Unity of science

GEN.32. 1. Prigogine, Comments on the problem of the unity of Science, in The Centrality of Science and Absolute Values, Proceedings, 4th International Conference on the Unity of Science, The International Cultural Foundation, 1975. 

Oppenheim, P. and Putnam, H. (1958). The unity of science as a working hypothesis. In Minnesota Studies in the Philosphy of Science, eds. H. Feigl, G. Maxwell and M. Scriven. University of Minnesota Press, pp. 3-36. 

The unity of science appears indisputable. The way in which all facts hang together implies the reductionist principle. Failure of constructionism denies the priority of any branch of science over any other because of the unpredictability of emergent properties. The single discipline, normally not considered a science, but fundamental to all scientific facts, is mathematics, ft now appears that science, at all levels, is intimately entangled with number theory. 

Oppenheim, Paul and Putnam, Hilary. Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 2. Ed. by H. Feigl, M. Scriven and G. Maxwell. Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press, 1958.3-31. 

Chapter 4 will show how the ensuing clash between postpositivist and sociological interpretations of the Chemical Revolution involved a deeper polarity between theoreticism and sociologism, between a realist or globalist philosophy of science, which emphasized the unity of science and history, and the nominalism of postmodernism, which stressed the irreducible multiplicity and diversity... 

Sarton used the Comtean doctrine of the three stages of human progress to emphasize the unity of science. Held together like branches on a tree, the disciplines of science are demarcated from nonscientific disciplines by their epistemological, methodological and developmental unity. Linking the unity of... 

Reduction" is related to a variety of other issues in the philosophy of science, for example the (dis)unity of science, models for the development of science, and for the change of theories, the analysis of theoretical terms, the purpose of science, and types of scientific realism. Moreover, in one guise or another, reduction is pervasive throughout the history of philosophy. Not only has it played a central role in the history of analytic philosophy and philosophy of science, but also the philosophies of Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Foucault, and Derrida, to name but a few, can be read as reductive programs. 

Liegener, Ch. and Del Re, G. 1987a. Chemistry vs. Physics, the Reduction Myth, and the Unity of Science. Zeitschrift fur allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 18 165-174. 

One could consider this the 20th century culmination of Kant s view.18 Like Kant s view, Dirac s remark is referred to in lectures for a general audience of scientists in a way that suggests everybody knows it. Usually the reference is uncritical, e.g., by Noble laureate Mulliken in Physics Today (1968) 19 only rarely is the reference to Dirac more critical.20 Dirac s view fit the times, because logical positivism not only replaced metaphysics by logic, but stressed the unity of science all sciences were to be reduced to physics. 

Smith, P. 1992. Modest Reductions and the Unity of Science. In Charles, D. and Lennon, K. (eds.), Reduction, Explanation, and Realism. Oxford Clarendon, 19-43. 

Computational chemistry was becoming in my mind more and more simply a part of computational sciences, with blurred boundaries of no essential value. Indeed, we prepared an extended animated movie The unity of Science linking quantum chemistry, molecular dynamics and fluid dynamics computer simulations with parallelism the audio comments were given in English, French, German, Italian and Chinese. This was the spirit also behind the volumes Modem Techniques in Computational Chemistry, MOTECC [100], and Methods and Techniques in Computational Chemistry, METECC... 

The matter of how theories in science relate to each other is a key aspect of the unity of science. For the philosophy of chemistry, this problem is of paramount importance chemistry and physics are entwined to a degree where it is sometimes difficult, if not impossible, to imagine chemistry with the physics removed. Yet the widespread use of physical theories in chemistry is often not representative of how these theories are used in physics. ... 

This paper is structured as follows. In Sect. 2.2 I briefly summarise the important aspects of the Nagelian approach to reduction and some of the recent commentary on this scheme. This development assists in setting the scene for the discussimi to follow. In Sect. 2.3 I develop my specific proposals and outline their consequences for a conception of the unity of science. To provide an example of how this might work in practice, I discuss how the proposed structure of reduction qua belief revision fits Eyring s theory of absolute reaction rates in Sect. 2.4. Section 2.5 is a conclusiOTi. 

In Hettema (2012a) I proposed that we view reduction relationships as an instance of an interstructural link, sufficient to establish a global unity of science, but also capable of dropping local context . Belief revision is a stronger theory in the sense that it provides additional specification of how such a link might work. 

In this sense, the theory of absolute reaction rates is a very strong example for the unity of science - it is precisely one of those examples where it is hard to imagine a chemisfry with the physics removed, but at the same time it is a chemical theory in that it focuses on molecules, molecular structures, and transformations. 

It thus appears that a practical theory of chemistry can, with a little formal help, be reconstructed in terms of philosophical notions such as set theoretic structures and conceptual spaces that are fruitful starting points for the general philosophy of science, and that may have further import for discussions about pluralism and the unity of science. 

This recOTistractiOTi of the notion of reduction fulfills a number of interesting desiderata it supports the unity of science as an overall epistemic structure, and can make sense of some actual problematic cases of reduction from the philosophy of chemistry. The limitatimi oti incommensurabihty inherent in this approach also limits the scope of feasible pluralisms in the philosophy of chemistry, and focuses our attentimi instead on a more precise formal characterisation of the resulting epistemic stractures. 

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