Abstract
This paper examines selected writings of the American science writer Waldemar Kaempffert, Science Editor for the New York Times, in public support of Otto Neurath, his Isotype projects, and his Unity of Science Movement. Attention is focused first on Kaempffert’s writings in the 1930s, when some intellectuals, the American public, and their elected leaders were relatively sympathetic with Neurath’s quest to unify the sciences in ways that would advance and direct scientific research toward practical goals. Attention then turns to the 1940s to examine the debate over the nature, scope, and limits of wartime research and Vannevar Bush’s call for a national institution to support research. Against Bush, James Bryant Conant, and others, Kaempffert argued vigorously for a foundation that would adopt values and methods of the Unity of Science Movement, but he lost that argument as the National Science Foundation finally took shape. To suggest that this public debate influenced not only the decline of Neurath’s Unity of Science Movement but the scholarly development of history and philosophy of science after the war, the paper considers early writings and events in the life of Conant’s protégé Thomas Kuhn, whose Structure of Scientific Revolutions helped shape that development.
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Notes
- 1.
See for example, Cartwright , Cat, Fleck , Uebel (1996), Stadler (2001 /2015), Howard (2003), Reisch (1994, 2005), Wuest (2015). On Neurath’s early political concerns see Don Howard’s and Günther Sandner’s chapters in the present volume. On the rise of analytic philosophy in the United States and its relation to political currents, see Capps (2003) and McCumber (2001, 2016).
- 2.
According to Neurath’s son, Paul, Waldemar and Otto were cousins, which suggests that Waldemar’s father, Bernhard, in New York and Neurath’s mother Gertrud in Austria were siblings or themselves cousins (Fleck et al. 2005, 285).
- 3.
This and other information about Kaempffert can be found in his obituary (New York Times 1956).
- 4.
- 5.
Roosevelt to Vannevar Bush, Nov. 17, 1944. The letter is reprinted in Bush (1945, 3–4).
- 6.
- 7.
Of Michael Faraday , Flexner (1939, 546) wrote, “[a]ny suspicion of utility would have restricted his restless creativity” – as if the mere thought of prototype electric motors or other applications would have harmed his research in magnetic forces and electric currents. For a historical survey of the pure-versus applied distinction at midcentury and the difficulty of maintaining it credibly, see Douglas (2014).
- 8.
Bush (1945, 56) wrote, “[t]he entire history of science bears testimony to the supreme importance of affording the prepared mind complete freedom for the exercise of initiative.” Flexner (1939, 545) had earlier written, “[…] throughout the whole history of science most of the really great discoveries which had ultimately proved to be beneficial to mankind had been made by men and women who were driven not by the desire to be useful but merely the desire to satisfy their curiosity.”
- 9.
Frank and other logical empiricists, one internal report on the Unity of Science Movement points out, were refugees from “the stifling atmosphere of totalitarianism” (“Toward Integration of the Sciences,” hand-dated March 1949, Rockefeller Archive Center, Tarrytown, NY, hereafter RAC.). For more on Frank and the foundation of the Institute, see Reisch (2005). For more on Frank’s exile and his relationships to James Bryant Conant , see Reisch (2017) and the other essays in Tuboly (2017) prepared for the 50th anniversary of Frank’s death.
- 10.
As early as 1946, before Frank’s Institute received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, Weaver noted private concern after talking to Frank that the movement “may be developing in to too much of a personal venture on the part of F[rank]” (“Interview: WW, Friday Dec. 13 1946,” RAC). By 1951, Rockefeller documents frequently express reservations about “old-timers in the Unity of Science Program” who are “repeating themselves” (Letter to Weaver, Dec. 9, 1951, RAC), Frank’s organizational skills (Memo from C[hadbourne] [G]ilpatric, Nov. 5, 1951, RAC), and Frank’s conviction (as Weaver put it) that “it is politically important to support activities which emphasize empirical and pragmatic philosophies, since Fascism and Communism depend essentially on metaphysical doctrines” – an argument Weaver found “very tenuous and unconvincing” (“WW’s Diary, Thursday Sept. 27, 1951,” RAC).
- 11.
Trustee Report, Jan 18, 1952, RAC.
- 12.
A copy of this document and Kuhn’s reply remains in Kuhn’s archival papers at MIT (hereafter, TSK-MIT), box 25, folder 53.
- 13.
“Report of the Institute for the Unity of Science to the Rockefeller Foundation for the Period of July 1952-1953,” RAC. Frank’s final report to the Rockefeller foundation lists seven “research assistants” who wrote six papers under the guidance or support of the committee (Anatol Rapoport , Jeremy Bernstein , Ernst Topitsch , Benoit Hepner , John Wilkinson and William H. Meyer , and Lewis Feuer ). The majority of subjects of research listed represent Frank’s theoretical interests, including criteria for acceptance and rejection of theories (Rapoport) and philosophical interpretations of general relativity (Bernstein, Topitsch, Hepner).
- 14.
There is positive evidence, on the other hand, that Frank’s research project was viewed with sufficient disdain to be attacked as intellectually irresponsible in the pages of Philosophy of Science (Kegley 1959). On the relation of sociological studies of science and logical empiricism see Uebel (2000), with particular reference to Frank, see Reisch (2005, Chap. 11.).
- 15.
Kuhn to Lowell, Feb. 20, 1951. TSK-MIT, box 3 folder 10.
- 16.
Kuhn to Owen, Jan. 6, 1951, TSK-MIT, box 3 folder 10.
- 17.
Not only Kuhn’s focus on science of the past, but a tacitly invoked pure-versus-applied distinction additionally isolated his Lowell Lectures from debates about science’s proper or potential roles in modern life: “We shall be concerned with the sort of research that led to the Newtonian laws of motion, not with the manner in which these laws were applied in building new machines or instruments. We shall be concerned with the work of such men as Boyle and Dalton, in so far as this led to a new understanding and a new set of laws governing the formation of chemical compounds, but we shall not be concerned with the manner in which these laws, once arrived at and confirmed, were applied to the production of dyes, explosives, or plastics” (Kuhn, “Introduction: Textbook Science and Creative Science,” op. cit., p. 7).
- 18.
Conant himself, for example, initially objected to Kuhn’s theory of paradigms on the grounds that it portrayed all members of a community bound by just one scientific point of view. Other objections came from Paul Feyerabend, Karl Popper and his circle, and others treated in detail in Reisch (2019). More recently, David Hollinger noted the ironically “totalitarian” character of Structure’s theory of science (Hollinger 1996, 169, 170). The Popperian/Conantian line of argument against Structure was later taken up by Steve Fuller (2000, 2004).
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Acknowledgement
I thank Günther Sandner for pointing out Modley’s importance to me, as well as spirited commentary from others at the conference ‘The Socio-Ethical Dimension of Knowledge: The Mission of Logical Empiricism,’ Budapest, December 2017.
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Reisch, G.A. (2019). What a Difference a Decade Makes: The Planning Debates and the Fate of the Unity of Science Movement. In: Cat, J., Tuboly, A. (eds) Neurath Reconsidered. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 336. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02128-3_14
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