Scientific Revolution

March 29th, 2002

Thesis by Johan Tino Frederiksen

Abstract: From one perspective the following is a holistic theory of how the different fields of science can be brought together. From another perspective it is a modern koan.

Chapter 1 Introduction

The various disciplines of science have traditionally been divided from each other, the more specialized the field became, the more esoteric its theories and concepts. As a result the education system is designed to let the students choose, at some point during their studies, which field they want to specialize within. This again leads to more specialization. If each of the disciplines are viewed as a mountain, the new student is the mountaineer standing at the bottom, deciding which mountain he is going to climp. If the student manages to conquer one of the mountains, he might occasionally pick up his binoculars and take a curious look at one of the other mountain tops, wondering what is going on over there, but in most cases he decides to stay where he is.

Figure 1: Each of the disciplines psychology, biology, sociology, cognition science and others

are traditionally considered to be distinct from each other, with their own concepts and theories.

The division are probably a result of the reductionistic approach to science that emerged during the Enlightenment in the 18th century. Since then amazing new technology and knowledge have had a deep impact on the western world. Science was viewed as a consctruction where hypotheses were tested by empirical facts to be either true or false. The true ones were used as building bricks towards a further exploration of the true reality. At the end of the 19th century some scientists declared that in just a few more years of scientific research, there would be nothing left to discover. The scientific faith was peaking and it was rock-steady. Then came two world wars, where it turned out that building bricks could be used for more than building a house. Also a new theory, that introduced a soul shaking new interpretation of the fundamental building bricks, came about: Quantum mechanics. The psychologist C.G. Jung wrote books about the collective unconscious and the importance of the human psyche when talking about true reality. These factors among others were disturbances to the traditional scientific approach, but were, if not ignored, then at least putted aside for a while: The world wars were a political phenomenon that didn’t really concern science. Quantum mechanics were written in a complex mathematical language only understood by very few scientists, like the danish scientist Niels Bohr (who suddenly started to get interested in ancient eastern religion) and C.G. Jung was a psychologist who could maybe help people with mental problems, but his work was about the human mind and not about the reality ’out there’.

During the years disturbances have accumulated and today the faith is not that rock-steady anymore. Whether a result of this or not, a new approach towards science seems to be emerging in this period of history. This approach transcends the traditional division of the scientific disciplines, not just by being interdisciplinary, but in a more profound way that I will attempt to describe in the following.