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Paul Ziche (Utrecht)
Monism and the Unity of Science // (First) draft version
I. The anti-unitarian history of the ‘unity of science’
It seems unquestionable, at first glance at least, that a monism has to defend a strong
thesis not only of unity,1 but also of uniqueness: if there is just one principle, this must
necessarily be unique. However, the very fact that there are many different monisms
immediately casts doubts on this conviction. It is equally clear that (at least several of
the) typical monisms of the 19th century are based on one or the other of the natural
sciences or even on more specific theories within a particular science: evolutionary
biology, physical chemistry (or the more fundamental discipline of energetics), cellbased neurology in the cases of Haeckel, Ostwald and Forel, respectively. This leads
to a whole series of questions: Do all of these monisms imply the claim that, at least in
the long run, these disciplines have to coincide? Is it one of these (comparatively)
specific disciplines that comes to lie at the basis of all monisms, or do we have to look
for yet more fundamental disciplines? If so: then it is impossible to use the disciplines
that are in existence at a particular moment as the basis for a solid argument for
monifying intellectual efforts. And: what kind of relations does this monification (to coin
an artificial term that avoids the traditional assumptions inherent in ‘unity’ and
‘unification’) imply?
In order to get a grip on ‘monification’, let’s start with the history of the
unification of science. Hardly anything could be less unitarian than the original unity of
science movement in the 1920ies and 30ies.2 Linked with the genesis of variagataed
See also the entry “monism” in the Stanford Encyclopedia on Philosophy, which
begins with the laconic remarks: “There are many monisms. What they have in
common is that they attribute oneness” (Schaffer, J., “Monism”, The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/monism>.
2
For an overview over the history of the idea of the unity of science, cf. Jordi Cat,
“The Unity of Science”, in: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta
(ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-unity/›. - Earlier developments
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enterprises such as ‘Logical empiricism’, the ‘philosophy of science’ as an innovative
and autonomous sub-field within philosophy, and with the project to publish an
Encyclopedia of Unified Science, a study of the early sources concerning this
movement reveals its inherent dis-unity. It would make an interesting historical study
indeed to explain why the unity of science could ever be come thought of as
supporting radical reductionist ideas as seems to be the case in the 1940ies and
50ies. Such a study would also have to explain why the discovery of the disunity of
science, hallowed by historians of science since roughly 15 years (the emblematic
publication on The disunity of science. Boundaries, Contexts, and Power was
published in 19963) could be seen as a necessary antidote against an – from the
perspective of the dis-unitarians – overdone and unrealistic conception of science’s
unity.
At the same time, finding a richly textured, flexible and structured idea of unity
in this period establishes a direct link between the unity-of-science-movement and
monism. Not only do we find, as has been mentioned, several monisms, a plurality of
monisms hardly compatible with a strict rendering of the claim as to uniqueness that
seems to inhere in a literal reading of the “monos”-character of monism; the individual
monisms, too, are remarkably open insofar as they readily admit the legitimacy of
different forms of science that cannot be reduced to just one type of science. This
amounts to the claim that monism is – just as the original unity-of-science-movement
– a theory with surprisingly strong anti-reductionist elements. However, this by no
means implies that monism intends to lose contact with the reality of science: Monists
look for evidence for their pluralistic tendencies within a very rigorous view of what
sciences are or should be.
The unity-of-science-movement finds its official mouthpiece in the International
Encyclopedia of Unified Science, edited by the philosopher/economist/social
in the systematization of the sciences will not be discussed here; cf. Paul Ziche:
Wissenschaftslandschaften um 1900. Philosophie, die Wissenschaften und der nichtreduktive Szientismus. Zürich 2008.
3
Peter Galison/David J. Stump (eds.), The Disunity of Science. Boundaries, Contexts,
and Power. Stanford 1996.4 First two volumes Chicago 1938-9, many later editions.
See also the series “Einheitswissenschaft”, also initiated by Neurath; modern edition
e.g. Einheitswissenschaft. Ed. by. J. Schulte and B. McGuinness. Frankfurt a.M. 1992.
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theoretician Otto Neurath together withthe philosopher/logician Rudolf Carnap and the
semiotician/philosopher Charles W. Morris.4 Neurath himself characterizes the aim of
this encyclopedia in rather open terms: it intends to further the “confluence of
divergent intellectual currents”; aims are “bringing together scientists in different fields
and in different countries”5, and opening up a “new field for co-operation”.6 Two
aspects stick out as remarkable: Unification of science obviously has as one of its
central features the bringing together of scientists in order to form a larger
social/political unity that, however, certainly cannot lay claim to forming a body of
identical activities. Neurath speaks in terms of a “synthesis” rather than a reductive
elimination leading to a single core of scientific doctrines or methods, and is
remarkably guarded as regards the concrete impact of such a synthesis that can at
best ‘help’ to make unified science ‘evolve’: “The International Encyclopedia of Unified
Science aims to show how various scientific activities such as observation,
experimentation, and reasoning can be synthesized, and how all these together help
to evolve unified science”. Unified science is “not directed at creating the system of
science”, and he consequently employs the metaphor of a “mosaic”, thereby placing
much emphasis on evidence taken from the historical genesis of science.7 This
mosaic becomes defined as “the pattern of which has been formed by combining new
observations and new logical constructions of diverse character and origin”, and it is in
a constant process of reforming and reshaping.
