Civilizational Foundations of Socio-Humanitarian Criteria for Evaluating Technological Innovations

Malakhova Elena Vladimirovna ORCID: 0000-0002-1829-8234 PhD in Philosophy Doctoral Student of the Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences. 115409, Russia, Moscow, Goncharnaya str., 12, p. 1. e.v.malahova@mail.ru Other publications by this author

1. IntroductionWhen it comes to the criteria for evaluating scientific and technological innovations, there are a number of difficulties associated both with the interpretation of the concept of the evaluation criterion itself and with the questions of the origin and sources of these criteria.

In this article, we will focus on the latter, although clarifying the meaning of the criterion, the norm, and the essence of the assessment will also be necessary.

The purpose of this work is to find the reason for the origin of these criteria, organically related to the technogenic civilization that gave rise to technological innovations, being then forced to develop forms of regulation of their implementation and development.

The questions that we would like to try to answer in this paper are the following.

1) What are the criteria for evaluating technological innovations? To do this, we will need to address the problem of what the criteria of any assessments are in general.

2) Where do certain criteria come from in a technogenic civilization (and in any civilizations in general)?

3) How is the variability inherent in civilizations related to the emergence and modification of the criteria of interest to us? This issue is especially important for a man-made civilization with its scientific and technological progress and, consequently, constant variability. Moreover, since there are more and more groundless statements about the crisis of this type of civilization, in this paper we propose to specifically focus on the causes of this crisis and its role as a force forming new civilizational foundations for the criteria for evaluating scientific and technological innovations.

2. MethodologyIt should begin, as usual, with the search and selection of a suitable methodological basis for research.

This work is devoted, first of all, to the problems of functioning of society in the conditions of mass introduction of technological innovations, therefore, we will leave aside the questions of fundamental axiology, focusing primarily on the problems of civilizational dynamics and the value core of culture and civilization.

From this point of view, the object, independent of us, will appear, oddly enough, not civilization as such, but the existing and historically changing society. And civilization will turn out to be one of the parts of the subject of research that requires appropriate problematization along with others: the concept and meaning of the civilizational crisis and the role of the value component.

If we try to find out the relationship of these parts of the complex subject of our research, we can still make a number of assumptions, the substantiation of which will be devoted to the following parts of the work: 1) the value component can be considered as the core, the fundamental part of the worldview of any civilization, determining through ideas about the possible and desirable, including the vectors of the development of material culture; 2) the type of civilization (including traditional and man-made) is a concept that is used to delineate a certain range of historically changing phenomena as belonging in terms of content and formal (structural) characteristics to a common field of culture for them; 3) the modification of the criteria for evaluating innovations generated by a particular civilization marks serious ideological shifts, caused by the need to bring these innovations into line with existing regulatory systems or, if necessary, supplement the latter – and all this happens in the form of more or less large-scale systemic civilizational crises; 4) and finally, such a crisis itself is a process that can take place only within a certain system as one of its possible states arising in response to internal problems or external challenges.

Thus, we come to consider the technogenic civilization as a kind of system in which (perhaps) there is a crisis associated with its value component and the gradual modification of such.

As a methodological approach in this study, we use the concept of autopoiesis proposed by U. Maturana ^[1] and expanded by N. Luhmann ^[2] in his numerous works on social systems. We also rely on the works of A. Bogdanov ^{[3, 4]} and some other theorists of the system movement ^[5], who examined the features and significance of crises in social systems.

We assume that if there are some sources of basic norms in our modern technogenic civilization, then they, as such, will be displayed at all levels of the existence of this civilization and its introduction of technological innovations into its daily practice.

3. Results and discussion3.1. Problematization of technogenic civilization as a type of civilizational development

The concepts of civilization in general and technogenic in particular, by themselves, before being used in this work, require some explanation, since their content is constructed depending on the chosen theoretical and methodological platform.

We do not have the opportunity here to consider in detail the features of the many definitions of civilization, so we will limit ourselves to giving such a formulation of the definition of this term that will give us the opportunity to continue working with it within the framework of this small study. So, by civilization here we understand both a certain stage of social development (using the division of civilizations into traditional and technogenic proposed by V.S. Stepin ^[6]), and the state of society as an integral system inherent in this stage.

