Reduction, Integration, and the Unity of Science: Natural, Behavioral, and Social Sciences and the Humanities

The notion that science is unified in one way or another dates back at least to Aristotle, though unity claims since then have been diverse and variously motivated. By way of introduction to the modern discussion of unity, disunity, and integration, in this first section we examine five historical attempts to unify knowledge: Aristotle’s metaphysical and hierarchical unity; the Enlightenment project of the French Encyclopedists; the systematic unity of Naturphilosophen Lorenz Oken; the methodological unity of the Vienna School’s Encyclopedia of Unified Science; and finally, the organizational unity of cybernetics and general systems theory. We treat these unification projects not only as context, but also because, as we shall see, something of their momentum carries over into the modern discussion.