Slowly, however, another set of motives hinting at stronger form of unification or
even redcution comes to the fore when Neurath stresses the atomistic structure of
science (“Science as a whole can be regarded as a combination of an enormous
First two volumes Chicago 1938-9, many later editions. See also the series
“Einheitswissenschaft”, also initiated by Neurath; modern edition e.g.
Einheitswissenschaft. Ed. by. J. Schulte and B. McGuinness. Frankfurt a.M. 1992.
5
Otto Neurath, “Unified Science as Encyclopedic Integration”, in: International
Encyclopedia of Unified Science, ed. by Otto Neurath e.al., Vol. 1, no. 1, Chicago
1938, 4th impression 1947, 1-27, here p. 1.
6
Neurath, “Unified Science”, p. 2.
7
Neurath, “Unified Science”, p. 3sqq. See also Walter Tega, “Atlases, Cities, Mosaics
– Neurath and the Encyclopédie”, in: Encyclopedia and Utopia. The Life and Work of
Otto Neurath (1882-1945). Ed. by Elisabeth Nemeth/Friedrich Stadler.
Dordrecht/Boston/London 1996, 63-77.
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number of elements, collected little by little”8) and sees a rather uniform development
leading to an analysis of science with the means of logic9 and fostering the hope that
one may arrive at a – then presumably definite – axiomatization; but, he still wants to
insist that any axiomatization has to start with the data to be found in the history of
science: every “preliminary axiomatization has to be founded on a long evolution of
science”.10
A conceptual space is created in which axiomatization, strict deduction,
reduction to elements and far more flexible accounts of science are imaginable. In the
end, it becomes necessary to rely on science itself. No external criteria are available,
science has to be taken up as it is: “Science itself is supplying its own integrating glue
instead of aiming at a synthesis on the basis of a ‘super-science’ which is to legislate
for the special scientific activities. The historical tendency of the unity of science
movement is toward a unified science departementalized into special sciences, and
not toward a speculative juxtaposition of an autonomous philosophy and a group of
scientific disciplines.”11 No stronger unification than that of an encyclopedia, taking the
historical state of the sciences into account, can be aimed at. In a similar vein,
Neurath stresses at the Congrès international de philosophie scientifique in Paris,
1935, that, in reflecting on science, we have to start from the set of propositions that is
available in the sciences, and that we must not begin with a-priori-systematizations of
this material.
Neurath’s co-authors pursue these issues further, giving them different
accentuations, but by no means leaving the framework he sketched. John Dewey, in
writing on the Unity of Science as a Social Problem, takes up the impossibility of apriori-structures within the field of the sciences, and pledges for a unification that
derives its cohesion from the social fact of a division of labour among scientists: “a
movement in behalf of the unity of science need not and should not lay down in
Neurath, “Unified Science”, p. 8.
Neurath, “Unified Science”, p. 8: “The parallel increase of the scientific attitude and
the systematic analysis of scientific procedures prepared the way for logical
empiricism.” p. 10: “”reform generalization [...] and develop them by means of modern
logic.”
10
Neurath, “Unified Science”, p. 18-9.
11
Neurath, “Unified Science”, p. 20.
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advance a platform to be accepted. It is essentially a co-operative movement, so that
detailed specific common standpoints and ideas must emerge out of the very
processes of co-operation.”12 More prone to reductionist attitudes seems to be Rudolf
Carnap who develops an extensive theory of the reduction of the vocabulary of one
theory to that of another. But he is very careful to stress that his reductionism is the
weaker substitute for (eliminative) definitions in those cases where strictly defining a
concept or a property in other terms is not possible. It is a question of logic, not of
ontology.13 He opts for a strong unification of the language of science without thereby
implying a stratification on the ontological level. The best example for his liberal
attitude towards this question is his readiness to accept the facts of introspection
within a scientific psychology.
In Carnap’s reflection on language and logic we already encounter a tendency
to ascribe the most important tasks in reflecting on science to a basic discipline, in the
case of Carnap’s with logic. In a similar vein, Charles W. Morris deems it necessary to
develop a new type of science, resulting from a self-application of science upon itself
that he names “’the science of science’” or “’metascience’”14, and he even does not
shun away from adopting a term laden with associations from completely different
philosophical traditions when, again at the Paris conference from 1935, he muses that
“Perhaps the hope might be expressed that somewhere – in a general volume on
John Dewey, “Unity of Science as a Social Problem”, in: International Encyclopedia
of Unified Science, ed. by Otto Neurath e.al., Vol. 1, no. 1, Chicago 1938, 4th
impression 1947, 29-38, here pp. 33-4. - William English Walling: The larger aspects
of socialism. New York 1913, pp. 41-2 critically discusses Ostwald’s criterion of
“concrete achievements”, based on Ostwald’s paper on “Wissenschaft” from 1911,
and derives a critical stance towards science in Ostwald in which he sees
fundamental agreement with that of Dewey.
13
Rudolf Carnap, “Logical Foundations of the Unity of Science”, in: International
Encyclopedia of Unified Science, ed. by Otto Neurath e.al., Vol. 1, no. 1, Chicago
1938, 4th impression 1947, 43-62, here pp. 49 sqq.
