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.
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## Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1991 Document 8 of 10 Page 4 is one of the areas of social research and a point of contact between the humanitarian and social sciences. 8. A.I. Panchenko: In my view, the interaction of the humanitarian-social and natural sciences can be most beneficial in the area of the problems of humanitarianizing biology and medicine. This conclusion can be confirmed, in the first place, from the example of literature on the mass information media and in books for now basically published abroad. They raise the questions of parapsychology, psychokinesis, extracensory perception, unidentified flying objects, astrology and so forth and these at present are also being discussed actively in our country. Here, it seems to me, the basic object of discussion to a significant degree relates to social psychology and it can be said the issue of the "'social health of society.'" In other words, during those moments of history when society is in a crisis stage of its development, certain things which "'replace'" reality are cultivated "'above'" and actively perceived, supported and experienced "'below.'" Moreover, on a general level the rise of such things, in my view, is tied to a need for "'miracles'" and this is internally inherent to man. Here it would be possible to argue about different historical forms of rationality or mentality, about political regimes, about global crises, or whatever you wish, but in man there is a need for a "'miracle'" and this is possibly responsible for the maintaining of "'social health'" and for creative activity. In my view, this need is one of the inner resources of human existence. And it must be supported, regardless of the distorted forms of its employment, for example, in the mass information media. Of course, here the role of medical workers is far from the last. 9. Secondly, in that same literature all the sought or supposedly visible 'substitute' things and abilities are established from the 'scientific' viewpoint. Here it is essential to figure out what a scientific viewpoint means. This has a common cultural point as there is the old tradition of putting natural science into opposition to the 'sciences dealing with the spirit' (W. Dilthey). If such a tradition is valid, then we cannot view biology as a sociohumanitarian discipline. I propose that the designated tradition is not quite valid. Certainly any sciences in one way or another derive from the needs of man and ultimately arrive at disclosing the conditions of his life. Natural sciences disclose the natural conditions, while the sociohumanitarian sciences show the social and spiritual ones. Understandable in this context is the great interest which is now being shown in the so-called anthropic principle in cosmology: together with physics, cosmology shows that the organization of the Universe is precisely one where life could arise in it and where man could appear along with life. The opinion of V.I. Vernadskiy is confirmed that life is a cosmic phenomenon.
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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.