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The Unity of Science as a Historico-Sociological Goal: From the Primacy of Physics to the Epistemological Priority of Sociology

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Reflexive Epistemology

Part of the book series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science ((BSPS,volume 118))

Abstract

In September 1935 the first International Congress for the Unity of Science took place at the Sorbonne in Paris with a large attendance by European as well as by a number of American scientists. Neurath, the moving force behind the conference, was also its leading light.1 It proved to be a triumph for mid-European logical neopositivism and put Neurath’s plan for a new ‘Encyclopedia’ of scientific knowledge on an international footing.2 From this point until his death at Oxford in 1945, the majority of his own writings were devoted to the problem of the encyclopedic integration of science, while his wider social and editorial energies were absorbed by the practical plan for an International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. Despite the obstacles presented in turn by the advent of National Socialism and by the outbreak of war, Neurath’s project materialised, in 1935, in the foundation at the Hague of the International Institute for the Unity of Science3 and, from 1938, in the publication of Foundations of the Unity of Science under the auspices of the University of Chicago.4

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Notes

  1. On the series of meetings and Congresses organised by the Vienna Circle and particularly by Neurath see: J. Joergensen, The Development of Logical Empiricism, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951, pp. 43–8; F. Barone, Il neopositivismo logico, pp. 9–13; F. Barone, ‘Introduzione’ to O. Neurath, Il Circolo di Vienna e Vawenire dell’empirisme logico, pp. 9–13.

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  2. As to the Paris Congress, see particularly O. Neurath, ‘Erster Internationaler Kongress für Einheit der Wissenschaft in Paris 1935’, [1935c], pp. 377–406; see in addition: Actes du Congrès international de philosophie scientifique, Sorbonne, Paris 1935, in Actualités Scientifique et Industrielles, Paris 1936.

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  4. For information concerning this Institute see: the Editors’ Note to the ‘Postscript’ to J. Joergensen, The Development of Logical Empiricism, p. 100; O. Neurath, ‘Die neue Enzyklopädie des wissenschaftlichen Empirismus’, Scientia, 62 (1937), now in GpmS, pp. 804–9, English trans. PP, pp. 192–6; G. Statera, Logica, linguaggio e sociologia. Studio su Otto Neurath e il neopositivismo, pp. 29–30, 127.

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  39. In P.A. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap, pp. 183–226.

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  1. Department for Philosophy and Social Sciences, University of Siena, Italy

    Danilo Zolo

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© 1989 Kluwer Academic Publishers

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Zolo, D. (1989). The Unity of Science as a Historico-Sociological Goal: From the Primacy of Physics to the Epistemological Priority of Sociology. In: Reflexive Epistemology. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 118. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2415-4_5

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