Публикации

Using mathematical modeling, we consider the phenomenon of singularity in the biological and social history. It is shown that hyperbolic trends in biological and social evolution can be explained by transitional processes that accompany the expansion of ecological niches due to periodically occurring revolutionary innovations. During these periods, strong positive feedbacks are actualized, leading to hyperbolic growth. However, this growth is then inhibited, and the system goes into a new qualitative state. Then, there is a relatively slow development of the updated system with a gradual accumulation of quantitative characteristics and a new innovative breakthrough. This cycle then repeats multiple times. In this regard, the system’s hyperbolic growth trends indicate the transitivity of its current state, while the time of singularity in this hyperbolic trend indicates the end of the transition process.

This book, including thirteen chapters, treats different aspects of epistolary genre in the history of sociology. Correspondence of sociologists contains a valuable material on the life and work of sociologists, on revealing of their intellectual exchange networks, on the assessment of theories influence, on the analysis of their elaboration, on the understanding of their social, intellectual and political context. In this book are considered the general issues of epistolary genre in the history of sociology, as well as the particular correspondence themes of some of its representatives. This is about letters of classics, well-known sociologists (like Marx, Durkheim, Bouglé, George Gurvitch, Michel Crozier, Robert Merton), as well as less known social scientists, whose epistolary heritage has a great importance.

В статье рассматриваются вопросы прогнозирования микроклимата городов и ветроэнергетического потенциала жилых зданий применительно к России, Северной и Восточной Европе. В исследовании проанализирована климатическая структура крупного города, биоклиматический комфорт, а также представлен климатический анализ на примере Москвы. Уточнена взаимосвязь ветрового режима с климатическими и градостроительными факторами. Представлены возможные подходы к оценке ветроэнергетического потенциала здания. Проанализирован зарубежный опыт и классификация факторов, влияющих на размещение ветроэнергетических установок. Отмечена возможность детализации данных микроклимата по ветровому режиму для размещения ветроэлектростанций с учетом благоустройства и озеленения городов. Рассмотрен вопрос первичной привязки ветроэнергетических установок в строительстве на основе ветроэнергетического потенциала зданий и территорий. Концепция "Умного города" рассматривается с целью формирования системы управления ветроэнергетическим потенциалом в городском строительстве и оценки комфортности аэрации для пешеходов с интеграцией в градостроительное энергетическое моделирование (УБЭМ).

In this chapter, we consider the process of technological progress presenting one of the options for measuring its speed throughout the entire historical process. We find that the general dynamics of accelerating technological growth over the past 40 thousand years can be described with amazing accuracy (R2 = 0.99) using the following simplest hyperbolic equation: yt = C/t0 − t, where yt is the technological growth rate measured as a number of technological phase transitions per unit of time. Although since 40,000 BP the speed of technological progress tended to generally increase, however, according to the theory of production principles on which we rely, the acceleration of technological progress had noticeable fluctuations. These fluctuations can be explained by the fact that technological development proceeded within the framework of super-long cycles. We show that, within these cycles, the phases of accumulation of basic breakthrough innovations are replaced by phases of rapid growth of improvements in basic innovations and their wide distribution. These fluctuations between cycle phases affect the pattern of acceleration of technological progress. Currently, there are a number of calculations of the point of singularity of the Big History and global evolution, which generally localize the singularity around the first half of the twenty-first century. The point of singularity in our calculations, if we rely only on historical time points, falls on 2018, that is, in principle, it fully fits the results of other studies. There is a fairly reasonable idea of slowing down a number of important social processes (such as demographic development, urbanization), including the speed of technological progress. Indeed, there are already some grounds for talking about signs of a slowdown in progress from the 1960 to 1970s. However, according to the theory of production principles, as already mentioned, there are strong fluctuations in the acceleration of technological progress. We assume that at the moment technological progress is in the fourth—the scientific and cybernetic—production principle. According to this theory, we expect a powerful acceleration of technological progress in the area between the 2030s and the 2070s. In this case, if we take into account the expected time points, the point of singularity, according to our calculations, is estimated to be around 2106. That is, with this method of calculation, we should first expect a new way of acceleration of technological progress, and then, its slowdown in the region of the end of the twenty-first century—the beginning of the 22nd. We also identify the social mechanism for such acceleration and deceleration: in the coming decades, the process of global ageing can cause technological acceleration first and change its direction, and then closer to the end of the present and the beginning of the next century, on the contrary, elderly society can be a brake on scientific-technological progress.

This chapter discusses in some detail the possibility of the Singularity being a product of biased human perception described by the Weber–Fechner law. It is shown that though the Weber–Fechner effect can produce series with a hyperbolic shape, the hyperbolic acceleration pattern with the twenty-first century Singularity detected in Panov and Modis–Kurzweil series is explained first of all by the actual hyperbolic acceleration of the global megaevolution.

People’s attachment to the plant world makes a great contribution to the maintenance of psychological well-being. At the same time, little is known regarding the contribution of attitudes to plants to people’s morality; the current study is aimed at filling this gap. We assumed that the more positive the attitude to plants is, the higher the level of moral motives is. The survey was conducted on the Russian sample; 257 participants (students from Moscow universities, 199 female, Mage = 21.1, SDage = 2.5), were recruited. The following tools were used: a questionnaire People and Plants (PaP) consisting of five sub-scales (joy, esthetics, practice, closeness to nature, and ecology) and Moral Motives Model scale (MMM scale) including six sub-scales (self-restraint, not harming, social order, self-reliance (industriousness), helping/fairness, and social justice). It was found that all parameters of positive attitudes to plants, except practice, were strongly positively connected with moral motives. Multi-regression analysis allowed developing certain models demonstrating the contribution of attachment to the plant world to people's morality. The proscriptive motives (especially self-restraint) are more sensitive to attitudes to flora as compared to prescriptive motives; prescriptive motive self-reliance was not predicted by the attitude to flora at all. Moreover, the findings seem to be gender-sensitive (predictions are higher in females). The obtained results are discussed referring to the reverence for life ethics by Schweitzer, deep ecology by Næss, Biophilia hypothesis by Wilson, and psychology of moral expansiveness by Crimston et al.