Human Genome as an Object of Interdisciplinary Socio-Humanitarian Research and a System of Appropriate Methodological Means.

Abstract

The research was preceded by a comprehensive analysis of scientific articles devoted to the problems to obtain, store and use a person’s genomic information. As a result, the author put forward a hypothesis about the interdisciplinary interaction of social sciences and humanities during the research, the object being the human genome. The research tests the hypothesis on the basis of disclosing its subject - the human genome as an object of interdisciplinary social and humanitarian research and the system of methodological means corresponding to them. Along the way, the author identified the methodological interaction between natural and social sciences and humanities, which resulted in the emergence of such synthetic areas of knowledge as psychogenetics and behavioral genetics.

During the research author relied on the general philosophical means of the methodology of science (categories of materialistic dialectics, foundations, conditions and principles of scientific knowledge), the systemic and structural method and general logical methods (analogy, synthesis, analysis), which are widely used in socio-humanitarian studies.

As a result of the research, it was concluded that the special significance of the consequences of studying and using the human genome for society and individual determines the a priori social and humanitarian interdisciplinary connections, thanks to which the human genome becomes the object of interdisciplinary social and humanitarian research. These research analysis made it possible to reveal their subject orientation towards the social regulation of genomic research, legal protection of genomic information, and the focus on the human genome research standardization (and in this sense - foreseeability) and the use of their results.

At the same time, the methodology of three levels is used: philosophical and methodological analysis, general scientific methodological principles and a special scientific methodological approach. Within philosophical and methodological analysis, the epistemological framework surrounding human genome is set by the category of "value", which dialectically combines people's perceptions of researching the human genome benefits and defending the biological uniqueness of humans.

Within the general scientific methodological principles in interdisciplinary social and humanitarian studies of the human genome, the system approach principles are used (consideration of the forms variety and methods of the genome interaction with the external world, as well as the identification of the set of elements (structure) of the human genome), as well as elementary general scientific methods of analysis, synthesis, comparison, deduction, induction, etc.

The level of a special scientific methodological approach in the interdisciplinary social and humanitarian studies analyzed by the author is represented by a special conceptual and categorical apparatus of legal science and legal constructions as means of the formal legal (dogmatic) method; sociological survey methods, questionnaires and the Delphi method.