This quote from Descartes’ treatise
Rules for the Direction of the Mind
offers a concise algorithm for scientific research, understandable to everyone
professionally involved in science, research as a process, a goal, and a tool.
‘Investigation’, that is, research itself, aimed at achieving the truth (or, let us
say more modestly, finding new knowledge that might bring us closer to
the truth), is impossible without a method, a certain approach that allows
us to achieve our goal.
We have dared to disturb the shadow of the great thinker to formulate
a title that looks rather pretentious if understood literally for a simple
reason; the current issue of
Quaestio Rossica
introduces a new section,
Modi
studiorum
(or “Methods of research/study”). Every innovation requires an
explanation; hence we are summoning Descartes, shifting the presentation
scheme familiar to readers usually built around the central
Problema voluminis
section. Such recentering, however, does not necessarily require changing the
order of our presentation; after all, ‘the circumference is nowhere, and the
center is everywhere’ [Шоню, с. 604]. Therefore, we will leave methods and
truth alone for the moment and present the central section of this issue.
