Texts
- The Problem of Learning
- Problemistics Courseware
- Corso su Problemistica
- Resources Management
- Manuale/Intellettuale
- Campagna/Città
Problemistics - Problémistique - Problemistica
The Art & Craft of Problem Dealing
Premises
Definition (Reference books)
Unity of experience-science (John Dewey)
Unity of science (Edward H. Carr)
Unity of science (Peter Caws)
Unity of science (Ludwig von Bertalanffy)
Unity of science (Union of International Associations)Aspects of unity of science (Philipp Frank)
Aspects of unity of science (Nicholas Rescher)Methodological unity (Abraham Kaplan)
Consilience (Edward O. Wilson)
Ethos of science (Robert K. Merton)
Ethos of science (John Ziman)
Ethos of science (Paul Feyerabend)Key concepts
Continuum (Ernest H. Hutten)
Continuum (W. W. Spradlin & P. B. Porterfield)
Field (Don Martindale)
Field (Ernest H. Hutten)
Holon (Arthur Koestler)
[1981] Webster’s Third New International Dictionary
1 : a proposition antecedently supposed or proved : a basis of argument : as
a : a proposition in logic stated or assumed as leading to a conclusion : either of the first two propositions of a syllogism from which the conclusion is drawn
b : something assumed or taken for granted : Presupposition.
[1983] The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
In Logic (often premiss) A previous proposition from which another follows as a conclusion;
in pl. the two propositions from which the conclusion is derived in a syllogism.
[1916] John Dewey, Essays in Experimental Logic
“Neither the plain man nor the scientific inquirer is aware, as he engages in his reflective activity, of any transition from one sphere of existence to another. He knows no two fixed worlds - reality on one side and mere subjective ideas on the other; he is aware of no gulf to cross. He assumes uninterrupted, free, and fluid passage from ordinary experience to abstract thinking, from thought to fact, from things to theories and back again. Observation passes into development of hypothesis; deductive methods pass into use in description of the particular; inference passes into action, all with no sense of difficulty save those found in the particular task in question. The fundamental assumption is continuity.
This does not mean that fact is confused with idea, or observed datum with voluntary hypothesis, theory with doing, any more than a traveller confuses land and water when he journeys from one to the other. It simply means that each is placed and used with reference to service rendered the other, and with reference to the future use of the other.” (Chapter II, p. 87)
[1961] Edward Carr, What Is History? 1981
“Scientists, social scientists, and historians are all engaged in different branches of the same study: the study of man and his environment, of the effects of man on his environment and of his environment on man.
The object of the study is the same: to increase man’s understanding of, and mastery over, his environment. The presuppositions and the methods of the physicist, the geologist, the psychologist, and the historian differ widely in detail; nor do I wish to commit myself to the proposition that, in order to be more scientific, the historian must follow more closely the methods of physical science.
But historian and physical scientist are united in the fundamental purpose of seeking to explain, and in the fundamental procedure of question and answer.” (Chapter 3, p. 86)
[1965] Peter Caws, The Philosophy of Science
“The differences between the various sciences ... are not essential differences; there is a genuine logical and methodological unity underlying their apparent diversity.”
“The logic which provides each of the sciences with its articulate structure is one logic, although each theory makes use of a different part of it.” (p. 336)
[1968] Ludwig von Bertalanffy, General System Theory, Allen Lane, London, 1971
"Major aims of General System Theory:
(1) There is a general tendency towards integration in the various sciences, natural and social.
(2) Such integration seems to be centred in a general theory of systems.
(3) Such theory may be an important means of aiming at exact theory in the nonphysical fields of science.
(4) Developing unifying principles running ‘vertically’ through the universe of the individual sciences, this theory brings us nearer to the goal of the unity of science.
(5) This can lead to a much-needed integration in scientific education." (p. 37)
[1986] Union of International Associations eds., Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential
https://uia.org/encyclopedia
“There are several persistent ... factors to support unity of the sciences:
1. All sciences deal with the same universe.
2. The different phenomena encountered in the universe are interrelated and interdependent. It is assumed ... that the universe itself is somehow unified.
3. A finite set of logically related laws and theories should eventually emerge to explain all natural phenomena. New theories are characterized by their applicability to more phenomena than the theories they replace.
4. There are certain key concepts that permeate all science disciplines. These concepts ... may be regarded as constituting the essence of a unified science.
5. There are fundamental similarities in the manner in which scientists establish new knowledge, regardless of the discipline or fields with which they are nominally associated (e.g. hypothesis formation, validation, use of theories and models, etc.).” (KC0811)
[1941] Philipp Frank, Modern Science and its Philosophy, Collier Books, New York 1961
"According to Mach this desire to make use of a unified mode of expression in all fields of science is a consequence of the economical design of science. This design implies the comprehension of as many facts as possible by the simplest possible system of propositions."
(Chapter 3: Ernst Mach and the Unity of Science, p. 88)
[1979] Nicholas Rescher, Cognitive Systematization
“1. Methodological unity: the contention that exactly the same methods of inquiry and of validation are at issue in all of the sciences."
