IAN HACKING

The Disunities of the Sciences

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What's in a name? Often, an ideology. Take the present names, inEnglish, of the fields of specialization represented in the presentcollection of essays. We have the philosophy of science, the historyof science, social studies of science, the history and philosophy ofscience—as if there were one thing, science, for there to be aphilosophy or a history of social studies "of." Philosophers used tospeak of the sciences, not science. In this paper I am concerned withdifferent kinds of unity and disunity, not with different kinds ofscience, but it is well to begin by thinking about how an ideology,the unity of science, has affected even the names of what many of ussometimes do.

Sciences

Specialist philosophy or history of the sciences descends from twolandmark bodies of work written in the 1830's. In one case the verytitles make the plurality plain: William Whewell's The History of theInductive Sciences (1838; three volumes) and The Philosophy of theInductive Sciences, Founded upon Their History (1840; two volumes).Diversity is also firmly asserted in the other case, Auguste Comte'sCours de philosophie positive (1830–43; originally six volumes). Hisvast classificatory system of the departments of knowledge was anaffirmation of difference. Comte fought long and in vain to establishthe first professorial chair in the field—of histoire des sciences.The founding fathers of our fields of specialization differ greatly,the one adumbrating the rationalist vein still apparent, and theother prescribing the more common empiricist analysis. The rolemodel for the rationalist Whewell was Francis Bacon, and for theempiricist Comte it was Laplace; so much for philosophical, asopposed to national, -isms. The two men agreed in this: boththought of themselves as philosopher-historians of the sciences,not of science.

Whewell, ever thorough, addressed the issue of science/sciencesin the opening two paragraphs of his Philosophy. He did thinkthat there might be something worthy of the name philosophy ofscience, but it was not something that he or anyone else couldpropound: "The Philosophy of Science, if the phrase were to beunderstood in the comprehensive sense which most naturally offersitself to our thoughts, would imply nothing less than a completeinsight into the essence and conditions of all real knowledge, and anexposition of the best methods for the discovery of new truths."As optimistic, encyclopedic, and influential as he was, he did notreject such a philosophy out of hand, but he did consider it impracticable.We should concern ourselves not with some "real knowledge"of which human beings could dream, but, as he put it, withthe doctrines of solid and acknowledged certainty that do existamong us—the several sciences. He did think, what many nowreject, that the very idea of a philosophy of science (in his ampleunderstanding of the words) makes sense; but any who aspire to it"may best hope to make some progress towards the Philosophy ofScience by employing [them]selves upon THE Philosophy of theScience."

Comte's talk of the sciences, in the plural, was also based not onabstract principles but on what we are able to do. He spoke to thisin the first lesson of the forty that constituted his Cours: "Onecannot reduce all the sciences to a unity." Comte is not to beunderstood maliciously, as somehow self-refuting, saying somethingabout all science. He wanted only to avoid being misunderstood.Since he wished to give a systematic presentation of thedepartments of knowledge, he feared that his course would be seenas one more of those attempts at universal explanation "that aredaily hatched by those to whom scientific methods and results areentirely foreign." At that juncture he wanted to dismiss one modelof unity, namely derivation of all laws from one fundamental lawof nature—an "eminently chimerical" project: "I believe that thepowers of the human mind are too weak, that the universe is far toocomplicated for such a scientific perfection to be within our powers,and I think, moreover, that one usually forms a very exaggeratedidea of the benefits that would necessarily accrue, were it tobe possible." Despite our admirably clear forefathers, we cannotundo the terminology that has since been adopted. "Philosophy ofscience" is agreeably shorter than "philosophy of the sciences."Our journals are called Philosophy of Science and the like. And whynot? The stage was set long before, with, for example, the BritishAssociation for the Advancement of Science—"science" seen as aspecial-interest group in 1833. The American Association publishesScience. But because of my interest in diversity, I shall returnto Whewell, Comte, and our roots, and write about the sciences.

Unities

Otto Neurath said that "the unity of science movement ... includesscientists and persons interested in science who are consciousof the importance of a universal scientific attitude." Themovement was closely associated with logical positivism, but theunity of science had been an important slogan, for diverse reasons,for Helmholtz, Mach, Karl Pearson, and many others. It breaksinto several parts: unity has a fairly clear meaning; unity is a goodthing; the sciences are a very good thing; and the sciences are orshould form a unity. The first is a little-discussed point of logic orlanguage. The second and third are judgments of value. The fourthis hortatory, an injunction about the status or aims of the sciences:the sciences do or should form a...