Unity of Science

Philip Kitcher has advocated and advanced an influential antireductionist picture of science on which the higher-level sciences pursue their aims largely independently of the lower-level sciences -- a view of the sciences as autonomous. Explanatory autonomy as Kitcher understands it is incompatible with explanatory reductionism, the view that a high-level explanation is inevitably improved by providing a lower-level explanation of its parts. This paper explores an alternative conception of autonomy based on another major theme of Kitcher's philosophy of science: the (...) importance of the division of cognitive labor. That the sciences are in practice autonomous is compatible with reductionism, I argue, if we understand the high-level sciences' systematic explanatory disregard of lower-level details of implementation as practically, rather than intellectually, motivated. (shrink)

A number of biologists and philosophers have noted the diversity of interpretations of evolvability in contemporary evolutionary research. Different clusters of research defined by co-citation patterns or shared methodological orientation sometimes concentrate on distinct conceptions of evolvability. We examine five different activities where the notion of evolvability plays conceptual roles in evolutionary biological investigation: setting a research agenda, characterization, explanation, prediction, and control. Our analysis of representative examples demonstrates how different conceptual roles of evolvability are quasi-independent and yet exhibit important (...) relationships across scientific activities. It also provides us with the resources to detail two distinct strategies for how evolvability can help to synthesize disparate areas of research and thereby potentially serve as a unifying concept in evolutionary biology. (shrink)

Bilim ve çarpık bilim arasına sınır çizebilmek için yapılan girişimler farklı teorilerin gelistirilmesini sağlamıştır. Henüz net bir sınır çizilememiştir ve tartışmalar devam etmektedir. İlk olarak doğrulama ve yanlışlama teorileri daha sonraları ise bilim çalışmalarını bir bütün olarak ele alan, araştırma programları olarak gören teoriler sunulmuştur. Bilimsel çalışmaların, yeni sorunlar üretmesi ve eleştirel bakış açısına sahip olması da bilim olanın sınırlarını çizebilmek için ölçütler arasında sayılmıştır. Bu çabalar ile bilim pratiklerinin irdelenmesi zamanla bilim insanına ve bilim kurumlarına yönelmiştir. Bu konunun önemli (...) bir sorunu bilim yolu ile ulaşabileceğimiz doğru bilginin ne olduğu ile neyin bilim olarak ele alınabileceğinin tek bir sorun gibi ele alınmasıdır. Bilimsel doğrunun ne olduğu ile bilimsel bilginin ne olduğu tartışması iç içe yürütülmektedir. Bir diğer sorun ise bilimin sınırlarını belirlerken bilim çalışmaları dışında etik ve sosyal ölçütler aranmasıdır. Bu yaklaşımlar konuyu çözümsüz bir noktaya götürmektedir. Diğer önemli nokta Astroloji örneğinin yanlış bilgilerle ele alınmasıdır. Bu çalışmada tartışmanın bilim pratiklerinde kalması gerektiği savunulmuştur. Çarpık bilimi ayırmak için sık kullanılan Astroloji örneği yeniden ele alınarak yanlış yargılara sebep olan bilgiler düzeltilmeye çalışılmıştır. Ayrıca önermelerin bilimsel doğruyu ayırma konusundaki önemi ve durumu tartışılmış böylece neyin bilim, neyin bilimsel doğru ve neyin bilim dışı olduğu netleştirilmeye çalışılmıştır. (shrink)

Unity of science was once a very popular idea among both philosophers and scientists. But it has fallen out of fashion, largely because of its association with reductionism and the challenge from multiple realisation. Pluralism and the disunity of science are the new norm, and higher-level natural kinds and special science laws are considered to have an important role in scientific practice. What kind of reductionism does multiple realisability challenge? What does it take to reduce one phenomenon to another? How (...) do we determine which kinds are natural? What is the ontological basis of unity? In this Element, Tuomas Tahko examines these questions from a contemporary perspective, after a historical overview. The upshot is that there is still value in the idea of a unity of science. We can combine a modest sense of unity with pluralism and give an ontological analysis of unity in terms of natural kind monism. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

Philosophy Beyond Spacetime assesses the state of play in the philosophy of quantum gravity. Research in this field aims at a unified theory in which quantum matter is related dynamically to relativistic spacetime. This volume highlights the conceptual questions involved, showing how physics and metaphysics can illuminate each other.