The concept of civilization was originally used in a relatively narrow sense ^[7], practically being identified with the concept of culture used in approximately the same meaning – as education, upbringing and following the norms of a certain society. The term "civilization" has been actively used since about the XVIII century, and a significant surge of interest in civilizational issues occurred at the end of the XIX - first half of the XX century, when the classical works of N. Y. Danilevsky, O. Spengler, A. Toynbee, P. A. Sorokin were written. It is worth noting that their concepts, which focused on the multiplicity and uniqueness of civilizations, were later often opposed to linear-stadial approaches, in particular, formational, although the latter is not always legitimate.

One of the landmark attempts to overcome this often imaginary opposition was made by V. S. Stepin in his concept of technogenic civilization. On the one hand, Stepin contrasts technogenic civilization with traditional ones as a certain stage – quite within the framework of a stadium approach. On the other hand, traditional civilizations can be considered in all their multiplicity and uniqueness of each of them, despite the fact that all of them, according to Stepin, are qualitatively different from man-made, expansive in nature and striving for unification. If traditional civilizations saw ideal patterns in the past and therefore sought to preserve the basic worldview structures unchanged, as far as possible, then man–made civilization, on the contrary, is directed to the future - from the imperfect present forward, to progress, mainly due to the development of science and technology.

And here this civilizational type falls into a trap capable of causing, and perhaps already causing, its crisis state, if only because civilization as a certain socio–cultural type should develop evenly, while it is definitely possible to talk about progress only in very few areas, one of which, of course, is science and technology. Thus, anticipating our subsequent arguments, we can say that a man-made civilization striving for progress inevitably faces internal contradictions due to the different ability of its "parts" to change.

3.2. The concept of evaluation criteriaSpeaking from the standpoint of philosophy about the criteria for evaluating technological innovations, it is necessary to clarify what exactly we can generally understand by such criteria.

Here we will separate the concepts of evaluation and value, recognizing that the latter is formed as a result of the former. We also believe that value is the result of the subject's activity in evaluating any object with the help of some criterion known in advance to the subject. The criterion itself, in turn, especially if we are talking about collective social subjects, turns out to be directly related to the existing norm postulating that something is mandatory/allowed/prohibited.

The norm makes it possible to evaluate an action or phenomenon, but does not explain why it should be evaluated as more or less or absolutely positive, negative, or neutral. The explanation of the position from which the assessment is made is carried out within the framework of a particular ethical concept. The phenomenon can be useful or harmful from the utilitarian point of view of meeting the goal, or from the point of view of influencing the individual, or for something else ^{[8, p. 205]}. Here, of course, we can recall Hume's argument that the description does not logically follow the prescription. This is true, but in fact, from understanding the connection between phenomena, the prescription of more useful actions may well follow, which is, in fact, one of the primary quasi-empirical justifications of norms. In situations where the justification of assessments and norms can be quasi-empirical ^{[8, p. 252]}, in principle, such a justification fits in with an explanation of why the norm arose, and sometimes why it is better to follow it than vice versa. In general, philosophical ethics and, in part, other philosophical disciplines are just not fully empirical (or even non-empirical) justifications of norms.

Nevertheless, we cannot agree with Ivin's statement ^{[8, p. 93]} that moral reasoning has a dual descriptive-prescriptive character. We insist that any moral judgment that seems to be a description ("this act is good/bad") absolutely always contains a prescription that it is worth or not worth doing so further. That is, such judgments are always prescriptive. Another thing is that their apparent descriptiveness leads to a sense of their objectivity, immutability and indisputability.

Practice is a universal criterion of both truth and value only on a purely empirical and utilitarian level. At higher levels, the criteria for both lie in theoretical constructions – either scientific (in the case of truth), or philosophical (axiological, ethical and others – in the case of value). In addition, even the utilitarian level of evaluating something as useful inevitably goes back either to a scientific theory justifying some "benefit", or, again, to philosophical and ethical concepts. Accordingly, in the end, it is the scientific/philosophical/religious concepts that dominate in a particular society that will determine even seemingly purely utilitarian assessments, not to mention all others. These estimates will also be significant, as we assume, at all levels of the existence of a particular civilization, since it is a recursive autopoietic system that constantly reproduces itself and repeats its main structural features at all levels.

