From Informational Levels to Hierarchical Reasoning: Dmytro Krivenko's Methodology of Science, Ontology, and Interlevel Explanation

This article reconstructs Dmytro T. Krivenko’s (1941–1994) contribution to Ukrainian philosophy and methodology of science. It examines his publications of 1973–1988, his 1991 discussion of a hierarchical model of cognition, and the manuscripts published posthumously as Prynat i prynatyka (1996). The study argues that Krivenko developed a level-sensitive methodology that distinguished general philosophical principles, logical and methodological rules, and the procedures specific to particular sciences. Working within the ideological constraints of the late Soviet period, Krivenko often used the accepted language of dialectical materialism. Nevertheless, his analyses limited the explanatory authority of general dialectical principles. In his account, philosophical claims could not directly replace scientific explanation: they had to be mediated by quantitative concepts, measurement procedures, mathematical structures, clearly defined domains of applicability, and explicit relations between levels of description. His discussions of informational levels, the inheritance of rational content, and the coarse-graining of complex systems were parts of this broader methodological programme. The article also examines Krivenko’s criticism of dichotomous reasoning and his proposal for a “hierarchical logic” capable of representing multilevel systems and transitions. This proposal is interpreted neither as a completed formal logic nor as an explicit public rejection of dialectics. Rather, it is understood as an attempt to place dialectical opposition within a more general hierarchy of forms, relations, and transformations. Finally, the article clearly distinguishes Krivenko’s documented claims from family testimony, contemporary philosophical reconstruction, and later applications to effective theories, quark structure, and preon models. These modern comparisons are used to clarify the continuing relevance of his methodology, not to attribute later physical theories to him. Krivenko’s work thus emerges as a distinctive Ukrainian programme of interlevel explanation that resisted the reduction of scientific knowledge to a single universal philosophical scheme.