Conservation of a circle is the basis for unification (and, also, then, 'unitization'). Explaining and unifying physics, philosophy, and psychology. All disciplines.

The universal system architecture of Nature can be summarized as: one zero, one one. This is because zero is, technically (and literally), circumference, and one is, technically (and literally), diameter. This means the algorithm that produces Nature (what humans label 'reality') is: if zero, then one (meaning, if one, then zero). Explaining the tokenzation of space (any matrix) (any lattice) (all vortices and edges) (if circumference, then diameter). Meaning, technically, you cannot use 'words' in any language (including the language of (...) mathematics) to describe 'reality.' You have to use the CIrcular Theory diagram (in this article). (shrink)

The numerous and diverse roles of theory reduction in science have been insufficiently explored in the philosophy literature on reduction. Part of the reason for this has been a lack of attention paid to reduction2 (successional reduction)—although I here argue that this sense of reduction is closer to reduction1 (explanatory reduction) than is commonly recognised, and I use an account of reduction that is neutral between the two. This paper draws attention to the utility—and incredible versatility—of theory reduction. A non-exhaustive (...) list of various applications of reduction in science is presented, some of which are drawn from a particular case-study, being the current search for a new theory of fundamental physics. This case-study is especially interesting because it employs both senses of reduction at once, and because of the huge weight being put on reduction by the different research groups involved; additionally, it presents some unique uses for reduction—revealing, I argue, the fact that reduction can be of specialised and unexpected service in particular scientific cases. The paper makes two other general findings: that the functions of reduction that are typically assumed to characterise the different forms of the relation may instead be understood as secondary consequences of some other roles; and that most of the roles that reduction plays in science can actually also be fulfilled by a weaker relation than (the typical understanding of) reduction. (shrink)

Appeals to intersectionality serve to remind us that social categories like race and gender cannot be adequately understood independently from each other. But what, exactly, is the intersectional thesis a thesis about? Answers to this question are remarkably diverse. Intersectionality is variously understood as a claim about the nature of social kinds, oppression, or experience ; about the limits of antidiscrimination law or identity politics ; or about the importance of fuzzy sets, multifactor analysis, or causal modeling in social science.

Universitäten weisen als institutioneller Inbegriff von Wissenschaft eine immense Fächervielfalt auf. Doch was hält diese Vielfalt der Wissenschaften zusammen, und was sind deren jeweiligen Besonderheiten? Ist es überhaupt sinnvoll, solch unterschiedliche Forschungsbereiche wie zum Beispiel die Koptologie und die Materialphysik nach ähnlichen Standards zu bewerten und zu vergleichen? Ist solch eine Vielfalt notwendig für den Erkenntnisfortschritt oder eher ein Hemmnis, das es zu überwinden gilt? Wie hängen die Theorien, Methoden und Gegenstandsbereiche der verschiedenen Disziplinen miteinander zusammen – haben die Disziplinen (...) einen je eigenen Zugriff auf verschiedene Aspekte der Wirklichkeit, oder lassen sich die Theorien und Erklärungen einiger Disziplinen auf die anderer zurückführen? Fragen dieser Art werden in diesem Buch aus der Perspektive verschiedener Disziplinen betrachtet. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage est la version anglaise d’un ouvrage paru initialement en français en 2013 sous le titre Pluralisme scientifique. Enjeux épistémiques et métaphysiques, qui a reçu jusqu’ici un accueil assez favorable. L’auteure y explore le thème de la pluralité dans trois grands registres de la philosophie des sciences : d’abord celui de la méthodologie scientifique (chapitre 1), ensuite celui des relations interthéoriques ou du réductionnisme (chapitre 2), et, enfin, celui de la représentation (chapitre 3). La grande diversité des sujets qui (...) appellent un positionnement en faveur du monisme ou du pluralisme en philosophie des sciences fait en sorte qu’il serait vain de penser que l’on puisse de nos jours se dire pluraliste tout court (p. xiv). Pour cette raison, l’auteure se contente d’examiner les diverses formes de pluralismes mises en avant par les philosophes dans chacun des registres mentionnés ci-dessus en portant un regard critique sur leurs conséquences méthodologiques, épistémiques et métaphysiques, en adoptant le point de vue de la pratique scientifique effective. (shrink)

