Globalization quotes - historical motion of the semantics of the notion of “social”

The historical experience evidences that the development of humanitarian sciences is largely associated with the permanent search for consensus as for the fundamental categories whose understanding and interpretation define the determination of the subject field, tasks, and methods of researches.
Among such gnosiological problems which form the structure of the entire multistory building of sciences about a man, the determination of the notion of “social” takes a key place. In this case, the examination of the development of
semantics, i.e. meaning senses, of the named category on different stages of the
historical development presents not only a theoretical but practical interest.
For the methodological convenience, one can conditionally separate three
clearly differentiated large epochs: traditionalism, modern, and post-modern.
On the whole, the complexity of the society life grows with each new stage of
its development. For a man, of significant meaning are the various cycles
which become the content of his activity. This yields, as the Russian researcher
A. Akhiezer asserts, the need to analyze the cycles intrinsic to the thinking and
actions of a man. So all the man’s life in the traditional society is an infinite
system of cycles which he reproduces as rituals. Moreover, the different types
of activity are not yet differentiated objectively. However, dual oppositions are
formed already on this stage as the tools of analysis and synthesis of the vital
experience. In particular, A. Akhiezer considers a dual opposition as a result of
differentiation of the undifferentiated. The formation of the sense of a certain
phenomenon takes place due to the transition of a subject’s thought from one
pole to another one18.
As to the interpretation of the notion of “social”, the components of dual
oppositions are the categories of “individual” and “collective”, “biological” and
“cultural”.