Abstract
Unity of Science is a regulative idea and a task. That is why it has been grasped through the most extreme metaphors of an invisible totality and has given rise to some epistemological programmes and even intellectual movements. But, before to mount up to such exemplary issues, I will pay attention to the deep, institutional configurations of Unity of Science (Library, Museum, “République des Savants”, School and Encyclopaedia) and to their polyhedric articulations. More than a game of complementarities, what seems to be interesting is to show that their structured relationship is endowed with important descriptive and normative capacity.
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Notes
- 1.
As mentioned by Carrier and Mittelstrass (1990: 17), a catalogue of German universities in 1990 already declared more than 4,000 research areas. By its side, the National Science Foundation at the USA, at 1940, declared 54 specialties, at 1954 74 only in Physics and at 1969 several thousands.
- 2.
Already in 1929, Ortega Y. Gasset vigorously denounced what he called the “barbarian specialist” (1929: 173). And precisely 30 years later, in 1959, Snow (1959: 15) considered as sociological evidence the break between the natural and the human sciences. As he wrote in his celebrated Essay, the rupture is such that “Scientist never read a single work of Shakespeare and literary intellectuals do not know the second law of thermodynamics” (1959: 15).
- 3.
As Prigogine and Stengers write (1988: 208), “some people try to reduce science to a simple research of general relations allowing to foresee and dominate the phenomena. But this ‘adult’ and not enchanted conception of rationality can never prevent the belief which is at the root of the passion of physicists: their research aims to understand the world, to make intelligible the movement of nature and not only to describe the way it behaves”.
- 4.
As Habermas states in Technick und Wissenschaft als Ideologie (1968): “the autonomy of disciplines is the epistemological correlatum of the non autonomy of science in its whole, face to the technical world where it gets its legitimacy”.
- 5.
Something which I have tried to systematize elsewhere according to a set of proposed categories for the analysis of scientific practices (importation, cooptation, convergence, decentration, commitment, crossings, etc.) (cf. Pombo 2004).
- 6.
Which Boulding (1956: 12) names as “multi-sexual interdisciplines”.
- 7.
In what concerns University, the aim is to recover the interdisciplinary vocation of University while metaphor of the very articulation of the diverse kinds of knowledge, as it has been presented in Kant’s Der Streit der Fakultäten (1798) and later theorized by Fichte, Schelling, Schleiermacher, Hegel and Humboldt during the famous reform of the University of Berlin at 1810. As Schleiermacher wrote, it is the aim of university “to examine the particular, not in itself, but in the net of its scientific relations, to inscribe it in a vast set without never putting it apart from the unity and the totality of knowledge”. Later, Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) will recognize the dangers to which University is submitted, namely, those which come from specialization of scientific knowledge and from the fragmentation of University in an amount of schools (cf. Jaspers 1965: 103–107). Also Habermas (1987) will recognize the integrative capacity of University which he defines as the place of the “convergent interaction” (Habermas 1987: 8) of the “subjectively shared awareness according to which some do things different from other but all together fulfill, not a function but a set of convergent functions” (ibid). Habermas grounds this possibility, not anymore at the hierarchical position of philosophy as the basis for culture and for unity of science (cf. 1987: 6) but in the communicative rationality which subsists at the heart of the public community of researchers (cf. 1987: 9).
- 8.
Put forward in France during the events of May 1968 as a student revindication, interdisciplinarity is in fact at the root of multiple experiences, of varied scope and amplitude. Curiously enough, in France, philosophy is the leader of the movement in favour of interdisciplinarity. See, for instance, the Rapport de la Commission de Philosophie et d’Épistémologie put forward by Jacques Bouveresse and Jacques Derrida, at 1988, for the French Minister of National Education (cf. Derrida 1990). On the contrary, in England and in the majority of anglophonic countries, it is science teaching which seems to go in front of the process. See the case of the celebrated projects “Nuffield Combined Science”, “Scottish Integrated Science” and “Harvard Project Physics: An Integrated Science Course”, created in the 1970s (cf. Rutherford 1971).
