Contemporary Status of Law Science: Postmodernism, Uncertainty about its Scientific Character and Change in the Approach to Science Itself

The article deals with the contemporary status of law science in Lithuania and world-wide. This status cannot be conceived without the analysis of the effect of postmodernism (new science or the science of complex dynamic systems). Postmodern legal thought hardly finds its place in Lithuanian law science, though in the world postmodern ideas and new (postmodern) science of complex dynamic systems affect the science of law. Law science has still much difficulty in "separating" from modernism, which conditions the deterministic, static and narrow attitude towards science. We believe that the time is ripe for a change in the approach towards science, focus more attention to indeterminism, humanization of science, social context and spontaneous development of thought. The aim of the article was to establish the contemporary status of law science by revealing the key points of the emergence of postmodern period, its development and influence, the problem of uncertainty of the scientific nature of law science as well as the importance of the changing approach to science itself, and to answer the question whether there is a postmodern legal thought in Lithuania and what is the direction of the development of law science. Methods: scientific analytical, systemic, logical. In addition, the empirical method was used to study the quantity of the documents. The main finding. It is high time to change the approach to science itself. Contemporary (new) science encourages us to combine science, common sense and social context in order to understand the reality more clearly, though not absolutely clearly. Scientists of law need to understand the importance of connecting science and life, and most importantly, to use not a single one, but a number of methodologies (and their integration) in science. Only by changing our approach to science in general we will be able to perceive law as a complex dynamic system. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.