“2. Explanatory unity: the claim that everything may be subsumed under one certain selfsame family of explanatory principles."
“3. Semantic unity: the doctrine that everything can be expressed in a common vocabulary.”
(Chapter XII, p. 203)
[1964] Abraham Kaplan, The Conduct of Inquiry
“... each science - and indeed, each inquiry - finds some techniques appropriate and other inappropriate and even impossible. The microscope is of very limited use to astronomy (for the present, at least) while the biologist cannot learn much about extra-terrestrial life with the telescope. But to note this difference is not to say that these two sciences have different ‘methods’.”
“The unity of science is more than an abstract philosophical thesis; it marks the ever- present potentiality of fruitful unions. It is in this sense that all sciences, whatever their subject-matter, are methodologically of one species: they can interbreed.” (Chapter I, p. 31)
“What unites behavioral science to physical and biological science is not that the ‘behavior’ it studies is physical and biological, but that the study itself is, like the other sciences, an empirical one. And experience is all of a piece, a seamless whole.” (Chapter II, p. 79)
[1998] Edward O. Wilson, Consilience
“Consilience is the key to unification.”
“William Whewell, in his 1840 synthesis The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, was the first to speak of consilience, literally a ‘jumping together’ of knowledge by the linking of facts and facts-based theory across disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation.” (p. 8)
“To ask if consilience can be gained … is equivalent to asking whether, in the gathering of disciplines, specialists can ever reach agreement on a common body of abstract principles and evidentiary proof. I think they can. Trust in consilience is the foundation of the natural sciences. For the material world at least, the momentum is overwhelming toward conceptual unity. Disciplinary boundaries within the natural sciences are disappearing, to be replaced by shifting hybrid domains in which consilience is implicit.”
“Given that human action comprises events of physical causation, why should the social sciences and humanities be impervious to consilience with the natural sciences?” (pp. 10-11)
[1942] Robert K. Merton., The Sociology of Science, 1973
1. Universalism. "Universalism finds immediate expression in the canon that truth-claims, whatever their source, are to be subjected to preestablished impersonal criteria: consonant with observation and with previously confirmed knowledge.”
2. Communism. "The substantive findings of science are a product of social collaboration and are assigned to the community. They constitute a common heritage." "The institutional conception of science as part of the public domain is linked with the imperative for communication of findings."
3. Disinterestedness. "A passion for knowledge, idle curiosity, altruistic concern with the benefit to humanity and a host of other special motives have been attributed to the scientist."
4. Organized skepticism. "The temporary suspension of judgment and the detached scrutiny of beliefs in terms of empirical and logical criteria.”
(Chapter 13, pp. 270-278)
[1968] John Ziman, Public Knowledge
- Internationalism. “The manifest internationalism of Science ... is inherent in the very nature of Science itself, which must always seek to encompass the largest public for the knowledge it aspires to.”
“Internationalism is a primary principle of Science, demanded by the inmost law of its being.” (p. 93)
- Communism. “It is precisely the public nature of scientific knowledge, its freedom, its communism, its lack of copyright and patents and other restraints upon its use, that makes this so important.” (p. 95)
[1975] Paul Feyerabend, Against Method, 1987
“… anarchism, while perhaps not the most attractive political philosophy, is certainly excellent medicine for epistemology, and for the philosophy of science.” (Introduction)
• Continuum
[1962] Ernest H. Hutten, The Origins of Science. An inquiry into the foundations of western thought, Allen & Unwin, London
"... the continuum has become a basic conception of modern science with which we still have not come to satisfactory terms." (p. 72)
[1979] W. W. Spradlin & P. B. Porterfield, Human Biosociology. From Cell to Culture, Springer-Verlag, New York
"... we have used a theoretical frame which focuses on the coding, storage, and movement of information within and among open systems." "Using this theoretical model we may see science and art as a continuum of imaginative ways of organizing information." (from Preface)
• Field
[1961] Don Martindale, The Nature and Types of Sociological Theory, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1967
"The units studied by science are systems in which parts are conjoined into something more than the qualities of the parts which acquire their character through a field of properties. Relation of parts has the properties of a gradient in an organism." (Chapter 19, p. 502)
[1962] Ernest H. Hutten, The Origins of Science. An inquiry into the foundations of western thought, Allen & Unwin, London
"The concept of field was established in the beginning of the last century by Faraday and elaborated by Maxwell." (p. 79)
• Holon
[1969] Arthur Koestler in Arthur Koestler and J. R. Smythies, Beyond Reductionism, Hutchinson, London
"1.1 The organism in its structural aspect is not an aggregation of elementary parts, and in its functional aspects not a chain of elementary units of behaviour.
1.2 The organism is to be regarded as a multi-levelled hierarchy of semi-autonomous sub-wholes, branching into sub-wholes of a lower order, and so on. Sub-wholes on any level of the hierarchy are referred to as holons.
1.3 Parts and wholes in an absolute sense do not exist in the domains of life. The concept of the holon is intended to reconcile the atomistic and holistic approaches." (Some general properties of
self-regulating open hierarchic order)