Unification of theories is achieved when several theories T 1, T 2, …, Tn previously regarded as distinct are subsumed into a theory of broader scope T*. Classic examples are the unification of theories of electricity, magnetism, and light into Maxwell's theory of electrodynamics, and the unification of evolutionary and genetic theory in the modern synthesis (Mayr and Provine 1980).

Some scholars see interdisciplinarity as a special case of a broader unificationist program. They accept the unification of the sciences as a regulative ideal, and derive from this the normative justification of interdisciplinary research practices. The crucial link for this position is the notion of integration: integration increases the cohesion of concepts and practices, and more specifically of explanations, ontologies, methods and data. Interdisciplinary success then consists in the integration of fields or disciplines, and this constitutes success in the sense (...) that unification is epistemically desirable. In contrast to this account, I defend the thesis that successful interdisciplinary interaction does not necessarily imply the integration of these disciplines. I show this at the hand of two cases. In both the case of evolutionary game theory and the case of hyperbolic discounting, genuine interdisciplinary exchange took place. From both exchanges, the respective economic fields emerged substantially altered – it wasn’t just a juxtaposition of disciplines in which disciplinary identities remained unchanged. Yet in neither case did the disciplines integrate. Rather, they developed their own concepts and methods, their own explanations, own ontologies, and their own views of what proper data standards were. Furthermore, the fields that emerged from these exchanges were very successful, if measured at the hand of properties like explanatory success, increase of control, bibliometrics and grant yields. Thus, I argue, there are cases of interdisciplinary success without integration. (shrink)

Unified science is a recurring theme in Carnap's work from the time of the Aufbau until the end of the 1930's. The theme is not constant, but knows several variations. I shall extract three quite precise formulations of the thesis of unified science from Carnap's work during this period: from the Aufbau, from Carnap's so-called syntactic period, and from "Testability and Meaning" and related papers. My main objective is to explain these formulations and to discuss their relation, both to each (...) other and to other aspects of Carnap's work. (shrink)

Neste artigo apresentamos as propostas de Otto Neurath para o problema da unidade da ciência. Conhecido integrante do Círculo de Viena, Neurath defende que a ciência deve ser unificada por meio da chamada concepção de mundo científica, uma orientação ou atitude em relação ao mundo e aos problemas que é característica da ciência. Neste artigo apresentamos o caráter social dos projetos de Neurath, como o da Enciclopédia Internacional da Ciência Unificada. Contrastamos a proposta de Neurath com a crítica pós-modernista da (...) abordagem contextualizada dos estudos sobre a ciência. Essa crítica parte de estudos de comunidades científicas e, em geral, apresenta a conclusão de que não há um fator que unifique a ciência. O termo "ciência" denotaria apenas uma coleção de atividades sem características relevantes em comum. A comparação feita mostra que a posição de Neurath é compatível com a abordagem contextualizada, apesar de defender a unidade da ciência. Por fim, avaliamos o aspecto político da proposta de Neurath diante da crítica pós-moderna e notamos que as ideias do Círculo de Viena e da Enciclopédia podem ser valiosas nos dias de hoje. This paper discusses Otto Neurath's proposal for the problem of the unity of science. This author, a well-known member of the Vienna Circle, proposes that science is to be unified by the so-called scientific world-conception, a characteristic orientation or attitude of science towards the world and the problems it deals with. In this paper, emphasis is given to the social aspect of Neurath's projects, as found, for instance, in the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. It contrasts Neurath's proposal with the post-modernist criticism, developed in the contextualized approach to science studies, that stems from studies of scientific communities and, in general, presents the conclusion that there is no unifying factor for science. The term 'science' would then denote just a collection of activities with no relevant common characteristics. The comparison made shows that Neurath's position is compatible with the contextualized approach, even though he defends the unity of science. Finally, the political aspect of Neurath's proposal is evaluated in the light of the post-modernist criticism, and it is pointed out that the ideas of the Vienna Circle and the Encyclopedia might be valuable nowadays. (shrink)