- 9.
See the case of the strong interdisciplinary programme developed since 1971 at the University of Chicago, the “Midwest Faculty Seminar” (cf. Walshok 1995: 207–224).
- 10.
With a first version in 1271, the Ars Magna Primitiva, Lull will go on rewriting the Ars during 23 years, always looking for a more simple, more accessible, universally appropriate form. However, the two last versions, one more extensive under the title of Ars Generalis Ultima and another shorter and easier to manipulate, under the title Ars Brevis, are both from 1308. See the classical study by Tomás and Joaquín Carreras y Artau (1939: I, 427–455).
- 11.
Bacon’s Instauratio Magna is the proclamation statement of modern science and of its future discovery (see exploration) of the natural and human world. There is no divine light to illuminate the voyage unless the doubtful light of senses. Science is a human, collective task whose Unity is resultant from a plural set of determinations. In fact, for Bacon, Unity of Science is the outcome of several features: a common object (the Unity of the World which science must mirror), a final hedonistic aim (the happiness of humankind), a common organizational structure (the organic community of men whose life is devoted to science) and, last but not least, a new universal methodology. Bacon is aware of the importance and novelty of his inductive logics as the methodological support of modern science. We understand his audacity in the Novum Organon (1620): “As common Logics, which covers all by the syllogism, does not only apply to nature sciences but to all sciences without exception, so this inductive method shall be used by all sciences” (Novum Organon, 127).
- 12.
Mathesis Universalis concerns a totally formalized science, unique, universal and free from error, from doubt and from uncertainty. A universal science which would assemble all human knowledge in an integrative, exhaustive way. Not by additive accumulation but by a process of deduction and logical engendering on the basis of a set of primordial categories, pure concepts or primitive terms. Two main postulates are present here: reality can be entirely apprehended by reason; mathematics is the key, the method and the model of such intelligibility. For Descartes, Unity of Science has its ground, not in the unity of the World, as for Bacon, but in the unity of human reason. It is in this context that Descartes points to a Mathesis Universalis as a universal science which (I quote the Regulae IV) “must contain the first principles of human reason and which must extend to the rising of truths in any subject” (Descartes 1963–1973, Oeuvres, I: 94). Mathesis Universalis, thus constructed on the basis of the clear and distinct principles, evident for any rational being, is thus warranted, from its beginning, by the return of a solitary reason to indubitable principles, subjectively constituted, on the basis of which all other truth will be deducted. On the contrary, for Leibniz, the main point concerns mathematics which he considers to be the centre, the source of any inventions and discovery. However, differently from Descartes – for whom mathematics is valuable most for the intuitive character of its first propositions – for Leibniz is by the formal rigour of its demonstrations that mathematics can constitute the model of true knowledge. As Leibniz states in a classical text against Descartes, Meditationes de Cognitione, Veritate et Ideis, published in the Acta Eruditorum in 1684: “logical laws, the same geometers use, constitute the truth criteria for propositions which cannot be despised. Nothing can be admitted as valid and certain which has not been proved, either through an accurate experience, or by a solid demonstration. Yet, a demonstration will be solid only if it respects the form prescribed by logics” (Leibniz, GP, IV: 425). Now, because only logical laws can guarantee the rigour of a demonstration, that rigour cannot lay in dependence for subjective certainties. Such rigour must be conquered inside a symbolic system, which, by making stable and visible the most abstract thoughts, could offer a sensible medium that guides, supports, raises or even substitutes natural reason. As Leibniz writes, in a clear anti-Cartesian tone: “the true method must provide us a filum Adiadnes, that is, a crude and sensible mean, which should lead the spirit as drawing lines in geometry which are usually prescribed to apprentices in arithmetics” (Leibniz, GP, VII: 22). For further developments, see our Pombo (1987).
- 13.