3.3. Civilization as an autopoietic systemCivilizations have been studied and continue to be considered from the standpoint of cultural studies, history, anthropology and other disciplines, which leads to a wide variety of existing methods, the most important among which historically were descriptive, "individualizing", in the terminology of the Neo-Kantians.

However, many things began to change with the advent of systemic and structural-functional approaches. On the one hand, they had a very powerful heuristic potential, on the other hand, the hopes placed on them were so great that they could hardly be justified. Despite the active development of both the system approach (in a broad sense) and the general theory of systems, along with its numerous derivatives, nevertheless, in general, the system movement began to move to the periphery of scientific discourse by the end of the XX and the beginning of the XXI centuries, since, according to many researchers, it was unable to solve the stated tasks (or, rather, super-tasks) and create a common theoretical and methodological platform that is relevant for almost all areas of scientific knowledge.

There are several reasons for this, and in retrospect they are quite clearly visible. One of them was previously identified in the criticism of the theory of systems by P. K. Anokhin ^[9] – due to the lack of a concept of a system-forming principle, it is often unclear why and how this particular system arises, and not some other in each individual case. Here we can also come to a more fundamental question: on what general basis, apart from a somewhat controversial series of inductive generalizations of empirical data, is it possible to conclude that a number of different (social, biological, physical) systems have fundamental common features? It is possible to find an answer to it, probably, only with an exhaustive (and therefore hardly possible) knowledge of each individual particular system, the ideas of which could then be combined into a kind of general metatheory, which would already function, most likely, as a kind of substitute for philosophical ontologies in the spirit of Pythagoras, Aristotle or Hegel.

The system theory, in fact, has remained a kind of "system hypothesis", extremely interesting and promising, but never fully substantiated. However, the latter did not prevent the use of a number of private developments of the system movement for the development of a number of areas and disciplines – from information theory to psychology. That is, where the desired system-forming factor is present, and the essential (and not only formal) features of individual systems are well studied, a systematic approach can be applied quite successfully.

It is characteristic that classical structuralism and structural functionalism faced similar problems around the same period. We will talk about the latter in more detail later, and on issues related to the former, it is advisable to refer, for example, to a fairly well-known and in some sense even programmatic work within the framework of poststructuralism – the "Missing Structure" of U. Eco ^[10]. This author, no less a scientist than a writer, quite clearly outlines the reasons for the rejection of the fundamental classical structuralist constructions of K. Levi-Strauss ^[11]. Despite the fact that it is very tempting to find common fundamental "protostructures" in the culture, language, and mythology of various peoples, but the higher the level of abstraction here, the more difficult it is to verify the conclusions obtained using empirical data, and the higher the chance that the facts will be "adjusted" to the theory. In order to avoid all of the above, Eco suggests not ontologizing structures, but deliberately stopping at the level where they can still be applied, albeit to a greater extent private.

But here another extremely important and difficult issue remains unresolved, especially for the humanities. Namely: on what basis can we be sure at all that the system we have built has explanatory power, and indeed somehow correlates with the "real" world? Indeed, in the case of studying social, cultural and psychological issues, each phenomenon is capable of carrying individual traits that cannot always be neglected, since they may be critical for the further behavior of this phenomenon. And having considered even a sufficiently large set of facts, we can almost never be sure that there are no counterexamples among the (and often immeasurably larger) set that we have not considered. Or that the patterns we have deduced really take into account all the significant parameters of even one single phenomenon, and do not simplify it forcibly.

The systematic approach itself in a broad sense can be attributed to generalizing methods, and the dispute as to how such methods are generally legitimate in the humanities goes back to the neo-Kantians. It may seem that this problem is basically unsolvable, but this is so only in a certain, if you will, "coordinate system" of cognitive activity. Moreover, the idea transferring systemicity from the knowable to the knower, again, is not something new, and is presented in the most explicit and justified form in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Considering the fundamental question of how a priori synthetic judgments are possible at all, without which science could not be presented as a fact, Kant, as is known, insists that it is the cognizing subject that forms the knowable, and not vice versa, therefore, the very formulation of the question in which there is a separately knowable reality, a kind of systemic reality, would be incorrect. theory and the cognizing subject, trying to bring the second in line with the first. "Reason must approach nature, on the one hand, with its own principles, only according to which phenomena that agree with each other can have the force of laws, and, on the other hand, with experiments invented in accordance with these principles in order to draw knowledge from nature..." ^{[12, p. 17]}.