I argue that there is a tension between the claim that at least some kinds in the special sciences are multiply realized and the claim that the reason why kinds are prized by science is that they enter into a variety of different empirical generalizations. Nevertheless, I show that this tension ceases in the case of ‘cultural homologues’—such as specific ideologies, religions, and folk wisdom. I argue that the instances of such special science kinds do have several projectable properties in (...) common due to their shared history of reproduction, and that the social learning involved means that we should also expect these kinds to be multiply realized. (shrink)

It is demonstrated that Maxwellian electrodynamics was created as a result of the old pre-Maxwellian programmes’s reconciliation: the electrodynamics of Ampère–Weber, the wave theory of Young–Fresnel and Faraday’s programme. Maxwell’s programme finally superseded the Ampère–Weber one because it assimilated the ideas of the Ampère–Weber programme, as well as the presuppositions of the programmes of Young–Fresnel and Faraday. Maxwell’s victory became possible because the core of Maxwell’s unification strategy was formed by Kantian epistemology. Maxwell put forward as a basic synthetic principle (...) an idea that radically differed from that of rival approaches by its open, flexible and contra-ontological character. “Action at a distance”, “incompressible fluid”, “molecular vortices” were contrived analogies for Maxwell, capable only of directing the researcher to the “right” mathematical relations Kantian epistemology subsequently enabled Helmholtz and Hertz to arrive at a version of Maxwell’s theory that served as a heuristical basis for the discovery of radio waves. Finally, though neither of Einstein’s relativistic ideas came directly from Kant, they were made possible by the Kantian worldview that had permeated Einstein’s thinking. The Maxwellian revolution can be described in terms of Habermas’s communicative rationality encouraging the establishment of mutual understanding between the various scientific communities. Maxwell’s programme constituted a progressive step in respect to its rivals because it constituted a basis of communication and interpenetration between the main paradigms of 19th century physics. (shrink)

Natural Categories and Human Kinds is a recent and timely contribution to current debate on natural kinds. Because of the growing sophistication of this debate, it is necessary to make careful distinctions in order to appreciate the originality of Khalidi’s position. Khalidi’s view on natural kinds is naturalistic: if we want to know what Nature’s joints really are, we should look at the actual carving job carried out by our best scientific practices. Like LaPorte, Khalidi is a fallibilist: our best (...) scientific theories may be revised or abandoned and so can our current classifications of natural kinds. Unlike LaPorte, however, Khalidi is an anti-essentialist: he argues against the idea that membership in a natural kind is a matter of possessing an essential set of necessary and sufficient properties. Like Dupré, Khalidi is a pluralist and anti-reductionist: he does not believe that there is only one true classification system and that there are natural kinds only at the so-called "fundamental level" of microphysics. Khalidi develops his pluralistic and anti-reductionistic position on the basis of a deep appreciation for the special sciences but, unlike Dupré, he thinks that only the scientific inquiry, which is driven by epistemic purposes, discover natural kinds and that, therefore, there are important differences between scientific and folk classifications. Khalidi’s conception of natural kinds has both an epistemic and a metaphysical component. (shrink)