14
Charles W. Morris, “Scientific Empiricism”, in: International Encyclopedia of Unified
Science, ed. by Otto Neurath e.al., Vol. 1, no. 1, Chicago 1938, 4th impression 1947,
63-75, here p. 69.
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Wissenschaftslehre, or in the volume devoted to logic – sufficient attention be given to
methodology”.15
Unified science in the 1920ies and 30ies was far from being a strategy for a
barren elimination of ontological realms or forms of science; it aimed at unification in
the face of a rich and diversified landscape of scientific activities that was – and
hereupon all authors could agree – to be the basis for all reflections on science. Put
thus, this can immediately serve as a characterization of the program of the monists,
some relevant issues will be pursued further in the following paragraphs. What should
be stressed here is that there are direct and explicit links between the early
philosophers of science and the monists (see also section 5). Carnap, in his Logischer
Aufbau der Welt from 1928, voices some reservations regarding Ostwald’s
classifications,16 but sees a fundamental agreement between Ostwald’s concept of
reality and his own idea of a constitutional system: “der dort [in Ostwald’s Moderne
Naturphilosophie from 1914, p. 101-102, P.Z.] definierte Wirklichkeitsbegriff entspricht
etwa dem konstitutionalen Wirklichkeitsbegriff”.17 Ostwald presents here a view of
reality that might be called, in modern terms, ‘scientific realism’: “daß wir solche Dinge
wirklich nennne, welche wir den von uns anerkannten erfahrungsmäßigen
Naturgesetzen einordnen können.”18 There is, then, no ultimate form of reality in our
grasp. The flexibility claimed for dealing with science recurs again on the level of
ontology.
2. Monification and the dynamics of discipline genesis
Charles W. Morris, “Remarks on the Proposed Encyclopedia”, in: Actes du congrès
international de philosophie scientifique, Sorbonne, Paris 1935. II: Unité de la science,
Paris 1936, 71-74, here p. 73.
16
Rudolf Carnap, Der Logische Aufbau der Welt, Berlin-Schlachtensee 1928, p. 4.
See also Thomas Mormann, “Carnap’s logical empiricism, values, and American
pragmatism”, in Journal for General Philosophy of Science 38, 2007, 127-146, for
Carnap’s reference to Ostwald’s theory of values.
17
Carnap, Der logische Aufbau, § 176, p. 247.
18
Wilhelm Ostwald, Moderne Naturphilosophie. I. Die Ordnungswissenschaften.
Leipzig 1914. p. 101.
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One important argument why such a flexibility is required for an adequate
understanding of science comes from the ideals of science itself: After all, it is a
characteristic feature of science that it is continually making progress. At no period in
history, and certainly not in the years around 1900, could the monists and the
philosophers of science discover a genuine stagnation in this progress that might
indicate that a final state, the ultimate form of science, might have been reached.
Neurath’s anti-systematizing claims as well as his insistence that one has to monitor
closely the actual development and progress of science both show that science and
its development are itself the basis for assessing science. Given this background, it
can be seen as more than an accident that Thomas Kuhn’s paper on scientific
revolutions first appeared in the 1962-issue of the Encyclopedia of unified science.19
This, however, makes it difficult to see where a general reflection on science
should or could be implemented. Is there a separate discipline available which runs,
as it were, parallel to the course of the sciences and monitors their progress? Would
that not have to be a task for the retrospective historian? Certainly Ostwald, who
places much emphasis on the prophetic character of science, on its ability to issue
veridical predictions, would have to banish such an idea. On the other hand,
assuming an independent fundamental discipline presupposes that the “science of
science” stand outside thy dynamics of science itself, and that would imply that this
metareflection cannot claim scientific status for itself. Is it then ordinary science itself,
science just as it is, that has to be charged with the task of self-reflection? But then it
would be hard to explain why meta-science could be viewed as an innovative
endeaovaur. How, in short, should meta-science be implemented? This question is
obviously related to the self-conception of the monistic scientists: Does their ordinary,
working-day scientific activity already qualify themselves for the title of being metascientists as well?
At this point, it becomes necessary to investigate where precisely the need for
a meta-science, and the trust in the achievability of this meta-stance, arose. The
For a highly critical analysis of the thesis that Carnap, as one of the editors of the
Encyclopedia, might have found Kuhn’s ideas “congenial”, see J.C. Pinto de Oliveira,
“Carnap, Kuhn, and revisionism: on the publication of Structure in Encyclopedia”, in:
Journal for General Philosophy of Science 38, 20007, 147-157.
