While recognizing the general fruitfulness of the concept of distributed scientific knowledge and the importance of the study of science from the point of view of epistemic (in)justice, we would like to present a number of doubts about the rationale for this synthesis. Of course, it is difficult to argue with the fact that the informant in ethnographic research can act as a co-author and at the same time as an object of research, “giving change”. Here we are obviously faced (...) with a diversity of epistemic positions and the resulting distributed knowledge. The only question is to what extent this exotic example allows generalization within the framework of social cognition, not to mention the natural sciences and mathematics. Can we expect a special kind of mathematics or natural scientific generalizations from the natives? That they are willing to share the accumulated data about native nature, which they understand better than visiting white researchers, is beyond doubt, but is not this inferior function of the provider of scientific data rather a vestige of the colonial worldview? (shrink)

The article raises the problem of disciplinary differentiation of modern sciences and the question of whether their taxonomic and structural diversity corresponds to the actual differentiation of levels and kinds of nature that exist objectively in their autonomy? Or do the disciplines themselves constitute their own domains in the continuous and integral body of nature? In search of a solution to this dilemma, it is proposed to consider science as a communicative system, where each statement (publication) is defined in subject, (...) social and temporal dimensions. These communicative dimensions are proposed to be considered as principles of differentiation of scientific disciplines with the function of “breaker of natural continuity”. Accordingly, I distinguish (1) fundamental sciences oriented subject-wise; (2) disciplines oriented to external (social) requests from communicative systems adjacent to science, as well as disciplines crystallizing in response to epochal challenges of the time. It is substantiated that this kind of cognitive isolation of scientific domains is accompanied by an opposite – integrative – tendency. The latter is associated, firstly, with the socio-structural and socio-normative requirements of the scientific and educational functions of science, enshrined in the social structures of faculties and departments. Secondly, it is derived from the continuous, holistic and hierarchically organized external world of nature, which does not allow for sharp breaks and interruptions. (shrink)