Documents / FOIA release
This is a CIA JPRS translation, dated 1 January 1991, of an editorial roundtable written up by V.I. Shamshurin for the Moscow journal Sotsiologicheskiye Issledovaniya. Soviet scientists, physicians and philosophers discuss medicine and biology as sociohumanitarian sciences and the links between the natural and social sciences. One participant says public interest in parapsychology, UFOs and astrology reflects a human need for miracles during social crisis. He also criticizes parapsychology experiments and Uri Geller's performances.
“National Academy of Sciences”1 page
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## Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1991 Document 8 of 10 "population" as a whole, as was the case before) and makes it possible to thoroughly study man on a modern level (we have the most advanced equipment) and promptly treat the illnesses. 29. V.I. Shamshurin: In actuality, what principle should underlie the definition of man's health? Real altruism and humanism with its assertion of the generic essence of human mental activity preserving in his 'image and likeness'' the equal rights of all persons to the spiritual and material values of mankind's culture? Or misanthropy and xenophobia based upon the principle of 'ethnic selectivity'' with its constant 'veterinary'' desire to place people, as Chaadayev wrote, in closed stalls? Here the arguments inherent to these social concepts and drawn from one or another 'national geneology'' must prove that the harmonious combination of the fullness of thought and physical activity are possible only within the limits of one but only one nation more often understood biologically, in the form of a certain 'selection,' when the possibility is admitted of achieving a certain 'purebreed strain of new people'' and 'builders of a new society.' 30. R.A. Chizhenkova: The role of social science and particularly culture in the natural sciences is much greater than the most convinced representatives of the humanities can imagine. For me, a natural scientist, this is indisputable. 31. In recent decades in reviewing the problems of the development of society it has become a rule to discard psychological questions with extreme decisiveness and with extraordinary closeness seek out the boundary between the social and biological aspects of man, thereby splitting social sciences away from natural sciences, that is, from the foundation. Social sciences were being turned into the area of a parascience. As for the biological characteristics of man, such a deep abyss was created between them and social phenomena that man was actually no more than a ''cog'' in the social mechanism. Here there was a confusing of such concepts as society and the crowd, the individual and personality. 32. V.I. Shamshurin: How do you view the consequences of the notion of a ''cog'' in biology and in the social sciences? 33. R.A. Chizhenkova: The complete adaptation of a biological species to surrounding reality paralyzes its development and ultimately leads to extinction (P. Teilhard de Chardin). This is the case in biology. In and of itself social adaptation is a good thing. However, the variation of it which is optimal for the individual as a rule is an impediment in the development of society. To some degree it works for the good of the individual but not for the social organism. Those who rested on their laurels during the 'cult of
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 13 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.