Paradigms in law: the reality of modern legal science

The article is devoted to the study of scientific paradigms, in particular scientific paradigms in law. It reveals the essence and features of scientific paradigms based on the analysis of scientific works. Attention is drawn to the fact that the term «paradigm» entered the system of scientific knowledge by historical standards quite recently, in the second half of the twentieth century. This term owes its wide scientific use in the philosophy of science to the book by Tamas Kuhn, published in 1962 under the title «The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. An analysis of this work shows that the author considered science primarily as an activity carried out by different schools. At the same time, a paradigm is what unites members of the scientific community, and vice versa, the scientific community consists of people who recognize the paradigm. The authors of the article point out that each paradigm corresponds to a certain type of scientific discourse, scientific rationality. With the change of paradigm, the type of rationality changes, since rationality is, on the one hand, expediency, and on the other hand, one of the most important methods of science. Rationality cannot be non-paradigmatic, since rationality in general should be considered as compliance with the laws of reason, the laws of formal logic, and scientific rationality as a pure case of rationality. Researchers draw attention to the fact that the theory of paradigmatic science, which was developed by T. Kuhn, although not designed for social sciences, can still be applied to them. Investigating paradigms in law, the authors come to the conclusion that the vast majority of researchers understand the paradigm in law as the prevailing worldview guideline of individual and social assessment of law in solving scientific and practical problems of law enforcement. Attention is drawn to the fact that the recent trend in the philosophy of law is to turn to the multiplicity of the nature of the paradigm, which is probably explained by the rapid development of scientific knowledge, including interdisciplinary, and is also associated with socio-economic and political-legal events that are taking place. In this regard, we can state that jurisprudence has its own «family» of paradigms, which are a set of theoretical and methodological foundations used by the legal community and create the framework of scientific knowledge, acting as its fundamental construction.