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dynamics of the sciences includes, as one was perfectly well aware of around 1900,
the genesis of new disciplines, including such disciplines that were concerned with
meta-reflection: meta-mathematics – the term was coined by David Hilbert – as the
discipline dealing, by employing mathematical methods, with issues such as the
reducibility of arithmetics to logic or with the incompleteness theorems, is the best
example. Another obvious candidate would be (formal) logic itself. All these disciplines
come into existence within the system of the sciences, and are therefore justified in
just the same way as the more traditional forms of science, but still claim special
responsibility for general reflection. There is another group of disciplines that proved
highly significant for the meta-reflection on science in general, and for monism in
particular: newly emerging disciplines such as experimental psychology and the
physiology of nervous and/or perceptual processes. These new disciplines were
particulary quick in picking up recent developments in those fields of mathematics that
also formed the basis of meta-mathematics (group theory, calculus of ‘manifolds’), but
these disciplines and the founding relations discussed in them also emerged within a
surprisingly flat hierarchy of scientific disciplines.20 Seeing that Ostwald played a role
also in establishing new disciplines within the humanities (such as sociology or the
cultural sciences; Ostwald may well lay claim to be one of the first to have given the
term “Kulturwissenschaft” prominence21), one may ask how these different disciplinary
innovations relate to each other.
Hardly anyone was more proficient in creating or adopting such new disciplines
than Ostwald: Energetics itself is an obvious candidate, but in his texts on the
“philosophy of nature” – by far the most extensive and systematical texts on
philosophical issues by Ostwald – he goes beyond energetics and espouses a view
wherein “Mannigfaltigkeitslehre” and “Ordnungslehre” occupy the most fundamental
points in a structured system of the sciences. He even thought of himself as being the
Ziche, Wissenschaftslandschaften.
Vgl. Paul Ziche: “Wilhelm Ostwalds Monismus: Weltversicherung und
Horizonteröffnung, in: Jahrbuch für Europäische Wissenschaftskultur 3, 2007, 117134. – Other early references include Heinrich Rickert’s book on Naturwissenschaft
und Kulturwissenschaft from 1899, and the “Monatsschrift” Athenaeum. Monatsschrift
für Anthropologie, Hygiene, Moralstatistik, Bevölkerungs- und Culturwissenschaft,
Pädagogik, höhere Politik und die Lehre von den Krankheitsursachen, 1875-6.
20
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first to discover modern logic in precisely the sense that we today associate with
Frege or Russell, and given the fact that he draws on just the right new theories in
mathematics, this claim is not as easily dismissed as one might think.22
This trend to turn towards new fields in mathematics, firmly rooted within the
canon of scientific discipline, but with a new power to reflect on foundational issues, is
not easily squared with the flexibility that seemed necessary for an adequate, also
monistically adequate, account of science. All depends on the relations one admits
within a system of the sciences, and Ostwald himself is devoting quite some space to
this issue. He adopts the traditional picture of the pyramid of the sciences that seems
dangerously rigid, but stresses that this picture, too, has to be interpreted nonreductively.
The lower levels – that is, the levels occupied precisely by the new fundamental
disciplines such as “Ordnungs-“ or “Mannigfaltigkeitslehre” – make the higher levels
possible, and the concepts of the base level are contained in the higher level
concepts (as a vertical reading of the picture clearly shows; here we get layered
columns built up of slices from the different levels), but still it is clear to him that
Paul Ziche, “Wilhelm Ostwald als Begründer der modernen Logik. Logik und
künstliche Sprachen bei Ostwald und Louis Couturat”, in: Ein Netz der
Wissenschaften? Wilhelm Ostwalds „Annalen der Naturphilosophie“ und die
Durchsetzung wissenschaftlicher Paradigmen, ed. by Pirmin StekelerWeithofer/Heiner Kanden/Nikolaus Psarros, Leipzig 2009, 46-66.
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reduction is excluded. Such a reduction would imply a loss of virtually all content of
the higher-level concepts and sciences, because the basic concepts are defined
precisely through the absence of all concrete content. Neither do the lower levels hold
a historical priority; the fundamental level comes surprisingly late in the genesis of the
sciences. Ostwald has all sympathies for empiristic reconstructions of the genesis of
concepts from simple elements such as sense impressions, but does not transfer this
conviction to the system of the sciences.
As a consequence, one may ask whether Ostwald was, in the end, an energetic
or rather an order-theoretical monist. This question obviously epitomizes the plurality
of monisms: speaking about Ostwald, it is not just a question of layers of reality that
have to be embedded into a monistic overall-picture; rather, different forms of monism
come to be layered one upon another.
3. Interlacing high and low: Monistic organicism and historical growth
Monism views science as a set of dissipated, yet multiply linked disciplines, and
science is bound to remain within such a structure. In a paper on the “Theorie der
Wissenschaft”, Ostwald takes it as a kind of general truth that the growth of science
follows a the same time two, as it were, orthogonal directions, just as in his pyramids:
“So vermehren sich die Wissenschaften gleichzeitig im Sinn einer zunehmenden
Vermannigfaltigung wie in dem einer zunehmenden Vereinheitlichung.”23
The most obvious model for such a structure is the organism, and Ostwald
takes great efforts to relate science to biological entities, explicitly adopting ideas from
the biology of his time. In his lecture over “Die Wissenschaft”, given at the first
congress on monism in 1911, science is viewed as an all-powerful (“allgewaltig”) tool
with quasi-personalistic traits, transformed from being a mere tool into having an
Wilhelm Ostwald, “Zur Theorie der Wissenschaft”, in: Annalen der Naturphilosophie
4, 1905, 3-27, here p. 9 (this paper was presented at the international conference on
the arts and sciences, St. Louis 1904; on this conference, see Ziche,
Wissenschaftslandschaften.
