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.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
# Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1991 ## Document 8 of 10 traced in all stages of its development and in all its manifestations, with the exception of the present stage in the development of human society. 15. The destruction and pollution of the environment, in reaching a scale threatening the health of people and the possibility of their further existence, is the result primarily of the wasteful, noneconomic use of enormous energy capacity which human society has gained in recent decades. The ecological problem is largely exacerbated by the food problem. The intensification of food production everywhere has been accompanied by an exceptionally rapid rise in the expenditures of anthropogenic energy per unit of product, by an accelerated growth of pollution and destruction of the environment, by a deterioration of food quality and by a negative influence of it [food?] on human health. 16. The genesis and initial development of culture and social relations of all peoples, regardless of their nationality and geographic location, obviously and with good reason are permeated with and accompanied by artistic images of the methods of securing food, the most precious and irreplacable type of free energy. 17. V.I. Shamshurin: You are right. At present, this is being intensely studied by representatives of a recent current in foreign sociology, the followers of 'figurative' sociology of N. Elias. 18. I.I. Sventitskiy: And they are right to do this, as the needs of man in the preindustrial period were very largely determined by the energy found in food. During extensive industrial development, the technogenic energy consumed by man surpassed by many-fold the energy consumed in food. During this period technologies were clearly energy-wasteful and this became the main reason for the exacerbation of global problems. Precisely man's awareness of the particularly important social importance of bioenergetic extremality in the development of living systems, including human society, and the inevitability of shifting it to autotrophy will make it possible to accelerate the development of energy-saving and ecologically safe technologies, protect nature and ensure the survival of man under the conditions of the biosphere. 19. V.I. Shamshurin: Thus, the points of contact and similarity of social and natural sciences can be seen. What about the differences? In what way does philosophy differ from medicine? 20. A.S. Ivanov: The difference is as follows. Our main philosophical aphorism know thyself' (or nature' or society') belongs to the realm of recommendations, advice for long research, wishes and desires for ideals that would be difficult to
Not linked to a story yet.
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.