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Varieties of Unification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

C. West Churchman  and
Russell L. Ackoff
C. West Churchman
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
Russell L. Ackoff
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Extract

“Unification of Science” is probably the most popular slogan in contemporary philosophy. This phrase has not only become the cry of a specific group of philosophers, but it is now accepted as one of the aims of philosophy by most of the contemporary philosophic schools, with but few exceptions. Each particular school believes that it has found the way of effecting such a unification, implicitly assuming that it knows the conditions for a unified science. One who concerns himself with the literature of the movements soon becomes aware of current confusion in the meaning of the expression, “Unification of Science“. The observer begins to wonder whether “Unity of Science” has not become a philosophic stereotype, designed to evoke feeling rather than thought.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , October 1946 , pp. 287 - 300
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1946

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Footnotes

1

This article attempts to fulfill in part a promise made under the heading of “A Challenge” in an earlier issue of this journal (Phil. of Sci., vol. 12, 1945), by T. A. Cowan and C. W. Churchman.

References

Notes

2 Throughout, the term “individual” may designate a “human being” or a “social group.“

3 Churchman, C. W., Ackoff, R. L., “Towards an Experimental Definition of Personality“, Psych. Rev., (to appear).

4 Randall, J. H., Jr. “Newton's Natural Philosophy: Its Problems and Consequences“, Philosophical Essays in Honor of E. A. Singer, Jr., U. of Pa. Press (1942).

5 Hegel, G. W., Phenomenologie des Geistes, A, I.

6 Hume, D., Enquiry into Human Understanding.

7 Polya, G., How to Solve It, Princeton Univ. Press (1945); Hadamard, J. S., Essay on the Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field, Prin. Univ. Press (1945).

8 Singer, E. A., Jr., Mind as Behavior, R. G. Adams & Co. (1924), pp. 3–17.

9 Schlick, M., Fragen der Ethik, Wien, 1930.

10 Watson, J. B., Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist, Lippincott (1919).

11 Quine, W. V., Mathematical Logic, W. W. Norton Co. (1940), pp. 310ff.

12 James, W., Pragmatism, Longmans, Green & Co. (1916), p. 76.

13 Dewey, J., Intelligence in the Modern World, edited by Ratner, J., Modern Library (1939), p. 816.

14 See “The Algebra of Propositions“, Phil. of Sci. v. 3 (1936). Smith's work attempted to broaden the criteria of generality within logic, in the sense that the general “truth” of a proposition did not depend upon the collection of its special instances: a proposition might not hold in general even though it held for every possible “value” of the variables involved. Thus a general proposition is not shown to hold by a set of rules specifying the meaningfulness, truth, or falsity of its instances.

15 Dewey, J., The Quest for Certainty, Gifford Lectures (1929), p. 267.

16 Singer, E. A., Jr., Mind as Behavior (1924); On the Contented Life (1936); “On Spontaneity,” Jour. Phil. XXII, 16 (1925); “On the Conscious Mind,” Jour. Phil. XXVI, 21 (1929); “Mechanism, Vitalism, Naturalism“, Phil. of Sci. V. 13, 2 (1946); Experience and Reflection (in preparation).

Cowan, T. A., Churchman, C. W., “On the Meaningfulness of Questions“, Phil. of Sci., 13, 1 (1946).

Churchman, C. W., “The Dialectic of Modern Philosophy“, Jour. Phil. XLIII, 5 (1946); “Probability Theory”, I, II, and III, Phil. of Sci., 12, 3 (1945); Theory of Experimental Inference (in preparation).

17 Neurath, O., “Unified Science as Encyclopedic Integration“, Internat. Encycl. of Unified Sci., Vol. I, Number 1, p. 20.

18 Carnap, R., “Logical Foundations of the Unity of Science“, ibid, p. 61. For Carnap “Terms like ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ may be regarded as belonging to the thing-language, but not ‘temperature’ because its determination requires the application of a technical instrument.” The writers are puzzled as to how one determines whether or not an individual is feeling heat as a result of a stimulus independent of the use of instruments. That is, Carnap's distinction between the eye as a thing and the microscope as an instrument or between the unaided sense organs (measuring heat) as things and the thermometer as an instrument is based on the outmoded distinction between “natural” and “artificial” aids to the understanding. It harks back to the eighteenth century empiricist's naive faith in the infallibility of sense data and his distrust of secondary or artificial aids. What the naked eye sees is “pure datum”; what the telescope discloses is “inference“.

19 Dewey, J., “Unity of Science as a Social Problem“, ibid, pp. 33–34.

20 Examples are the Statistical Institute at the University of North Carolina, directed by Miss Gertrude Cox; similar, but less formalized groups at Princeton, Columbia, University of California at Berkeley. There is also the ASTM committee E-11, “On Quality Control of Materials”, and the well-known war creation, the Applied Mathematics Panel of the NDRC.

21 Preliminary attempts in this direction were made at the Conference on Measurement of Consumer Interest, held at the University of Penna., May 17 and 18, 1946. The proceedings are to be published by the U. of Pa. Press.