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“Eigenwesen”.24 As an organism, it inherits the typical kind of holistic unity
characteristic of organisms. This unity can be described in a way that oscillates in an
interesting way between organic wholeness and the de-personalizing subjugation of
individuals under greater unities so characteristic of modern forms of labour: “So
sehen wir, daß die Wissenschaft einen Gesamtorganismus darstellt, von der jeder
einzelne an ihr Beteiligte nur die Rolle einer Zelle spielt”.25 The implication is, of
course, not that of an alienation between labourer and product, as in critical analyses
of the modern labour economy; rather, through the back door, the individual
contributions are raised to the status of being integrated into organic whole-partrelations.
The role of history, and the – as Ostwald things – close parallelism between the
historical and the logical-conceptual growth of science, then, can be viewed as a kind
of ‘biogenetisches Grundgesetz’, Haeckel’s famous idea of the recapitulation of
phylogeny in ontogeny, as applied to the growth of science. Ostwald’s own efforts to
provide the history of science with source texts, via his series Ostwalds Klassiker der
Naturwissenschaft, is the most visible outcome of his appreciation for history (at least
if historical research regards the sciences; see below). History, in this function, has to
make space for innovation, for the unpredictable (see also Ostwald’s studies on the
psychological typology of scientists), and thus offers yet another instance for the
importance of flexibilizing monistic science.
Again, we see that the ideas motivating and structuring Ostwald’s monism
come from many different fields, and that energeticism is by no means the only basis
for his views in the philosophy of science. He immediately translates the biologistic
apects of his theory of science into one of his favourite issues at that time, namely
information politics:26 An organism is essentially a community of unities sharing
Wilhelm Ostwald, Die Wissenschaft. Vortrag gehalten auf dem Ersten MonistenKongress zu Mabhurg am 10. September 1911, Leipzig 1911. – This idea is worked
out in detail also in the introduction to Ostwald’s book-length treatment of the
systematization of the sciences: Wilhelm Ostwald, Die Pyramide der Wissenschaften,
Stuttgart/Berlin 1929.
25
Ostwald, Die Wissenschaft, p. 9.
26
For an overview over Ostwald’s acitvities in this field, see Thomas Hapke: “Ostwald
and the Bibliographic Movement”, in: Wilhelm Ostwald at the Crossroads between
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information that is de-localized. When Ostwald sketches a world-wide information
network under the title of a “World brain”,27 he consciously runs together biology and
information theory, and nowhere is the link with the unity-of-science movement clearer
than here: For Neurath, it is a necessary condition for the further development of the
sciences that there be available a body of texts, accessible at different places all over
the world and integrating all geographical areas, connecting past, present and future.
Neurath and the monists, as well as many other thinkers in the unity-of-science
movement or in early logics and analytical philosophy, all contributed to developing
tools to facilitate such an information exchanges: Neurath’s code for visual languages,
the endeavours to develop an artificial language for use in everyday communication,28
setting up standards for library organization, down to the format of the paper used to
record relevant information.
In his lecture on “Die Wissenschaft”, Ostwald connects the biologistic
characterization of science with a vocabulary that employs, by emphatically drawing
on the terminological field of unity and wholeness, all the epithets of the sublime,
again and again focused on the social role of science: Science is “Gemeingut der
gesamten Menschheit”,29 and even more Goethean in tone, science incorporates “das
Allgemeinst-Menschliche”.30 Characteristic for science, and distinguishing it from mere
curiosity, is its “social aspect, the general human importance of the questions the
researcher is answering”.31 He plays in a virtuoso manner with the contrast between
these sublime labels and the traditional ‘lower’ aspects of scientific activity: the
“Allgemeinst-Menschliche” is reached precisely via science’s origin in technology, in
shared and practically relevant practices and applications.
Chemisty, Philosophy and Media Culture, ed. by Britta Görs/Nikos Psarros/Paul
Ziche, Leipzig 2005, 115-134.
27
Ostwald starts, in describing the “Gehirn der Welt”, with the cellula structure of
organisms that requries a “Zentralorgan” (again, a non-reductive relation between
centre/foundation and periphery!); cf. Ostwald, “Das Gehirn der Welt”, in: Nord und
Süd 1912.
28
Ziche, “Ostwald als Begründer der modernen Logik”.
29
Ostwald, Die Wissenschaft, 12.
30
Ostwald, Die Wissenschaft, 14; though Goethe probably would have refrained from
talking in terms of the stylistically awkward superlative of “allgemein”.
31 Ostwald, Die Wissenschaft, 16
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That much said for the case of a non-reductive and organic unity of the science,
Ostwald then adopts a highly critical stance towards the humanities. Genuine
sciences – that is, “Wissenschaften” in the German sense of the term – can only be
found in the natural sciences, because everything that exists is natural. In the long
run, all Wissenschaften have to become natural science. Note, however, that this
need not imply an eliminative stance; everything can, according to Ostwald, become
the object of a particular science.32 Unless we dismiss the whole realm of, f.i., the
mental as non-existent (which Ostwald has no intentions to do), these realms remain
on the agenda of the sciences. What has to change, however, is the attitude of the
humanities: Since science is to be defined via its ability to make predictions (Ostwald
here clearly follows Comte), history, too, can only lay claim to have scientific merits if
it is turned towards the future, and this can be guaranteed only if it deals with the
future-directed events per se, that is, with science itself.
