Theunity of science is a thesis inphilosophy of science that says that all thesciences form a unified whole. The variants of the thesis can be classified asontological (giving a unified account of the structure of reality) and/or asepistemic/pragmatic (giving a unified account of how the activities and products of science work).[1] There are also philosophers who emphasize thedisunity of science, which does not necessarily imply that there could be no unity in some sense but does emphasizepluralism in the ontology and/or practice of science.[1]
Early versions of the unity of science thesis can be found inancient Greek philosophers such asAristotle,[2][3] and in the later history ofWestern philosophy.[2] For example, in the first half of the 20th century the thesis was associated with the unity of science movement led byOtto Neurath,[4] and in the second half of the century the thesis was advocated byLudwig von Bertalanffy in "General System Theory: A New Approach to Unity of Science" (1951)[4][5] and byPaul Oppenheim andHilary Putnam in "Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis" (1958).[2][6] It has been opposed by, for example,Jerry Fodor in "Special Sciences (Or: The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis)" (1974),[2][7] byPaul Feyerabend inAgainst Method (1975) and later works,[2][8] byJohn Dupré in "The Disunity of Science" (1983) andThe Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science (1993),[2][9] byNancy Cartwright inThe Dappled World: A Study of the Boundaries of Science (1999) and other works,[2][10] and byEvelyn Fox Keller inMaking Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines (2002) and other works.[11]
Jean Piaget suggested, in his 1918 bookRecherche[12] and later works, that the unity of science can be considered in terms of a circle of the sciences, where logic is the foundation for mathematics, which is the foundation for mechanics and physics, and physics is the foundation for chemistry, which is the foundation for biology, which is the foundation for sociology, the moral sciences, psychology, and the theory of knowledge, and the theory of knowledge forms a basis for logic, completing the circle,[13] without implying that any science could bereduced to any other.[14] More recently, manycomplex systems are considered to betransdisciplinary[15] objects of study.[2][16] Such systems can be modeled as havingemergent properties at differentlevels of organization, which do not neatly correspond to separate disciplines such as physics or biology,[2] and which cannot be adequately modeled using a philosophy of extremereductionism ("everything comes from the bottom", which does not fully account for emergent properties) or extremeholism ("everything comes from the top", which does not fully account for systems' components and interactions).[17][18]
Bertalanffy, Ludwig von (December 1951). "General system theory: a new approach to unity of science: 1. Problems of general system theory".Human Biology.23 (4):302–312.JSTOR41448003.PMID14907026. Bertallanfy's article was part of a section that also included, in response,Carl G. Hempel's "General system theory and the unity of science" (pp. 313–322), Robert E. Bass's "Unity of nature" (pp. 323–327), andHans Jonas's "Comment on general system theory" (pp. 328–335).
Kitchener, Richard F. (September 1981). "The nature and scope of genetic epistemology".Philosophy of Science.48 (3): 400–415 (413).doi:10.1086/289007.JSTOR186987.S2CID144785292.Nowhere does Piaget suggest that sociology can be reduced to psychology, but instead refers to 'psycho-sociology'.
Piaget, Jean (1918).Recherche(PDF) (in French). Lausanne: Édition La Concorde. p. 59.OCLC2565864.Archived(PDF) from the original on 2016-06-29. Retrieved9 February 2017.