Thus, if we apply all of the above to a systematic approach (not even a system theory), then we can hope to remove the above methodological contradiction. In this case, we do not undertake to assert in the spirit of subjective idealism that we get into a vicious circle by studying those systems that we create ourselves, regardless of external reality. On the contrary, consistency in this case will rather be a structured form through which, in principle, we can first notice, and then try to explain the interrelationships of phenomena that exist in reality. Here one could draw an analogy with any natural language (also representing a system), outside of which it is hardly possible to imagine human thinking.

However, for the purposes of our research, it is necessary to take into account the specifics of systems of a special kind – such as civilizations. On the one hand, their extreme scale often makes it very difficult to empirically verify the revealed hypothetical patterns. On the other hand, civilizations themselves are, in a sense, "man-made" formations in the sense that they were created by people, albeit not purposefully. The observer and the researcher, thus, simultaneously creates a theory as an explanatory system and at the same time, with this theory, he is inscribed in his own civilization, which can also be understood as a complex system of interrelations.

One of the most consistent and at the same time relatively recent attempts to apply a systematic approach to the study of a dynamically developing society has been the research of N. Luhmann. He also analyzed in detail the methodological foundations of the possibility of such an approach, so an appeal to his works here will be more than appropriate.

Luhmann defends, among other things, the approaches of his predecessors in social research – structural functionalists. Despite the fact that the dominance of structural functionalism in social research did not last much longer than structuralism – in research in the fields of cultural studies, anthropology and ethnography – still its heuristic potential should not be underestimated. The structural and functional approach made it possible, first of all, to understand what parts a particular society consists of, how these parts are interconnected and why they are necessary in principle. Without all this, it is hardly possible to build any coherent holistic theory explaining social phenomena. And Luhmann quite rightly draws attention to the fact that criticism of structural functionalism is hardly justified from the standpoint that it is allegedly unable to explain social dynamics and the emergence of social crises and conflicts. As we will see later, the phenomenon of crises itself can arise only in a certain system that must already exist for this, change over time and, probably, interact with the external environment for itself, and the latter can be both a resource and a catalyst for possible changes.

It is also worth mentioning here at least briefly that initially the formation of structural and functional approaches was influenced not only by such classics of sociology as E. Durkheim, but also by ethnographers and anthropologists - for example, B. Malinovsky and A. Radcliffe-Brown. In order to understand the peculiarities of cultures and societies unknown to European researchers, a theoretical and methodological apparatus was needed that would allow drawing parallels and "translating" the concepts of one culture into the language of another. If only for this purpose, it was necessary to allocate certain structures in cultures and societies. Somewhat later, such approaches became a kind of "common place" also in applied research of various subcultures within even a single society, since the XX century provided extremely rich material for study here.

Luhmann, based on the works of his predecessors, nevertheless creates his own holistic theory, in which he quite often relies on second–order cybernetics, where there is a place for an observer - an extremely important component for Luhmann's systemic research.

Considering society as a system, Luman pays extremely significant, although well-deserved, attention to the very concept of the system, its possible characteristics and features. This is what makes his approach especially interesting for us.

Luhmann begins by defining the system, so to speak, "from the outside" – from the point of view of its difference from everything that is not it. If we are talking about any open system (and it is such that Luhmann is interested in), then it can exist only in the relationship of exchange with an environment external to itself, which will also be defined as such in relation to this system. The system, therefore, primarily postulates itself as a difference between itself and the surrounding world. And in the same connection, the system as such is capable of generating information.

This point is especially important precisely for the social and cultural systems we are interested in. These are primarily symbolic and normative systems. If you imagine them as a kind of language, then it will not only communicate and reveal certain meanings, but also at the same time hide them from all those who do not own it. One of the functions of cultural symbols, noticeable in the first place, is the function of separation, delineation of cultural space or some part of it. It can be the boundary between the sacred and the profane, or between two cultures, or between culture and subculture. In all cases, it is the boundary that will determine both the space of the system itself and what will become the external environment in relation to the latter, as well as the possibilities and types of relations between them.

