Theoretical and Practical Thinking in Social Development

Abstract

In order to control person's actions in relation to natural objects by means of thinking, he developed the most powerful cerebral apparatus among living beings. But it also became the basis for an incomparably more powerful informational phenomenon – social consciousness, which runs (through individual consciousnesses) the activity of society as a whole. It is carried out by means of individual cerebral structures interconnected by material sign systems. Therefore, the single process of thinking of each person includes two different components: thinking on the basis of ideal images of objects of the surrounding world (practical thinking), and on the basis of abstract signs denoting them (theoretical thinking). Practical thinking directly runs the practical activity of the individual to create consumer goods necessary for society from natural objects, while theoretical thinking is aimed at understanding the essence of the objects of this activity and, respectively, the development of its specific goals and tasks. Accordingly, society has formed two operational subsystems for communication with the environment: material (material and energy), which includes individuals who make up society in their productive function together with supporting material devices – tools of production (technosphere) and informational – the same individuals, but in the cognitive and controlling functions (noosphere). The interaction of the operational subsystems of society ensured its existence in the form of an egalitarian primitive tribe for about twenty thousand years. But the development of the noosphere gradually led to the fact that the theoretical thinking of each individual could no longer fully master all its achievements in cognition and the technosphere could no longer fully master the developing means of production. And then a new social phenomenon arose – the division of labor, which led to its specialization first between individuals and then between their groups, the connections between which determined the relations of production. So, it made the social structure of society dependent on the achievements of both theoretical and practical thinking. As a result of the development of productive forces, more and more production functions previously performed by man were transferred to technical systems, changing the nature of labor and, reciprocally, the social structure of society. And, finally, nowadays, there have appeared and are developing technical systems which take on more and more functions no longer in the material implementation of the production process, but in their management (artificial intelligence systems). As a result, there is gradually no need to apply practical thinking in production processes, and consequently in the division of labor. And this means that social groups with different interests are also disappearing, and society in the future will again acquire egalitarian unity, but on the scale of all mankind.