Evo-Devo exhibits a plurality of scientific “cultures” of practice and theory. When are the cultures acting—individually or collectively—in ways that actually move research forward, empirically, theoretically, and ethically? When do they become imperialistic, in the sense of excluding and subordinating other cultures? This chapter identifies six cultures – three /styles/ (mathematical modeling, mechanism, and history) and three /paradigms/ (adaptationism, structuralism, and cladism). The key assumptions standing behind, under, or within each of these cultures are explored. Characterizing the internal structure of (...) the cultures is necessary for understanding how they collaborate or compete, and how they are fragmented or integrated, in the rich interdisciplinary /trading zone/ (Galison 1997) of Evo-Devo. Evo-Devo is an important example of how science can progress through a radical plurality of perspectives and cultures. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to show the methodological power and potentiality of the concept paradigm of unity introduced originally in the ceremony on the occasion of honoring Chiara Lubich with the doctor honoris causa title by the Catholic University of Lublin in 1996. Originally this conception was used to suggest the societal activity of Chiara Lubich in building, via the Focolari movement, psychosocial infrastructures for unity in various social domains,, in public media, in ecumenism and inter-religious contacts This (...) conception is a kind of a great inspiration which would motivate the social sciences to build their own research paradigm of a type of mental and methodological power and potentiality which could give a new vision of social world ). Thomas Kuhn regarded the Copernician revolution as the one which, in the history of science, best illustrates the nature of scientific revolution. The essence of paradigm in a Kuhnian sense is a mentality change in its nature. Copernicus had to change the well-established geocentric system which functioned not only in the science of his day but also in culture, tradition, social perception, and even in the mentality of religious and political authorities. And he did it in a well prepared empirical, methodological and psychological way. In a similar way Chiara Lubich created by her social acting a revolutionary inspiration for building paradigm in social science She decided in an extremely difficult and risky situation in 1944 in Trento not only to escape from her own life emergency but she with her friends made a decision to help other people who were in a much more difficult situation to survive. She decided to take a war bombing risk to be with lost children and older people who were in need. It was a practical building of the unity with the real people who were in need. This kind of experience rediscovered the community as a model for the real life and made a concretization and clarification of the charisma of the unity. However, the development of this charisma shows that it is simply a concrete and practical actualization of the new vision of social, economic, political and religious relationships which advises, recommends, suggests, and promotes the unity with others persons. (shrink)

The program of logical positivism gave inspiration to the unity of science movement. The movement carried the belief that all sciences, including the social sciences and the humanities, ought to share some common language if these disciplines were to be considered genuine sciences.

Starting from the plurality of explanatory strategies in the actual practice of socialscientists, I introduce a framework for explanatory pluralism – a normative endorsement of the plurality of forms and levels of explanation used by social scientists. Equipped with thisframework, central issues in the individualism/holism debate are revisited, namely emergence,reduction and the idea of microfoundations. Discussing these issues, we notice that in recentcontributions the focus has been shifting towards relationism, pluralism and interaction, awayfrom dichotomous individualism/holism thinking and a winner-takes-all approach. (...) Then, thechallenge of the debate is no longer to develop the ultimate individualistic approach ordefending the holist approach, but rather how to be combine individualism and holism; howcan they co-exist, interact, be integrated or develop some division of labour, while making thebest out of the strengths and limitations of the respective explanatory strategies of holists andindividualists? Thus, the debate shifts to how exactly pluralism should be understood as thenext leading question, going beyond the current individualism/holism debate. The paper endswith a discussion and evaluation of different understandings of explanatory pluralismdefended in the literature. (shrink)

The notion of 'natural kinds' has been central to contemporary discussions of metaphysics and philosophy of science. Although explicitly articulated by nineteenth-century philosophers like Mill, Whewell and Venn, it has a much older history dating back to Plato and Aristotle. In recent years, essentialism has been the dominant account of natural kinds among philosophers, but the essentialist view has encountered resistance, especially among naturalist metaphysicians and philosophers of science. Informed by detailed examination of classification in the natural and social sciences, (...) this book argues against essentialism and for a naturalist account of natural kinds. By looking at case studies drawn from diverse scientific disciplines, from fluid mechanics to virology and polymer science to psychiatry, the author argues that natural kinds are nodes in causal networks. On the basis of this account, he maintains that there can be natural kinds in the social sciences as well as the natural sciences. (shrink)

Henry Eyring's absolute rate theory explains the size of chemical reaction rate constants in terms of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and quantum chemistry. In addition it uses a number of unique concepts such as the 'transition state'. A key feature of the theory is that the explanation it provides relies on the comparison of reaction rate constant expressions derived from these individual theories. In this paper, the example is used to develop a naturalized notion of reduction and the unity of science. (...) This characterization provides the necessary clues to the sort of inter-theoretic linkages that are present in the theory of reaction rates. The overall theory is then further characterized as a theory network, establishing connections between non-reductive notions of inter-theory connections. This characterization also sheds new light on the unity of science. (shrink)