Luhmann believes that the system "builds itself as a concatenation of operations. The difference between the system and the environment arises solely from the fact that one operation generates the next operation of the same type" ^{[13, p. 79]}. Thus, the first difference provokes the second, third, and so on, creating a system in a "primary" version along the chain, which does not mean that its internal structure will remain homogeneous at the same time.

The postulation of a single operation that creates a system gives Luhmann the opportunity to move on to one of the fundamental concepts of his theory – the concept of communication. It is communication, according to Luhmann, that forms society as a system, the existence of which is maintained in the future. At the same time, communication itself includes both information about something happening ("external reference") and about oneself ("self-reference"). Communication appeals to itself and constantly reproduces itself. Thus, according to Luhmann, in principle, it does not go beyond the framework of the system that it forms and restricts itself. At the same time, the system exists and is reproduced by constant self-copying, which Luhmann calls "re-entry".

Communication, however, is carried out by a subject, an observer, who can also carry out a kind of "external" observation (although this can be said with a stretch), fixing the differences between the system and its external environment, and self-observation inside the system where he is. Switching between these two actions, the scientist can simultaneously see the self-description of society from the inside, while trying to explain it as if from the outside.

The system itself, Luhmann believes, always has the property of operational closeness, that is, its operations always exist only inside it, not extending to the space surrounding it. However, this does not mean that it does not communicate with the outside world in any way. In order to "master" something external to itself, the system must, in some way, "appropriate" it - first make it a part of itself, translate it into an understandable language, reformulate it and, thus, extend to all those phenomena that it wants to "understand".

Here Luhmann also refers to the concept of "structural conjugacy", in his own words, borrowed from Maturana. The system does not exchange with the outside world what constitutes its own separate existence. But it can be structurally correlated with individual segments of the surrounding reality that are at least in some kind of similarity with it, so this conjugacy is possible only selectively.

Interestingly, Luhmann, unlike many other authors, quite clearly distinguishes between the system and the structure, which are sometimes almost identified in the literature. For Luhmann, a structure is something that is created by the system through its own operations, and there may be many potentially variable structures in the system, which, nevertheless, may not particularly affect the entire system as a whole and the possibilities of its vital activity.

For comparison, we can give definitions of the system and structure from the New Philosophical Encyclopedia. "A system ... is a set of elements that are in relationships and connections with each other, which forms a certain integrity, unity" ^[14]. "The structure ... is a set of stable connections of an object that ensure the preservation of its basic properties under various external and internal changes, the main characteristic of the system, its invariant aspect" ^[15].

The structural self-organization of the system, according to Luhmann, can occur only because the system, through its operations, is able to create and determine its own states, which make possible all further similar operations. The author of the concept calls this feature of the systems "autopoiesis".

Linking, thus, the emergence of structures in the system with its operations, Luhmann introduces another important remark: in order for the system to use (and, apparently, reproduce) its structures, it must "be in the process of operating" ^{[13, p. 105]}.

So, civilization in general and technogenic, in particular, in order to create and reproduce those worldview concepts fundamental to itself (within the framework of science, religion or philosophy) that make any assessments possible, must constantly reproduce these ideas in any of its private structures. If this does not happen for some reason, there is a mismatch in the interaction of these subsystems, provoking a civilizational crisis. As we will see, it also takes place in modern technogenic civilization and serves as a kind of catalyst for the formation of new socio-cultural criteria for evaluating technological innovations.

3.4. The concept and significance of civilizational crises. The crisis of man-made civilizationMuch has been said and written about the fact that modern civilization is in a state of crisis, so that this statement has become almost a "commonplace" of modern humanitarian discourse.

However, when we talk about such a crisis, it is not enough just to state some undesirable state of modern society or some of its subsystems from our point of view. For the purposes of both scientific and philosophical analysis, it is necessary to identify the features that distinguish the crisis stage from all others, as well as to clarify the causes of its occurrence, which would both explain this phenomenon and offer possible forecasts of the further development of the situation.

Based on all that has been said, we, first of all, will raise the question of on what basis it is possible to talk about the crisis of man-made civilization at all. The answer to this question will also include an inevitable appeal to the value and ideological problems of technological progress, thanks to which this type of civilization arose and exists precisely in the quality that contributed to both its development and the onset of a crisis state.

