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Niels Bohr on the Unity of Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2022

Edward MacKinnon
Edward MacKinnon*
Affiliation:
California State University, Hayward
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Extract

When the Unity of Science movement organized, Niels Bohr was listed as the first member of the Advisory Committee. He contributed a one page paper to Volume One of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science (Bohr 1938). This paper stressed, but did not explain, the idea that to bring out the proper unity of science it is necessary to analyze the presuppositions underlying the unambiguous application of even our most elementary concepts. Since this rather trivial paper was the only contribution to the movement Bohr made, he might seem to have little interest in the unity of science.

The opposite was the case. Bohr thought that his explanation of the unity proper to physics was one of his most basic, and certainly his most misunderstood, contributions to science. Yet, he thought that he never succeeded in making his position intelligible to professional philosophers.

Type
Part III. Quantum Theory in Historical Perspective
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1980 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1980 , 1980 , pp. 224 - 244
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

I have suppressed all references to secondary sources. These may be found in my forthcoming Scientific Explanation and Atomic Physics.

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