We seem to suffer from a case of cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, we seem to have almost unanimously rejected as hopeless or incoherent the aim of a unified science. On the other, we passionately debate about the prospects of research programs which, if successful, would considerably enhance the prospects of unification: from particle physics to cognitive neuroscience, from evolutionary theory to logical modeling or dynamic systems, a common motivation seems to be the quest for unity1. The purpose of (...) this paper is to relieve the dissonance. I will defend a moderate form of unity, one which is compatible with the diversity and open-endedness of science, for which I can think of no better name than federalism, as it combines plurality and the construction of a common epistemic area. This view is not original: Otto Neurath himself espoused it, albeit in a context which is in certain respects quite unlike ours2. (shrink)

We summarise the contributions to the discussion and the links between them. The complex relationship between the physical and biological sciences demonstrates three “axes of tension”: the role of simulation, the interplay between levels of explanation, and the generality of “laws”. We identify examples of true synergy between approaches that genuinely explore new research territory, and underscore the contemporary value of the type of discussions contained in this volume.

An historically important conception of the unity of science is explanatory reductionism, according to which the unity of science is achieved by explaining all laws of science in terms of their connection to microphysical law. There is, however, a separate tradition that advocates the unity of science. According to that tradition, the unity of science consists of the coordination of diverse fields of science, none of which is taken to have privileged epistemic status. This alternate conception has roots in Otto (...) Neurath’s notion of unified science. In this paper, I develop a version of the coordination approach to unity that is inspired by Neurath’s views. The resulting conception of the unity of science achieves aims similar to those of explanatory reductionism, but does so in a radically different way. As a result, it is immune to the criticisms facing explanatory reductionism. This conception of unity is also importantly different from the view that science is disunified, and I conclude by demonstrating how it accords better with scientific practice than do conceptions of the disunity of science. (shrink)

This essay develops a form of scientific pluralism that captures essential features of contemporary scientific practice largely ignored by the various forms of scientific pluralism currently discussed by philosophers. My starting point is Hacking's concept of style of scientific reasoning. I extend Hacking's thesis by proposing the process of “ontological enrichment” to grasp how the objects created by a style articulate with the common objects of scientific inquiry. The result is “foliated pluralism,” which puts to the fore the transdisciplinary and (...) cumulative ways of proceeding in science, as well as the historical dimension of the genesis of scientific objects. (shrink)

In recent decades, several authors have claimed that an epoch-making change in the development of science is taking place. A closer examination of this claim shows that these authors take different – and problematic – concepts of an epochal break as their points of departure. In order to facilitate an evaluation of the current development of science, I would like to propose a concept of an epochal change according to which it is not necessarily a discontinuous process that typically begins (...) in a subarea of the sciences, has far-reaching consequences for the entire system of the sciences, and can be observed by contemporaries as early as during its initial phase. Taking this concept as my point of departure, I discuss various candidates for the status of an epochal transformation in the recent development of the sciences. Although there are sound reasons to doubt that an epochal break is currently taking place, one must concede that the sciences are probably in a profound transformation, which could unfold in various directions, perhaps even leading to epoch-making new characterizations of the sciences. (shrink)

Accounting for the evolutionary origins of morphological novelty is one of the core challenges of contemporary evolutionary biology. A successful explanatory framework requires the integration of different biological disciplines, but the relationships between developmental biology and standard evolutionary biology remain contested. There is also disagreement about how to define the concept of evolutionary novelty. These issues were the subjects of a workshop held in November 2009 at the University of Alberta. We report on the discussion and results of this workshop, (...) addressing questions about (i) how to define evolutionary novelty and understand its significance, (ii) how to interpret evolutionary developmental biology as a synthesis and its relation to neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, and (iii) how to integrate disparate biological approaches in general. (shrink)