So, if we are talking about the possibility of a certain civilizational crisis, then it is necessary to clarify on what grounds, apart from purely evaluative judgments, this statement can be based. To do this, let's explain what we mean by a crisis here. The definition of the crisis, again, will directly follow from what theoretical and methodological grounds we will rely on. This dependence is easy to trace, considering the historical evolution of the concept of "crisis", which has been used since Antiquity in political and medical meanings, then mentioned in the Middle Ages and in Modern times, each time acquiring different meanings depending on the position of specific authors.

However, attempts not just to state, but also to explain and predict crises can only be associated with the beginning of the application of systemic approaches and methods already in the XX century. In this regard, it is impossible not to mention the work of the Russian thinker A. A. Bogdanov ^{[3, 4]}, who was one of the first to state the systemic nature of crises. According to Bogdanov, crises are states that are possible and periodically occur in any systems, including social ones, and are subject to consideration and explanation based on the characteristics of these systems and the features of their interaction with the external environment for them. This approach marked the beginning of the consideration of crises as a systemic phenomenon, which is associated with the ability of systems to variability.

Problematization of crises, freed from personal assessments, fears, hopes, disappointments, moralizing and other external and largely unnecessary layers became possible when the idea of a person's moral responsibility for the present state of society began to leave, if not social, then at least scientific discourse. That is, relatively recently – in the second half of the XIX century (Burckhardt) and at the beginning of the XX (Bogdanov).

Bogdanov's arguments about social crises are particularly interesting. So, in the last volume of his "Tectology" Bogdanov writes that in order to foresee the consequences of the social revolution, the observer needs to mentally decompose the social system into elements, taking into account their functions, structural relationships, historical continuity – all that, according to Bogdanov, their "viability" will consist of in the face of the fact that which he himself calls a disaster. The collapse of the system (its crisis) will inevitably have to end with the restoration of its equilibrium at a new level – based on Bogdanov's previous postulates, in particular, that structures (egressive centers) seeking to exercise the same powers in any sphere will inevitably compete, and those who win in the end will win. they will demonstrate more flexibility and plasticity in response to the current demands of the environment.

In the end, Bogdanov postulates the universality of crises for any system that changes over time, that is, changes its organizational structure, going through a series of small and large crises. Equilibrium, therefore, becomes for Bogdanov a special case of crises, and not vice versa. However, it is only on the basis of such a vision of crises that it is possible not only to describe and evaluate them after the fact, but also to explain and anticipate, and in some cases to use their potential to direct changes in the system in the right direction.

Bogdanov wraps up his extensive work with an inevitable, probably, appeal to philosophical dialectics, which, however, may seem somewhat unexpected in light of his attempts to disown philosophy in every possible way in the first volume of Tectology. However, Bogdanov's approach is dialectical in itself to such a large extent that he himself is forced to admit it, believing dialectics to be historically prior to his tectology. The latter, indeed, can be considered a development of the principles of the first and, to some extent, their more detailed explanation.

Indeed, where Bogdanov himself believes that he criticizes dialectics, it may seem to the modern reader that he rather complements and clarifies it. For example, he writes that in Marxist (and Hegelian) dialectics, the principle of the emergence of antithesis in its relation to the thesis is postulated without explaining the mechanism and reasons for their mutual relations.

Filling this "gap", Bogdanov focuses on the interaction of the system with the external environment, which determines the complex of "responses" of the system, causing disorganization processes in it as crises of its modification, and then achieving equilibrium at a new level. Thus, dialectical changes, according to Bogdanov, are determined by two factors – the external influence of the environment, which causes the system to react and change; and the internal properties of the system itself, which determine in which direction and how much it is able to change at all. The crisis, therefore, will represent such a change in the system–forming characteristics (due to external or internal influences), thanks to which the system enters a state of instability - and is already able to come out of the latter in a qualitatively new state, unless it is completely destroyed.

If we are talking about the crisis of man-made civilization, then in order to have some measure of the presence or absence of such a crisis state in principle, it is necessary to clarify what are the system-forming principles for it, as a result of which they may be subject to changes, how exactly and, if possible, to predict with what consequences.

