SES 00-02222 - George A. Reisch, Jr. (Independent Scholar) - "Logical Empiricism, the Unity of Science Movement, and the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science"
This award support research on logical empiricism and the Unity of Science Movement. From the 1930s to the 1960s, logical empiricism was the dominant program under which philosophy of science became established in the U.S. as a branch of academic philosophy. Though their opinions often widely differed, logical empiricists shared a commitment to empiricism, to logical analysis of knowledge, and to science as the most effective project for generating knowledge.
One theme of logical empiricism was the unity of science -- the belief that theories in different branches of science were interconnected and would continue to unify as science progressed. This belief was closely associated with logical empiricist critiques of pseudoscience and its goal of reforming academic philosophy as "scientific philosophy" or logical empiricism. The unity of science was not only a philosophical thesis about the nature of science, however. It also motivated leading logical empiricists to collaborate with scientists to further unification within science and counteract growing specialization within science. This activity took place from 1930s and 40s under the rubric of The Unity of Science Movement led by the Viennese economist and sociologist Otto Neurath, along with the philosophers Rudolf Carnap, Charles Morris.
With support from this award, the Principal Investigator is completing research on the Unity of Science Movement by examining the collaboration of Neurath, Carnap, and Morris as editors of their International Encyclopedia of Unified Science and the series of International Congresses for the Unity of Science that they organized. By researching archival holdings pertaining to these and other philosophers, the goals of this research are to understand these philosophers' conceptions of the unity of science; the extent to which their Movement succeeded in popularizing unity of science within science and within philosophy of science; and the ways and causes by which their movement declined after World War II.
Need for understanding this period in philosophy of science is heightened by contemporary interest in the opposite theme -- the disunity of science. Some philosophers of science today, especially those based in philosophy of biology, reject the logical empiricist's thesis of the unity of science as false without understanding how the thesis operated as part of this constructive, collaborative project. It is also heightened by broader debate about scientific literacy (and the question of what counts as a canon of scientific theory and achievement) and continuing disputes over the teaching of creationism.
