An enormous amount of philosophical literature gets published nowadays. Some of it is good; some is fit only for pulping. We get into the habit not so much of reading as of glancing through the torrent that pours down on us. But sometimes special conditions arise. It so happened that I was forced to spend about a month in the hospital. I took with me the book Evolutionary Epistemology and the Logic of the Social Sciences: K. Popper and His Critics (...) [Evoliutsionnaia epistemologiia i logika sotsial'nykh nauk. K. Popper i ego kritiki] . I attentively read it through and without any irony I can say that I felt "legitimate pride and deep satisfaction." Legitimate pride for philosophy and deep satisfaction with the content of the book. And although readers of Problems of Philosophy [Voprosy filosofii] have already had the opportunity of reading a review of this book , I would like to return to it and make in passing a number of points about Popper's philosophy in general. (shrink)

Science is a historically evolved and developed system, which does not include every construction. If a new construction is to become part of scientific knowledge, it must fit into a certain paradigm or meet the conformity princilple and comply with certain general "rules of the game". These two aspects constitute the systemic principle, which thus works as a sort of a metaregulative.