Unity of Science will get here the character of a movement. In fact, with the neo-positivism, the expression corresponds not only to a theoretical programme on the technical problematics of Unity of Science (an articulated, even if not always coherent, sum of thesis inspired by the logical empiricism of the Vienna Circle) but also to a set of concrete initiatives undertaken in order to encourage Unity of Science (the organization of six International Congress on the Unity of Science; the foundation, first in Haia (Mundanaeum Institut) and then at the USA, of the Institute for the Unity of Science; the publication of the Library of Unified Science; the edition, after 1930, of the famous journal Erkenntnis (afterward, named as Journal of Unified Science) by Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach; and, above all, the project of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science).
- 14.
We could, naturally, consider several other projects for the unification of knowledge, each of them actualizing a singular form of articulation between philosophy and the idea of Unity of Science. For instance, a deductive metaphysics, where philosophy is the form of knowledge par excellence, as it was the case in Spinoza; a unity which corresponds to the regulative power of a transcendental structure, as for Kant; a theoretical and practical unity which has in self-consciousness its radical ground, as for Fichte; an absolute knowledge with the capacity to enclose in itself the contradictions of a becoming totality, as it was the case with Hegel. For further developments on the most important programmes for Unity of Science, cf. Pombo (2006a).
- 15.
In one case, the inductive logic is the paradigm, in the other, the primacy is given to mathematics.
- 16.
We can read on a fragment by Heraclitus, “numerous knowledge does not teaches intelligence” (Diels 1952: 40). From the Greek poli math, science of the multiple, the polimatia condemned by Heraclitus, first great philosopher of unity, was though out as the juxtaposition of data and fragmentary information, that is, as the amount of what is seen face to what cannot be seen at all. As Bollack and Wisman write (1972: 152), “unable to identify and to enunciate the unity of things, then men thought out the multiple”.
- 17.
One of the decisive reasons for the emergence of science and philosophy would have been the new language practices that became possible in the Greek cities democratically organized. There, it would have been developed new communicative conditions, habits of dialogue, of discussion and of rational argument, never before experienced in human communities. In contrast to the traditional, millenary forms (mythic and narrative) of knowledge transmission, it appeared in Greece new forms of transmission of knowledge (the school was invented), new ways of using language that will result in the formation of new types of knowledge, basically, mathematics – a word meaning precisely what can be thought – and philosophy, the mother of all sciences. What we want to stress is that it is not the accumulation of scientific knowledge that is on the basis of the appearance of teaching. Rather, it is the emergence of teaching that makes possible the creation of scientific knowledge. Science and philosophy, as we know them today, are therefore the product of a long history of school along which specific forms of using language were imposed, discursive rules, ways of doing and saying and forms of producing, analyzing and explaining linguistic practices endowed with the rationality inherent in the very practice of communication. For further details, see Pombo (2002b: 182–228).
- 18.
Science is never a solitary form of knowledge. Its topos of production is a community of peers which only can accept, recognize and validate the produced statements. But even before the call for discussing the results of research, the work of invention and production of knowledge takes place within a communicative network. As Schleiermacher wrote “is a hollow illusion to assume that an individual who is engaged in scientific activity can live alone with their work and their projects: how much it seems that he works alone in the library, at the desk or in the laboratory, his knowledge activity is, inevitably, interior to a public community of researchers” (Schleiermacher 1808: 258).
- 19.
- 20.
Let us think about Alexandria’s Library and Museum. As Strabo says, at the Library of Alexandria were together “all the books ever written on the inhabited earth”. Those books were there made available to scholars who Ptolemy Soter has invited to Alexandria and installed in the Museum of which the Library was a necessary complement. We know that what it is behind the foundation of these two major cultural institutions is the Aristotelian idea of science, a collective undertaking requiring the combined effort of a republic of wise men. The great inspiration for the cultural policy of Ptolemy Soter was Demetrius Falero (350–283 BC), disciple of Theophrastus (372–287); successor of Aristotle in the Lyceum where he created, along with the particular library of Aristotle, a Museion; and true predecessor of the Museum of Alexandria. What matters however to emphasize is the symbolic fact that the destiny of the Library is so crossed, and from that inaugural moment forever, with the destiny of the Republic of the wise. For more developments, cf. Pombo (2002b).