I feel honored to be asked to speak at this university where so many ground-breaking scientists and philosophers were students or teaching, spreading their message world wide and I am especially glad to have been asked to come by the Institut Wiener Kreis, of which I am proud to be a member, and whose splendid work for two decades and to this day is being carried out vigorously under Professor Stadler and his colleagues. Through that, a bright flame is being (...) kept shining. That has its own salience. But I firmly believe, as you will hear later, that at just this time such studies have additional purpose, force and inspiration, in academe and society, as well as in global policies that are now under our very eyes. All these contain an urge to bring about a new version of a unifying Weltauffassung. If that succeeds, historians of the future may well say that there was a certain pre-established harmony between the original Vienna Circle program, and what is now being done here, and a new, better world. Let me add two remarks about why being invited to speak here today is special for me. You have often seen the large, elegant building at the corner of Schottengasse 10 and Schottenring. One of its high balconies were part of a Kanzlei of an attorney, specializing in international law, who had got his degree in jurisprudence right at this university, nearly a century ago. When his older boy visited there and looked out from that balcony, he could see the university where he hoped to study one day. (shrink)

Naturalists tell us to rely on what science tells about the world and to eschew aprioristic philosophy. But foundational physics relies internally on modes of thinking that can only be called philosophical, and philosophical arguments rely upon what can only be called scientific inference. So what, then, could the naturalistic thesis really amount to?

Summary: Throughout the history of science, indeed throughout the history of knowledge, unification has been touted as a central aim of intellectual inquiry. We’ve always wanted to discover not only numerous bare facts about the universe, but to show how such facts are linked and interrelated. Large amounts of time and effort have been spent trying to show diverse arrays of things can be seen as different manifestations of some common underlying entities or properties. Thales is said to have originated (...) philosophy and science with his declaration that everything was, at base, a form of water. Plato’s theory of the forms was thought to be a magnificent accomplishment because it gave a unified solution to the separate problems of the relation between knowledge and belief, the grounding of objective values, and how continuity is possible amid change. Pasteur made numerous medical advancements possible by demonstrating the interconnection between microorganisms and human disease symptoms. Many technological advances were aided by Maxwell’s showing that light is a kind of electromagnetic radiation. The attempt to unify the various known forces is often referred to as “The Holy Grail” of physics. Some philosophers have even suggested that providing explanations is itself just a sort of unifying of our knowledge. But while unification (like simplicity) has often been hailed as a tremendous virtue in science, the meaning of the term is not altogether clear. Scientists often don’t specify what, precisely, they mean by unification. And in cases where what they mean is clear, different thinkers plainly mean different things by the term. What are the various senses of unification, and why has unification been such an important aim in the history of inquiry? (shrink)

One of the hallmarks of Kantian philosophy, especially in connection with its characterization of scientific knowledge, is the importance of unity, a theme that is also the driving force behind a good deal of contemporary high energy physics. There are a variety of ways that unity figures in modern science—there is unity of method where the same kinds of mathematical techniques are used in different sciences, like physics and biology; the search for unified theories like the unification of electromagnetism and (...) optics by Maxwell; and, more recently, the project of grand unification or the quest for a theory of everything which involves a reduction of the four fundamental forces under the umbrella of a single theory. In this latter case it is thought that when energies are high enough, the forces , while very different in strength, range and the types of particles on which they act, become one and the same force. The fact that these interactions are known to have many underlying mathematical features in common suggests that they can all be described by a unified field theory. Such a theory describes elementary particles in terms of force fields which further unifies all the interactions by treating particles and interactions in a technically and conceptually similar way. It is this theoretical framework that allows for the prediction that measurements made at a certain energy level will supposedly indicate that there is only one type of force. In other words, not only is there an ontological reduction of the forces themselves but the mathematical framework used to describe the fields associated with these forces facilitates their description in a unified theory. Specific types of symmetries serve an important function in establishing these kinds of unity, not only in the construction of quantum field theories but also in the classification of particles; classifications that can lead to new predictions and new ways of understanding properties like quantum numbers. Hence, in order to address issues about unification and reduction in contemporary physics we must also address the way that symmetries facilitate these processes. (shrink)

Will we ever discover a single scientific theory that explains everything that has ever happened and everything that will happen - a key that unlocks the ...