The first section of this chapter describes the major goals of this investiga tion and the general strategy of my presentation. The remaining three sections review some requisite background material and introduce some terminology and notation used in the book. Section B contains a brief review of some of the ideas and notation of elementary logic and set theory. Section C contains an introductory discussion of kinds and at tributes. Section D presents some basic ideas about laws and law sentences. A. GENERAL PLAN OF THE BOOK Basic scientific research is directed towards the goals of increasing our knowledge of the wor1d and our understanding of the wor1d. Knowledge increases through the discovery and confirmation of facts and laws. Understanding results from the explanation of known facts and laws, and through the formulation of general, systematic theories. Other things being equal, we tend to feeI that our understanding of a c1ass of phenomena increases as we develop increasingly general and intuitively unified theories of that c1ass of phenomena. It is therefore natural to consider the possibility of one very general, unified theory which, at least in principle, governs all known phenomena. The dream of obtaining such a theory, and the understanding that it would provide, has motivated an enormous amount of research by both scientists and philosophers.

The growing concern throughout the world for the logic, the history, and the sociology of science reveals a comprehensive international movement interested in considering the scientific enterprise in its entirety. The purpose of the "International Encyclopedia of Unified Science," as originally conceived by the late Otto Neurath, was to explore in numerous volumes the foundations of various sciences and to aid the integration of scientific knowledge. Circumstances during World War II and the death of Professor Neurath, however, limited the scope of the "Encyclopedia." The Foundations of the Unity of Science constitutes the only completed unit of the proposed multi-volume "Encyclopedia."

As a leading member of the Vienna Circle, Rudolph Carnap's aim was to bring about a "unified science" by applying a method of logical analysis to the empirical data of all the sciences. This work, first published in English in 1934, endeavors to work out a way in which the observation statements required for verification are not private to the observer. The work shows the strong influence of Wittgenstein, Russell, and Frege.

The unity of science has been a widely discussed issue both in the philosophy of science and within several sciences. Reductionism has often been seen as the means of bringing the different sciences to a fundamental unity by reference to some basic science, but it shows many limitations. Multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity have also been proposed as methodologies for attaining unity without underestimating the diversity of the sciences. This volume starts with a clarification of the possible meanings of this unity and then discusses the features of the mentioned approaches to unity, evaluating the success and the shortcomings of the unification programme among different sciences and within a single science. Contents: The General Framework: What Does ''The Unity of Science'' Mean? (E Agazzi); The Unity of Disunity (J Faye); Sciences of Nature and Sciences of Man: On a Difference between Natural Science and the Interpretive Sciences of Man (F Collin); Natural Sciences and Human Sciences (G M Prosperi); Overcoming Reductionism: Complexity, Reductionism, and the Unity of Science (J Ricard); The Consilience Approach to the Unity of Science (B Kanitscheider); The Unity Within a Single Science: The Problem of Unity in a Single Field of Science (A Cordero); The Unity of Particle Physics and Cosmology? The Case of the Cosmological Constant (J Mosterin); Is Quantum Mechanics a Universal Theory ? (B d''Espagnat); and other papers. Readership: Graduate students and academics in the philosophy of science.

The first volume in this new series explores, through extensive co-operation, new ways of achieving the integration of science in all its diversity. The book offers essays from important and influential philosophers in contemporary philosophy, discussing a range of topics from philosophy of science to epistemology, philosophy of logic and game theoretical approaches. It will be of interest to philosophers, computer scientists and all others interested in the scientific rationality.

The present volume collects some of the talks given at the Bertrand Russell Colloquium on Exact Philosophy, attached to the McGill University Foundations and Philosophy of Science Unit. It also includes a paper, on Bertrand Russell's method of philosophizing, read at the memorial symposium held at Sir Gorge Williams University shortly after the philosopher's death. All the papers appear here for the first time. Unlike many a philosophy of science anthology, this one is not center ed on the philosophy of physics. In fact the papers deal with conceptual and, in particular, philosophical problems that pop up in almost every one of the provinces of the vast territory constituted by the foundations, meth odology and philosophy of science. A couple of border territories which are in the process of being infiltrated have been added for good measure. The inclusion of papers in the philosophy of formal science and in the philosophies of physics and of biology, in a volume belonging to a series devoted to the philosophy and methodology of the social and behavioral sciences, should raise no eyebrows. Because the sciences of man make use of logic and mathematics, they are interested in questions such as whether the formal sciences have anything to do with reality (rather than with our theories about reality) and whether or not logic has kept up with the practice of mathematicians. These two problems are tackled in Part II, on the philosophy of formal science.

From 1918 to the late 1940s, a host of influential scientists and intellectuals in Europe and North America were engaged in a number of far-reaching unity of science projects. In this period of deep social and political divisions, scientists collaborated to unify sciences across disciplinary boundaries and to set up the international scientific community as a model for global political co-operation. They strove to align scientific and social objectives through rational planning and to promote unified science as the driving force of human civilization and progress. This volume explores the unity of science movement, providing a synthetic view of its pursuits and placing it in its historical context as a scientific and political force. Through a coherent set of original case studies looking at the significance of various projects and strategies of unification, the book highlights the great variety of manifestations of this endeavour. These range from unifying nuclear physics to the evolutionary synthesis, and from the democratization of scientific planning to the utopianism of H.G. Wells's world state. At the same time, the collection brings out the substantive links between these different pursuits, especially in the form of interconnected networks of unification and the alignment of objectives among them. Notably, it shows that opposition to fascism, using the instrument of unified science, became the most urgent common goal in the 1930s and 1940s. In addressing these issues, the book makes visible important historical developments, showing how scientists participated in, and actively helped to create, an interwar ideology of unification, and bringing to light the cultural and political significance of this enterprise.

This volume critically reexamines Otto Neurath’s conception of the unity of science. Some of the leading scholars of Neurath’s work, along with many prominent philosophers of science critically examine his place in the history of philosophy of science and evaluate the relevance of his work for contemporary debates concerning the unity of science.

Science is a dynamic process in which the assimilation of new phenomena, perspectives, and hypotheses into the scientific corpus takes place slowly. The apparent disunity of the sciences is the unavoidable consequence of this gradual integration process. Some thinkers label this dynamical circumstance a ‘crisis’. However, a retrospective view of the practical results of the scientific enterprise and of science itself, grants us a clear view of the unity of the human knowledge seeking enterprise. This book provides many arguments, case studies and examples in favor of the unity of science. These contributions touch upon various scientific perspectives and disciplines such as: Physics, Computer Science, Biology, Neuroscience, Cognitive Psychology, and Economics.

In this original and important book, Harold Kincaid defends a view of the special sciences -- all sciences outside physics -- as autonomous and nonreducible. He argues that the biological and social sciences provide explanations that cannot be captured by explanations at the level of their constituent parts, and yet that this does not commit us to mysterious, nonphysical entities like vital forces or group minds. A look at real scientific practice shows that the many different sciences can be unified in a way that leaves them each an autonomous explanatory role. This book will be of great interest to philosophers of science and social scientists.