And here we can just assume what kind of impacts are capable of introducing a man-made civilization into a state of instability and crisis. This type of civilizational development itself arose due to accelerated scientific and technological progress, caused, in turn, by the spread of a scientific worldview and related values - which did not completely cancel or replace the previous value and worldview systems.

Technogenic civilization is based on the achievements of science, which is based, in turn, on the values of truth, scientific novelty and technological progress inextricably linked with all this. However, all the other values necessary for the functioning of societies in this type of civilization had to be formed in parallel with the development of the scientific worldview and in many ways arose long before it. These are all the value systems on which the normative complexes of social institutions are based, different from the scientific and technical sphere, even if they are connected with it.

Traditional civilizations developed rather slowly in all their spheres, and therefore this development was relatively uniform. However, the sharp (on the scale of history, of course) leap forward that science has made and continues to make has disrupted this internal coherence of civilizational changes, on the one hand, giving us all the benefits of technological progress, on the other hand, creating prerequisites for a future crisis that inevitably must arise in such a system with the growth of its internal contradictions due to the above-mentioned inconsistency in the development of its parts.

According to A. P. Nazaretyan ^[16], every new technology that is critically important for a particular society is capable of generating more or less noticeable crises until this society "adapts" to it as a product of its own development through the modification of regulatory systems at all levels of social life that this technology is capable of at least somehow affect. If we take into account that each new technology, in addition to increasing efficiency in comparison with the previous ones, is also, as a rule, capable of carrying a more significant danger with irresponsible use, which is not uncommon in the absence of the necessary regulatory complexes, then all this can further aggravate the social consequences of such crises, adding to social problems a number of additional, for example, environmental.

Technogenic civilization, although it began to take shape, according to Stepin, at the beginning of Modern times, entered the phase of its active development in the era of industrialization. Therefore, in addition to the scientific and technical sphere, the features of this civilizational type are well illustrated by the example of industrial production and the work of the enterprises that provided it. The system features of their functioning are described in sufficient detail in the works of S. Bira ^[5], where it is shown that these organizations are essentially recursive systems, since the fundamental structural features of them as a whole are repeated in each of their separate parts and determine the consistency of the functioning of these parts.

So, man-made civilization, aimed at constant development and progress, itself exists in the same mode as the organizations generated by it, which, however, claim to cover only the sphere of production belonging to them, leaving, of course, the remaining areas of public life to other social institutions.

However, this civilization (like any other), in principle, cannot ignore any spheres of public life without leading itself to a crisis, since these spheres, in such a case, will be regulated by regulatory systems based on the values of other civilizational types and historical epochs. Using Bogdanov's terminology, several egressive (structure–forming) centers will arise in the civilizational system ^{[4, p. 118-120]}, formed by various fundamental value concepts and forming their own normative complexes, at best independent of each other, at worst mutually opposing in general.

4. ConclusionSo, for the purposes of studying the foundations of socio-humanitarian criteria for evaluating scientific and technological innovations, civilization in general and technogenic in particular should be presented as a socio-cultural system (or supersystem).

Its system-forming principles will be those that could be applied in all its spheres (including social institutions), regardless of their particular characteristics. That is, such principles are a kind of normative framework for such a system. For civilization, this is its value and ideological basis. It is she who represents the civilizational basis for socio-humanitarian criteria for evaluating technological innovations.

Thus, modern man-made civilization is a type of civilizational development that can give grounds for adequate criteria for evaluating technological innovations in terms of compliance with the latter goals arising from the ideas about the need for constant scientific and technological progress, but has difficulties when it comes to ideas about meanings and goals that are outside the subject of science.

What can be the forecasts of further developments? Any system, having entered the crisis phase, can either stop in its development (but such a frozen state of civilization is unlikely to threaten for any long time), or make a qualitative leap and adapt to the changed situation for its own more effective functioning, or, if the latter fails, collapse. In order to avoid negative options for a possible future, a technogenic civilization will necessarily have to find for itself those value systems that would contribute to the development of normative mechanisms that are uniform for all subsystems of social life – in the sense that these subsystems can develop evenly, supporting rather than weakening each other and, moreover, not entering into contradictions that can destroy civilization from the inside.

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