This interlacing between – seemingly – divergent levels, traditionally associated
with the ‘high’ and the ‘low’, turns out, again and again, to be programmatic for
monism. Nowhere becomes this attitude more obvious than in the monists’ stance
towards religion: “Denn alles, was die Menschheit an Wünschen und Hoffnungen, an
Zielen und Idealen in den Begriff Gott zusammengedrängt hatte, wird uns von der
Wissenschaft erfüllt”.33 This does not yet imply a refutation of traditional conceptions
of God; such a refutation is based, remarkably enough, on God’s failure to guarantee
the sort of social cohesion that lies at the centre of the sciences, and that Ostwald
feels to be needed in his time: God can not guarantee one of the fundamental aspects
of unity, and that, according to Ostwald, disqualifies him.34
4. Monism and elements: Concept formation
The history of science has to be dealt with in a way that leaves open the way to
innovation. The very same requirement can be made for the analysis of the concepts
Ostwald, Die Wissenschaft, 40.
Ostwald, Die Wissenschaft, 46.
34 Ostwald, Die Wissenschaft, 54.
32
33
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of science, too. It is, according to Ostwald, not reasonable to look for definite, ultimate
conceptual elements of science, or of the language of science. Although Ostwald is
an advocate of the idea that an absolutely precise language – he prefers “Ido” – would
be highly desirable for the purpose of everyday communication, he immediately
makes one exception as to the standards of absolute precision, namely for the
language of science. In order to be able to discover something new, the language of
science must not be absolutely fixed; science has to create new concepts as it
proceeds in its course of discoveries, and that requires a flexible conceptual material.
Monism is not about elements, just as Ostwald the chemists long held that the
notion of elements was not apriori necessary to do chemistry. What Ostwald has to
develop is thus a theory of how we form concepts that explains the status and
structure of elementary concepts while at the same time allowing for progress and for
a continuous change in the conceptual material. His theory of concepts, as
developed, significantly enough, in his books on the philosophy of nature and on the
systematization of the sciences, takes two steps.35 Ostwald starts with an
empiristically inspired theory of how we form concepts: combining elementary
experiences/impressions (where he immediately sees that there are more possible
combinations than are in fact supported by experience of the combined facts, here
already including an option for generalization). He explicitly adopts the principles of
associative psychology that were to prove so important for the genesis of brain
physiology (“die Tatsache, daß alle Vorgänge sich an einem Lebewesen um so
leichter wiederholen, je häufiger sie vor sich gegangen sind”36). Step two comes with
the transition from what Ostwald calls “general epistemology” to the fundamental
disciplines of “logic, theory of manifolds and mathematics”. These disciplines are
concerned with finding and understanding the most general concepts of all, and here,
too, Ostwald has recourse to the phenomenon of memory that also guided the first
steps of concept formation on the basis of experience. But now, the most general
concepts are associated with the most basic elements of experience, and that can be
nothing but the concept of a thing. Not particular things or types of things, but the
I follow the condensed presentation in Wilhelm Ostwald, Grundriß der
Naturphilosophie, Leipzig 1908.
36 Ostwald, Grundriß, 19.
35
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concept of ‘thing’ itself, or, more precisely, the epistemic structures necessary to
conceive of things form the basic subject matter of these most general disciplines.
What are these structures? They must be general enough for being used in all
concrete experiences, but specific enough to be treatable in specific sciences:
distinguishing and connecting, as studied, in the most general way imaginable, in the
new disciplines of mathematics. In other terms: For Ostwald, it’s the mist fundamental
types of relations that lie at the basis of concept formation, and of science in general.
Again, the comparison with the analytical philosophy of science becomes
relevant: The discovery that relations may be formalized lies at the basis of the
modern logic, and the attempt to unify language by reduction is Carnap’s contribution
to the unity-of-science project (it is important to remark here that Carnap’s reductions,
too, do not imply elimination; reductions become necessary where “definitions” that
effectively replace one set of vocabulary by another are not available). The relational
structure underlying the formation of concepts is, of course, also fundamental for
energetics and can add to understanding just why energetics was of such huge
importance for Ostwald, and it, too, recurs in the plans for a “Zentralorgan” for
science.
4. Monification: Competence in a science and scientific competence
Monism intends to start with science as it is; it is deemed impossible, and not
desirable, to fundamentally re-shape science on a-priori grounds. On the other hand:
The sciences themselves are in constant flux and change, and this immanent change
has to be accounted for by our theory of the sciences. Obviously, such a theory
presupposes that the sciences are in a state that makes them independent of any
external foundations but requires, at the same time, a general reflection on science. It
is imaginable that this need is not felt, that one relies on the auto-dynamics of science
to such an extent that one trusts the results of science to make themselves heard,
automatically, in all fields of human activities (it would be interesting to look for clear
historical instances of such a faith in science, and they are probably not easy to come
16
by; radical materialism of the La-Mettrie-type? The eliminative materialism of the
Churchlands?). That monism and the early philosophy of science thought it necessary
to incorporate a reflective stance into their account of the sciences clearly indicates
that they are not arguing in a situation where the status and the role of the sciences
can simply taken for granted; even in the first decades of the 20 th century, science still
is busy to find its place and describe its function, and if the openness claimed by
monists and early analytical philosophers of science gives an adequate account of
science, this is bound to be the case in the future, too.
