Abstract
The question of the unity of science is one of the most important issues that has concerned the modern philosophy of science from the beginning. The idea of Unified Science was so important for the Viennese neo-positivists that, from 1933 until its dissolution in 1938, the Vienna Circle edited a collection called Einheitswissenschaft with publications of several of the most significant members of the neo-positivist stream.
We are the heirs of three hundred years of rhetoric about the importance of distinguishing sharply between science and religion, science and politics, science and art, science and philosophy, and so on. This rhetoric has formed the culture of Europe. It made us what we are today (…) But to proclaim our loyalty to these distinctions is not to say that there are ‘objective’ and ‘rational’ standards for adopting them.
(Richard Rorty 1980, pp. 330–331)
I have written this paper as a member of the research group of Philosophy of Language, of Nature and of Science, Reference number 930174, supported by the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, and of research project FFI2009-10249 on Theoretical Models in Science financed by the Ministry of Science and Innovation of the Government of Spain.
I am very grateful to an anonymous referee for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
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Rivadulla, A. (2011). Scientific Reasonableness and the Pragmatic Approach to the Unity of Science. In: Symons, J., Pombo, O., Torres, J. (eds) Otto Neurath and the Unity of Science. Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, vol 18. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0143-4_17
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