Unified science
Unified science is a philosophical concept that proposes a shared core of principles, methods, and language among all scientific disciplines. Originating in the early twentieth century, particularly through the efforts of the Vienna Circle, this theory advocates for a unified approach to science, grounded in logical positivism. Proponents argue that all sciences—ranging from physics and biology to psychology and sociology—are interconnected and operate under universal guidelines. One key idea is that physics serves as a foundational discipline upon which other sciences are built, with physical laws influencing various scientific fields. The movement aimed to eliminate metaphysical elements from scientific inquiry and foster international cooperation among scientists. Central to this philosophy are "protocol sentences," which distill scientific observations into their simplest forms, facilitating clearer communication and understanding across disciplines. Though interest in unified science waned by the mid-twentieth century, its proposals continue to provoke thoughtful discussion about the nature of scientific inquiry and the relationships between different fields.
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Unified science
Unified science is a philosophical concept that all the sciences share a common core of laws, methods, and language and can be united in a single, hierarchical structure. The theory was first developed by a group of philosophers and scientists in the early twentieth century and is based on the concept of logical positivism—the idea that the only acceptable knowledge is that achieved through logical analysis. While individual sciences may have their own specific procedures and laws, unified science holds that all sciences operate under a universal set of fundamental guidelines and share the same basic methods of testing hypotheses. Some proponents of the theory believe that the laws of physics are the underlying governing force for all the sciences.
Background
The idea that physics, astronomy, chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology, and other sciences were interconnected in a unified manner was first proposed in the 1920s by a group of European philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists. The group was founded by German philosopher Moritz Schlick and was known as the Vienna Circle—named after the capital of Austria where it was based. Other members of the group included philosophers Gustav Bergmann, Rudolf Carnap, and Herbert Feigl; physicists Friedrich Waismann and Philipp Frank; mathematician Kurt Gödel; and sociologist Otto Neurath. Schlick and his colleagues held regular meetings at the University of Vienna, where they discussed a wide variety of philosophical and scientific subjects. The members of the Vienna Circle were proponents of the philosophical concept of logical positivism, or logical empiricism. They believed that logic was the main force behind knowledge and that any ideas and theories that could not be proven using logical, scientific observations were invalid.
Inspired by this viewpoint, the group sought to "purify" philosophy and science by removing any metaphysical, or non-quantifiable, elements. One of the ways to do this was to unite the various scientific disciplines under one system, governed by logic and empirical observation. They believed that science united by common methods and language could overcome the divisions caused by personal politics and biases. The group's 1929 manifesto called for a worldwide commitment to unified science, believing it could also help facilitate economic and social reforms. In the 1930s, Neurath, Carnap, and several other members of the Vienna Circle began publishing their views in a series of written studies called Einheitswissenschaft (Unified Science). The series and works from other contemporary scientists and philosophers were later compiled and published in the two-volume International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. The encyclopedia was the signature project of the unified science movement and was meant to promote international cooperation among scientists.
Neurath in particular was one of the driving forces of unified science. He organized for a series of international conferences on the subject in the 1930s and 1940s, and he founded the International Institute for the Unity of Science at The Hague in the Netherlands in 1936. The outbreak of World War II disrupted the group's efforts, and many of the philosophers and scientists of the Vienna Circle fled Europe for the United States. After the war and Neurath's death in 1945, Philipp Frank organized the movement at his Institute for the Unity of Science in Boston, Massachusetts. By the 1950s, however, the ideas of logical positivism began to fall out of favor as scientists and philosophers criticised its fundamental beliefs as inconsistent. A planned addition to the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science never materialized and interest in the concept of unified science ebbed as well.
Overview
One of the main tenets of the unified science theory is that all scientific disciplines follow the same basic guidelines. For example, astronomy may be the study of objects in space, and biology may be the study of living organisms, but they are both intellectual pursuits grounded in the common language of logic. To gain knowledge about their subjects, both the astronomer and biologist perform similar types of experiments that involve observation, study, and logical deduction. The fact that one uses a telescope and the other a microscope is not as important as the common procedures used in both fields.
One theory of unified science holds that science can be categorized in a hierarchical structure with physics at its base. Proponents of this idea argue that the laws of physics affect all other scientific disciplines. For instance, the same basic laws concerning the transfer of heat or energy can apply to the processes that power the stars and to the electrical impulses that make the human heart beat. This interconnectedness can also be seen in the way physics has a direct effect on chemistry, which fuels biology, which produces living organisms that are studied in sociology.
Unified science theorists believed that scientific terminology and statements could be simplified and reduced to basic structures called protocol sentences. These sentences describe scientific observations with the most elementary statements and facts. While protocol sentences were meant to contain the most basic facts, they could be used as the starting point for other, more complex statements and observations. Under unified science, all scientific theories could be expressed in the simplest of terms, a language Neurath referred to as "universal slang." In his work Unified Science and Psychology, Neurath illustrated the language of unified science using protocol sentences.
A protocol sentence might be as simple as "The ball is purple" or as complicated as "At 5:15, the purple ball was in the room perceived by James." In some instances, simple protocol sentences might be represented as numbers or other symbols to make combinations that reflect specific observations.
Bibliography
Carnap, Rudolf. "On Protocol Sentences." Richard Creath and Richard Nollan, translators. Nous, vol. 21, 1987, pp. 457–70, sites.ualberta.ca/~francisp/NewPhil448/Carnap1932ProtocolSentences.pdf. Accessed 18 Jan. 2023.
Cat, Jordi. "Otto Neurath." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 28 Aug. 2019, plato.stanford.edu/entries/neurath/. Accessed 18 Jan. 2023.
Cat, Jordi. "The Unity of Science." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 16 May 2013, plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-unity/. Accessed 15 Dec. 2016.
Krige, John, and Dominique Pestre, editors. Science in the Twentieth Century. Routledge, 2013.
"Logical Positivism." Loyola University New Orleans, www.loyno.edu/~folse/logpos.htm. Accessed 16 Dec. 2016.
McGuinness, B.F., ed. Unified Science: The Vienna Circle Monograph Series. D. Reidel Publishing, 1987.
Murzi, Mauro. "Vienna Circle." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, www.iep.utm.edu/viennacr/. Accessed 16 Dec. 2016.
Sarkar, Sahotra. The Legacy of the Vienna Circle: Modern Reappraisals. Garland Publishing, 1996.
Staley, Kent W. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science. Cambridge UP, 2014.
Tahko, Tuomas E. Unity of Science. Cambridge University Press, 2021.