The foregoing remarks, sketchy as they are, allow to clarify two kinds of issues:
- what is the central claim of monism? what is it to be a monist?
- what is the context of monism in the history of philosophy, here with a focus
on some of the lines that link monism with later developments?
As regards the second, historiographical question, monism turns out to be
rather smoothly embeddable into other relevant developments of 19 th century history
of philosophy and of science, and precisely in those that are part of the official history
of these fields. There is perhaps no better symbol for the inter-penetration of trends
that today seem incompatible than the early program of two benchmark journals of
modern philosophy of science, Synthese and Monist. Synthese – again with
unification on the agenda! – started as the journal of the “signifische kring” in the
Netherlands, a group that brought together logicians (such as Brouwer),
mathematicians/philosophers (Mannoury, Beth), poets (van Eeden), theosophers and
artists in order to discuss issues such as a general theory of signs that would
eventually cover scientific-logical utterances as well as the expression of emotions,
and the Monist’s origin in the monistic movement is obvious.
Monism is in this paper, therefore, not presented in a national setting, but in a
conceptual one: Monism as an element of a movement concerned with reflection on
science, inseparably related with the genesis of a “philosophy of science”. This term,
such as the German “Wissenschaftstheorie” (there are, however, some relevant early
instances, in the wake of Neo-Kantianism) or the French “philosophie des sciences”,
17
is hardly to be found before 1900.37 Ostwald definitely played a role in establishing
these terms; this becomes obvious, f.i., in the French translation of Ostwalds Grundriß
der Naturphilosophie which was rendered as an Esquisse in the philosophie des
sciences, but also in Ostwald’s own paper “Zur Theorie der Wissenschaft”.38 In this
line, then, modern philosophy of science is related to what in Ostwald’s terminology
could also be dubbed a “philosophy of nature”, at first a slightly uncomfortable
neighbourhood, certainly for analytical philosophers, but there are good reasons to be
given that, conceptually, both trends indeed can be linked.39 At the same time, this
teaches an important lesson concerning monism: handbooks or comprehensive
Cf. the historical introduction in C. Ulises Moulines, Die Entwicklung der modernen
Wissenschaftstheorie (1890-2000). Eine historische Einführung. Hamburg 2008;
Moulines focuses on Mach, James, Poincaré and Russell as early exponents of a
“Wissenschaftstheorie”. Relevant early texts include Alois Riehl, Der philosophische
Kriticismus, vol. 2,2, 1887; Eugen Dühring, Logik und Wissenschaftstheorie, 1878,
often seen as the first occurrence of the term “Wissenschaftstheorie”, Ernst Lange on
Goethes Farbenlehre (Über Goethe's Farbenlehre vom Standpunkte der
Wissenschaftstheorie und Aesthetik, 1882). A more detailed account, tracing back the
concept of “Wissenschaftstheorie” to earlier forms of a reflection on science, and
pointing at the term “Theorie der Wisenschaft” in texts by A. Trendelenburg from the
1860ies, in Helmut Pulte, “Wissenschaftstheorie”, in: Historisches Wörterbuch der
Philosophie, vol. 12, ed. by Joachim Ritter/Karlfried Gründer/Gottfried Gabriel, Basel
2004, col. 973-981.
38 Wilhelm Ostwald, Esquisse d’une philosophie des sciences. Traduit de l’allemand
par M. Dorolle. Paris 1911; Grundriß der Naturphilosophe. Leipzig [1908]. The “Avantpropos du traducteur” stresses just the issues discussed in this paper: “Il est un
moment où la construction des systèmes scientifiques ne peut utilement se poursuivre
que si l’on fait retour sur le passé, pour comprendre l’origine et l’évolution des notions,
en établir par là la valeur, et mettre en relief les conceptions vraiment fécondes. W.
Ostwald a montré dans des livres bien connus du public français combien il excelle en
ces vues d’ensemble et quelles larges généralisations il sait en tirer.”
39
An interesting characterization of the relationship between the new “methodology”
and the old philosophy of nature is given in a review of Walter Marvin’s chapter on
“philosophy of nature” in his Introduction to Systematical Philosophy – again, this
review places Ostwald alongside Russell and other figures of the official philosophy of
science: “Philosophers seem hardly to have realised the important fact that some of
the ablest special workers in these branches of knowledge – Russell, Couturat,
Ostwald, Duhem, Poincaré, to mention only these – have begun to devote themselves
with concentrated energy to discussions of the epistemological and ‘methodological’
aspects of the conceptions with which they have such an intimate practical
acquaintance; and when compared with this work, what has hitherto passed for:
‘Philosophy of Nature’ seems really almost ridiculous.” (S.H. Mellone, Review of W.T.
Marvin, An Introduction to Systematic Philosophy, in: Mind N.S. 14, 1905, 272-3)
37
18
standard reference works on monism are not easily singled out; the most systematic
treatises fall under the title of “Naturphilosophie” or “philosophy of science”,
complemented by Weltanschauungs-works such as the Welträtsel.
