Chapter 2 The Unity of Knowledge

There was another side of the Exposition plan which suggested a stronger topic. The World's Fair was not only an historical memorial work, and was not only a show of the practical tools of technical civilization; its deepest aim was after all the effort to bring the energies of our time into inner relation. The peoples of the whole globe, separated by oceans and mountains, by language and custom, by politics and prejudice, were here to come in contact and to be brought into correlation by better mutual understanding of the best features of their respective cultures.

The various industries and arts, the most antagonistic efforts of commerce and production, separated by the rivalry of the market and by the diversity of economic interests were here to be brought together in harmony, were to be correlated for the eye of the spectator. It was a near-lying thought to choose correlation as the controlling thought of a scientific World's Congress too. That was the topic which was finally agreed upon: the inner relation of the sciences of our day.

The fitness and the external advantages of such a scheme are evident. First of all, the danger of disconnectedness now disappears completely. If the sciences are to examine what binds them together, their usual isolation must be given up for the time being and a concerted effort must control the day. The bringing together of scholars of all scientific specialties is then no longer a doubtful accidental feature, but becomes a condition of the whole undertaking. More than that, such a topic, with all that it involves, makes it a matter of course that the call goes out to the really leading scholars of the time. To aim at a correlation of sciences means to seek for the fundamental principles in each territory of knowledge and to look with far-seeing eye beyond the limits of its field; but just this excludes from the outset those who like to be the self-appointed speakers in routine gatherings. It excludes from the first the narrow specialist who does not care for anything but for his latest research, and ought to exclude not less the vague spirits who generalize about facts of which they have no concrete substantial knowledge, as their suggestions towards correlation would lack inner productiveness and outer authority. Such a plan has room only for those men who stand high enough to see the whole field and who have yet the full authority of the specialistic investigator; they must combine the concentration on specialized productive work with the inspiration that comes from looking over vast regions. With such a topic the usual question does not come up whether one or another strong man would feel attracted to take part in the gathering, but it would be justified and necessary to confine the active participation from the outset to those who are leaders, and thus to guarantee from the beginning a representation of science equal in dignity to the best efforts of the exhibiting countries in all other departments. In this way such a plan had the advantage of justifying through its topic the administrative desire to bring all sciences to the same spot, and at the same time of excluding all participants but the best scholars: with isolated gatherings or with second-rate men, this subject would have been simply impossible.

Yet all these halfway external advantages count little compared with the significance and importance of the topic for the inner life of scientific thought of our time. We all felt it was the one topic which the beginning of the twentieth century demanded and which could not be dealt with otherwise than by the combined labors of all nations and of all sciences. The World's Fair was the one great opportunity to make a first effort in this direction; we had no right to miss this opportunity. Thus it was decided to have a congress with the definite purpose of working towards the unity of human knowledge, and with the one mission, in this time of scattered specializing work, of bringing to the consciousness of the world the too much neglected idea of the unity of truth. To quote from our first tentative programme: "Let the rush of the world's work stop for one moment for us to consider what are the underlying principles, what are their relations to one another and to the whole, what are their values and purposes; in short, let us for once give to the world's sciences a holiday. The workaday functions are much better fulfilled in separation, when each scholar works in his own laboratory or in his library; but this holiday task of bringing out the underlying unity, this synthetic work, this demands really the co?peration of all, this demands that once at least all sciences come together in one place at one time."

Yet if our work stands for the unity of knowledge, aims to consider the fundamental conceptions which bind together all the specialistic results, and seeks to inquire into the methods which are common to various fields, all this is after all merely a symptom of the whole spirit of our times. A reaction against the narrowness of mere fact-diggers has set in. A mere heaping up of disconnected, unshaped facts begins to disappoint the world; it is felt too vividly that a mere dictionary of phenomena, of events and laws, makes our knowledge larger but not deeper, makes our life more complex but not more valuable, makes our science more difficult but not more harmonious. Our time longs for a new synthesis and looks towards science no longer merely with a desire for technical prescriptions and new inventions in the interest of comfort and exchange. It waits for knowledge to fulfill its higher mission, it waits for science to satisfy our higher needs for a view of the world which shall give unity to our scattered experience. The indications of this change are visible to every one who observes the gradual turning to philosophical discussion in the most different fields of scientific life.

