The Unity of Science

 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-unity/

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The Unity of Science

The topic of unity in the sciences can be explored through questions such as the following: Is unity a feature of reality or of our modes of cognition? Is there one privileged, most basic or fundamental concept or kind of thing and, if not, how are the different concepts or kinds of things in the universe related? Can the various natural sciences (e.g., physics, astronomy, chemistry, biology) be unified into a single overarching theory, and can theories within a single science (e.g., general relativity and quantum theory in physics, or models of evolution and development in biology) be unified? How are the so-called human sciences related to the natural ones? Are theories or models the relevant connected units? What other connected or connecting units are there? Does the unification of these parts of science involve only matters of fact or are matters of value involved as well? What about matters of method, material, institutional, ethical and other aspects of intellectual cooperation? Moreover, what kinds of unity, not just units, in the sciences are there? And is the relation of unification one of reduction, translation, explanation, logical inference, collaboration or something else? What roles can unification play in scientific practices, their development, application and evaluation? Are those expressions of more general cognitive activities? How are all these questions to be investigated? Is unification an aim of inquiry or a guiding idea at the service of ulterior aims? Is it a question for philosophy, e.g., for metaphysics or epistemology? If so, how can examining scientific practices help? Or is philosophy, rather, a resource for understanding science?

Over the last four decades much historical and philosophical scholarship has challenged the ideals of monism and reductionism and pursued a growing critical interest in pluralism and interdisciplinary collaboration (see below). Along the way, the distinction between the historical human sciences and ahistorical natural sciences has received much critical and productive attention. One outcome has been the application and development of concepts and accounts in philosophy of history in understanding different human and natural sciences as historical, with a special focus on the epistemic role of unifying narratives and standards and problems in disciplines such as archeology, geology, cosmology and paleontology (see, for instance, Morgan and Wise 2017; Currie 2019). Another outcome has been a renewed critique of the autonomy of the social sciences. One concern is, for instance, the raising social and economic value of the natural sciences and their influence on the models and methods of the social sciences; another is the influence on both of certain particular political and economic views. Other related concerns are the role of the social sciences in political life and the assumption that humans are unique and superior to animals and emerging technologies (see, for instance, van Bouwel 2009b; Kincaid and van Bouwel 2023).

At the end of the day, one should not lose sight of the larger context that sustains problems and projects in most disciplines and practices. We are as free to pursue them as Kant’s dove is free to fly, that is, not without the surrounding air resistance to flap its wings upon and against. Philosophy was once thought to stand for the systematic unity of the sciences. The foundational character of unity became the distinctive project of philosophy, in which conceptual unity played the role of the standard of intelligibility. In addition, the ideal of unity, frequently under the guise of harmony, has long been a standard of aesthetic virtue, although this image has been eloquently challenged by, for instance, John Bailey and Iris Murdoch (Bailey 1976; Murdoch 1992). Unities and unifications help us meet cognitive and practical demands upon our life as well as cultural demands upon our self-images that are both cosmic and earthly. It is not surprising that talk of the many meanings and levels of unity—the fundamental level, unification, system, organization, universality, simplicity, atomism, reduction, harmony, complexity or totality—can place an urgent grip on our intellectual imagination.