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References
Otto Neurath “Unified Science as Encyclopedic Integretion” in theInternational Encyclopedia of Unified Science. Vol I No. I:Encyclopedia and Unified Science. Chicago, 1938. Page 25.
See Niels Bohr “Biology and Atomic Physics”Celebrazione del secondo centenario della nascita di Luigi Galvani. Congressi Scientifici. (Seduta plenari. Institutio di fisica, 19. Ottobre. Bologna 1938, Page 13: “the impossibilitis of regarding an organism as a well defined system...”
Examples taken from different sciences can be given. See the interesting remarks on this problem in Hermann Weyl “In memory of Emmy Noether” Scripta mathematica Vol. III. No. 3. 1935 about Gordan's idea of a “mathematical chemistry” and the possible scientific importance of logical isomorphism.
Otto Neurath, “Protokollfätze”Erkenntnis Vol. III, 1932/33.
The progress of the unification of science has been essentially furthered by the systematical introduction of “conditional definitions”. Rudolf Carnap “Logical Foundations of the Unity of Science”. In theInternational Encyclopedia of Unified Science. Vol. I No. I:Encyclopedia and Unified Science. page 49. Carnap does not object, as is done above, to a presumptuous order of sciences, but this does not affect his explanations dealing with reducibility and other problems of the unification of science
Otto Neurath, L'Encyclopédie common modèle'Revue de Synthese, October 1936.
Wilhelm Ostwald, Die Pyramide der Wiffenfchaften. Stuttgart and Berlin 1929. He was under the influence ofComte and others. Spencer, Wundt etc. created systems of a similar type.
See Robert Flint,Philosophy as Scientia Scientiarum and a History of Classifications of the Sciences. Edinburgh and London 1904. page 3, 4, 6: “The sciences are parts of a great whole, the members of a magnificent system ... (and this) is itself an object of knowledge ... there must be a science of sciences ... this science is philosophy ... It has to show how science is related to science, where one science is in contact with another, in what way each fits into each, so that all may compose the symmetrical and glorious edifice of human knowledge ... there is but one science, although it has various departments, whereby the incommensurableness of nature is brought down to our capacities ... There are precedence and subordination, order and harmony, among them.” Many elements of modern efforts to form an encyclopedic integration of unified science can be found in such a sublime song but one also sees the dangers of premature presumptions common to all “Pyramidism”. How the “science of science” revives in modern empiricism see: Charles W. Morris, “Scientific Empiricism” in theInternational Encyclopedia of Unified Science Vol. I,No. 1:Encyclopedia and Unified Science. Chicago 1938 page 69.
Henry Evelyn Bliss,The Organization of Knowledge and the System of the sciences. New York 1929 page 73 “The sciences have definite relations to other sciences; there are groups, or classes of sciences. This together, with the relations involved, constitutes the system of the sciences, which has the coherence or unity of a system.” See also hisThe Organization of Knowledge in Libraries New York 1934 and hisA System of Bibliographic Classification New York 1935. Bliss analyses some bibliographical systems, also the famous one of Melvil Dewey and its expansion elaborated byLa Classification Décimal of the International Institute of Bibliography (Paul Otlet, Brussels). The analysis is made partly in respect to ideas on the system of the sciences partly in respect to very concrete technical problems of a librarian. Dewey's and Bliss' work are useful apart from their ideas of THE SYSTEM. The same can be said of many valuable suggestions made by Paul Oppenheim,Die natürliche Ordnung der Wiffenfchaften, Jena 1926. He believes like others, that the demarcation lines of the traditional sciences can be made to meet the requirements of modern logicalization of sciences. William Maria Malisoff's interesting Disc of Sciences (“Arranging the Sciences”Philosophy of Science Vol IV, 1937 page 261) might also be too gemoetrically complete but it can become useful in finding out, for instance, whether certain possible scientific fields could be succesfully cultivated.
There is no place to analyze the character of the different structures and façades of the famous systems of the sciences, for instance of the Baconian one or of the strange bifurcations of Ampère.
Some scholars stress the educational importance of scientific integration for cooperation, for instance: John Dewey, “Introduction” to Bliss'Organization of Knowledge IX. “Specialization has been carried so far that the great need now is that of integration ... a special educational task, which at the present time has become urgent and dominant”. And John Dewey, “Unity of Science as a Social Problem” in theInternational Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Vol. I, No. 1.Encyclopedia and Unified Science, page 29.
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Neurath, O. The departmentalization of unified science. Erkenntnis 7, 240–246 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00666532
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00666532