When after the first third of the nineteenth century the great philosophic movement which found its climax in Hegelianism came to disaster in consequence of its absurd neglect of hard solid facts, the era of naturalism began its triumph with contempt for all philosophy and for all deeper unity. Idealism and philosophy were stigmatized as the enemies of true science and natural science had its great day. The rapid progress of physics and chemistry fascinated the world and produced modern technique; the sciences of life, physiology, biology, medicine, followed; and the scientific method was carried over from body to mind, and gave us at the end of the nineteenth century modern psychology and sociology. The lifeless and the living, the physical and the mental, the individual and the social, all had been conquered by analytical methods. But just when the climax was reached and all had been analyzed and explained, the time was ripe for disillusion, and the lack of deeper unity began to be felt with alarm in every quarter. For seventy years there had been nowhere so much philosophizing going on as suddenly sprung up among the scientists of the last decade. The physicists and the mathematicians, the chemists and the biologists, the geologists and the astronomers, and, on the other side, the historians and the economists, the psychologists and the sociologists, the jurists and the theologians-all suddenly found themselves again in the midst of discussions on fundamental principles and methods, on general categories and conditions of knowledge, in short, in the midst of the despised philosophy. And with those discussions has come the demand for correlation. Everywhere have arisen leaders who have brought unconnected sciences together and emphasized the unity of large divisions. The time seems to have come again when the wave of naturalism and realism is ebbing, and a new idealistic philosophical tide is swelling, just as they have always alternated in the civilization of two thousand years.

No one dreams, of course, that the great synthetic apperception, for which our modern time seems ripe, will come through the delivery of some hundred addresses, or the discussions of some hundred audiences. An ultimate unity demands the gigantic thought of a single genius, and the work of the many can, after all, be merely the preparation for the final work of the one. And yet history shows that the one will never come if the many have not done their share. What is needed is to fill the sciences of our time with the growing consciousness of belonging together, with the longing for fundamental principles, with the conviction that the desire for correlation is not the fancy of dreamers, but the immediate need of the leaders of thought. And in this preparatory work the St. Louis Congress of Arts and Science seemed indeed called for an important part when it was committed to this topic of correlation.

To call the scholars of the world together for concerted action towards the correlation of knowledge meant, of course, first of all, to work out a detailed programme, and to select the best authorities for every special part of the whole scheme. Nothing could be left to chance methods and to casual contributions. The preparation needed the same administrative strictness which would be demanded for an encyclopedia, and the same scholarly thoroughness which would be demanded for the most scientific research. A plan was to be devised in which every possible striving for truth would find its place, and in which every section would have its definite position in the system. And such a ground-plan given, topics were to be assigned to every department and sub-department, the treatment of which would bring out the fundamental principles and the inner relations in such a way that the papers would finally form a close-woven intellectual fabric. There would be plenty of room for a retrospective glance at the historical development of the sciences and plenty of room for emphasis on their practical achievements; but the central place would always belong to the effort towards unity and internal harmonization.

We thus divided human knowledge into large parts, and the parts into divisions, and the divisions into departments, and the departments into sections. As the topic of the general divisions-we proposed seven of them-it was decided to discuss the Unity of the whole field. As topic for the departments-we had twenty-four of them-the addresses were to discuss the fundamental Conceptions and Methods and the Progress during the last century; and in the sections, finally-our plan provided for one hundred and twenty-eight of them-the topics were in every one the Relation of the special branch to other branches, and those most important Present Problems which are essential for the deeper principles of the special field. In this way the ground-plan itself suggested the unity of the practically separated sciences; and, moreover, our plan provided from the first that this logical relation should express itself externally in the time order of the work. We were to begin with the meetings of the large divisions, the meetings of the departments were to follow, and the meetings of the sections and their ramifications would follow the departmental gatherings.