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The Plurality of Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2023

Patrick Suppes*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
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What I have to say falls under four headings: What is unity of science, unity and reductionism, the search for certainty, and the search for completeness.

To answer this initial question, I turned to the introductory essay by Otto Neurath for Volume 1, Part 1, of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. He begins this way:

Unified science became historically the subject of this Encyclopedia as a result of the efforts of the unity of science movement, which includes scientists and persons interested in science who are conscious of the importance of a universal scientific attitude.

The new version of the idea of unified science is created by the confluence of divergent intellectual currents. Empirical work of scientists was often antagonistic to the logical constructions of a priori rationalism bred by philosophico-religious systems; therefore, “empiricalizatlon” and “logicalization” were considered mostly to be in opposition—the two have now become synthesized for the first time in history (p. I).

Type
Part I. The Unity of Science – Plurality of Nature
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 Philosophy of Science Association

Footnotes

1

I am debted to Georg Kreisel for a number of penetrating criticisms of the first draft of this paper.

References

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[4] Kreisel, G.Informal Rigour and Completeness Proofs.” In Problems in the Philosophy of Mathematics. Edited by Lakatos, I. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1967. Pages 138171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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