Many more instances for cross-relations between monism and the unity-ofscience-movement resp. the early analytical philosophy of science can be given, the
best-known of course being the double publication of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus by
Russell and by Ostwald, and here again in the context of a journal devoted to
“Naturphilosophie”. Paul Oppenheim, due to his papers, together with co-authors such
as Carl Hempel (on explanation) and Hilary Putman (on the unity of the sciences!, see
below) one of the figureheads of philosophy of science, not only started his career
with works on the classification of the sciences that bear interesting parallels to
Ostwald’s treatment of this topic,40 he also discussed extensively another Ostwaldian
issue: The question whether the psychology of the scientist can be of relevance for
setting up a general methodology, and how the content of scientific publications can
be measured along the axes of “strength” and “extensity”. 41 The relationship between
continental Monism and the – idealism-inspired – monism of the British Hegelians
such as F.H. Bradley remains as yet largely unexplored, as is the role of these
Hegelians with their strong emphasis on relationally structured systems for the
growing logical interest in relations.42
The systematical issue – what is to be a monist? – can be summarized in the
idea that one has to make room, within science itself, for scientific progress and
change. Within science itself: even the meta-reflections on science in general, and the
accounts of the necessary openness of science, have to find their place within a
comprehensive system of the sciences. This leads to a form of
fundamentalism/foundationalism without reductionism. Clearly, such a conception of
For more information on Oppenheim’s early publications, see Ziche,
Wissenschaftslandschaften.
41 Paul Oppenheim, “Dimensions of Knowledge”, in: Revue internationale de
Philosophie 40, 1957, 151-191 (with a comment, 192-3, by Charles W. Morris and
ohter commentaries, including an empirical study by Frederick R. Kling).
42 Bradley and James van be contrasted as standing for “British monism” and
“American pluralism”; cf. Timothy L.S. Sprigge, James and Bradley. American Truth
and British Reality. Chicago 1994. In his The meaning of truth, James refers to
energetics, without however mentioning Ostwald explicitly.
40
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science can align easily both with a technical/logically oriented philosophy, and with
the attempt to give science a broader cultural relevance. The organicist and Goethean
motives inherent in Ostwald’s account of science clearly support the latter function of
monistic reflection on science.
At the same time, this view of science and of the prospects for the sciences’
unification allows to respond to a deeply-felt need of the time, namely the problems,
conceptual, organizational and emotional, associated with the specialization of the
sciences. The short solution offered by Ostwald would be: The competence of a
scientist in his field of specialization at the same time qualifies him for a general
reflection on science, without so much as making him into a traditional philosopher.
Many different angles can be taken on he general questions associated with science,
and there is no need to be reductive. Specialization becomes a brute facte of the
development of the sciences, in itself neither positive nor negative in value; there is no
need to counterbalance it by explicitly anti-scientific trends (such as in large parts of
the Weltanschauungs-movements), but, rightly considered, each step towards
specialization, insofar as this happens within science, contributes to our better
understanding of science in general. Many questions remain, and Ostwald certainly
does not give a clear answer: does this happen as a kind of automatism, an eo ipso
progress in reflective clarity associated with each step in the progress of science
(probably not, but then Ostwald would have to explicit what is needed in order to turn
‘ordinary’ progress into reflective progress)? Why should we trust in this harmonious
relationship between specialization and general reflection? Because all special
sciences share a basic element (here, the answer would have to be a clear “no”)?
It is clear why this idea could be attractive in Ostwald’s time. Specialization was
generally viewed as painful, as giving rise to tensions on all sorts of levels, and as
forcing men to lese a broad overview over the human intellectual endeavours. A
reductionist unification, singling out one particular form of science as the model
science, would just build forth upon this specialization, whereas Ostwald’s brand of
unification/’monification’ avoids these implications. Every scientist is not only a
specialist, but also – and precisely because of her specialist capacities – in charge of
science in general, and of humankind as a whole.
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This motive, too, persists in later forms of philosophy of science, but here we
can precisely localize a development leading to the form of reductionism that Ostwald
would have to vies as a threat. If we turn towards Oppenheim/Putnams’s classical
paper on the “Unity of Science” from 1950, they claim, in just the terms current around
1900, a “Science of Science” (the capitals are the authors’!), “i.e., the meta-scientific
study of major aspects of science, is the natural means for counterbalancing
specialization by promoting the integration of scientific knowledge”.43 Form the
Ostwaldian perspective, this thinking in terms of counterbalancing already seems
suspicious because it might severe the links between meta-science and science itself,
and the same holds for Oppenheim/Putnam’s claim that there are at least two levels
of unity implied in the progress of science: unity of language and unity of laws: “It is
attained to the extent to which the laws of science become reduced to the laws of
some one discipline.” Even if Oppenheim/Putnam still refrain from holding a “radical
reductionist thesis”, they already narrow down the field considerably – definitely an
anti-monistic trend in modern unifications of science.
Prof. Dr. Paul Ziche
Dept. Wijsbegeerte
Universiteit Utrecht
Heidelberglaan 6
NL-3584 CS Utrecht
Netherlands
paul.ziche@phil.uu.nl
Paul Oppenheim/Hilary Putnam, “Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis”, in:
Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 2, 1950, 3-36, here p. 3.
43