The history of scientific ideas through the prism of the history of philosophical ideas

The article proposes a method that builds a bridge between the history of science and the history of philosophy - a method of parallel reconstruction of the history of the formation of a scientific theory and its philosophical prototype, which is understood as a combination of philosophical premises and foundations of this theory. The method is based on a concept, according to which the actual being of philosophical ideas is, besides the possibilities of their own development, the potential being of scientific ideas. From the vast and multidimensional reservoir of philosophical ideas, the subsequent development of science actualizes and develops only some meanings and only in a historically specific concrete scientific interpretation. We certainly do not know what new reflections in the scientific consciousness one or another old philosophical idea can receive: theoretically, the number of such interpretations is infinite. But in the existing scientific theory, we are able to trace its philosophical background to its most basic premises. According to the authors, the consideration of the history of science in this vein contributes to the vision of intellectual history as a single process in which the history of philosophical ideas and the history of scientific ideas constantly resonate, mutually stimulating each other and merging in the process of intellectual progress. Finding the philosophical foundations of any modern scientific theory allows us to carry out its certain philosophical justification, which in a situation of competition with another scientific theory, ceteris paribus, can serve as an additional argument in favor of this theory.