engineering; he was the first to achieve the transmission of a radio signal over a considerable distance, laying the foundation for all developments in the field of wireless communication technologies.
A Swiss patent office employee, Albert Einstein, developed the special theory of relativity.
Scottish inventor and engineer John Baird invented the first mechanical television system.
German engineer Konrad Zuse created in 1941 the first computer with all the properties of a modern computer.
This list can be continued further, but it is already clear that the vast majority of epochal discoveries and inventions were made not by groups of official academic scientists, but by creative enthusiasts who followed the trends of their time, as well as by some scientists who worked individually, such as the founder of microbiology Louis Pasteur or the inventor of the world wide web Tim Berners-Lee.
Thus, a large clan of scientists from various laboratories and universities were mainly engaged and are, as a rule, engaged in finalizing inventions, hypotheses and projects proposed by creative people, and also conduct mostly routine experiments and research of various kinds, which do not open up new directions in the development of technology.
Bibliography
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