The Significance of Nature and Scientific Cognition in the Shaping of Reflectiveness and Responsibility

Cognition is the basic human activity. Human cognition differs from analogical activities in nature. Reflectiveness is inherent in human cognition and it produces meaning in the human consciousness, which allows individuals to discover correlations that exist in the world and allows them to experience themselves as active agents. Nature is at the same time the subject and the object of human cognition. It initiates and shapes human reflectiveness. By getting to know reality and discussing it in interpersonal dialogue, the individual opens up to the truth and obtains knowledge about the world. Truth is nothing but the adjustment of human cognition to objective external reality. Science is born in this dialogue of the individual with reality and with other individuals. Science as universal knowledge about the world shapes human reflectiveness by introducing it into a broader circle of truth. Scientific cognition makes individual s more responsible for their existence in the world. The truths which we know thanks to science mobilize people to update the good contained in matter - to the responsible engineering. Cognitive relativism is a modern day dilemma. Contemporary people don’t read reality, but create it. Their cognition has become pseudoscientific — detached from the truth of being, it has resulted in the catastrophic effects of engineering. Contemporary people have subordinated their reflectiveness and will to pragmatic truth and in this way make their activities in the world irresponsible