- 21.
Encyclopaedism in Greece happens only in school context. The fragments of more clearly encyclopaedic nature that arrive to us were produced by Speusippo (393–339 BC), nephew of Plato and his successor at the Academy. Speusippo would have assembled and compiled significant part of the content transmitted in the classes, a series of writings on natural history, mathematics, logics and metaphysics. His aim would have been to give students an overall presentation of the material under study. Thus, Encyclopaedia is born as a school requirement seeking to preserve and extend by the written word, the teacher’s spoken word. Regarding Alexandrian encyclopaedism – compilation, varia, abstract, collection of fragments and mirabilia – it was induced by the presence of Library and by the reading and writing practices which were constituted there. For a study on the history of encyclopaedism, cf. Pombo (2006b).
- 22.
That is the case of the Encyclopaedia Universalis (1968–1975) and the Enciclopédia Einaudi (1977–1984b) which both became more integrated, more decentred, more interdisciplinary, more combinatory and thus more concerned with heuristics.
- 23.
As one can read in the introductory note with which Claude Gregory opens the Organon of Universalia, “it is a reader´s job to work out the project” (1968–1975, vol. XVII: XI). The same at the Einaudi whose aim was “to concentrate on the more important elements of the cultural discourse organized in the last half century” (Romano 1977–1984a: XIII). The Einaudi thus explicitly gains a heuristic and interdisciplinary scope. Interdisciplinary, in that it implies the ability to “enter the logic of various subjects in order to see how could one transmigrated concept be enriched with new abilities in order to become broader and more fertile, in limit, to become completely different” (Romano 1977–1984a: XV). Heuristic because, not wishing to identify the knowledge acquired in the past nor even to review the knowledge of the present, encyclopaedia aims to open itself for new conceptual structures, for the new objects of study and research, aiming to give an account of “the ways which contemporary research is following, the organizational structures and – especially – the possibilities existing in each field” (see Romano 1977–1984a: XIII).
- 24.
Significantly, the concept of “navigation” appears explicitly at the Organon of the Encyclopaedia Universalis, vol. 17: 595.
- 25.
Namely, in what concerns electronic and online encyclopaedias whose main advantage is facility and speed. A second feature of this new type of encyclopaedias concerns its radical actuality. The passage from virtual to actual is always local, dependent on the subjective activation of a specific mechanism.
- 26.
For a comparative study on Leibniz and Neurath’s encyclopaedism, cf. Pombo (2002a).
- 27.
The original plan, conceived by Neurath around 1920, was presented, discussed and approved at the First International Congress for the Unity of Science held at the Sorbonne in Paris, 1935. The Encyclopaedia was intended to provide the publication of a series of 260 independent monographs in about 26 volumes. It would be designed to have the structure of an onion, including a heart formed by 20 books dedicated to the foundations of Unified Science and organized into four major sections: the first devoted to the theoretical analysis of the problem of the Unity of Science, the second on methodological issues, the third aimed at giving an overview of the current systematization state of the various sciences and the fourth intending to give an account of the main applications of science in the field of private education, medicine, engineering and law. All the other books planned would be located around the heart, as overlapping layers. They would be dedicated to the various particular sciences dealing with problems specific to each of them (cf. Neurath 1937: 139 and 1938: 24–25). Neurath also envisaged the publication of a supplement in ten volumes comprising one Atlas or Isotype Thesaurus that would include maps, graphs and other pictorial representations as “means of unified visual aid” (Neurath 1938: 25). Neurath also believed it would be possible to hold simultaneous editions in English, French and German aiming to gather the input from a wide range of European and Asian collaborators.
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Pombo, O. (2014). Unity of Science and Encyclopaedia: From the Idea to the Configurations. In: Riesenfeld, D., Scarafile, G. (eds) Perspectives on Theory of Controversies and the Ethics of Communication. Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7131-4_16
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