Breadth and Depth: Monism and Scientific Meta-Reflection The monistic movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century are most often studied as aiming at a comprehensive worldview, a Weltanschauung. Typically, monists tried to generate such a worldview by transforming their scientific expertise in a particular field into an all-encompassing explanation and interpretation of the world. Monism thus needed to strike a balance between the specialist depth in studying one area of science and the breadth that is the hallmark of a worldview. Immediately, this combination of breadth and depth raises important questions. As the career paths of the monists show, many different specializations could form the basis of a monist worldview: evolutionary biology and morphology in the case of Ernst Haeckel, cellular neurology and the study of social insects in the work of Auguste Forel, and physical chemistry in Wilhelm Ostwald's monistic theorizing. There were many brands of monism. In order therefore to avoid a conflict between this plurality of scientific activities on the one hand and the clear claims at unification that lie in the very idea of monism on the other, the step from particular subject areas to complete generality had to be justified. This justification itself had to be effected by a science-based mode of reflection; monism required a strong form of scientific self- and meta-reflection. What was necessary were arguments to the effect that the specialist basis did not compromise the generality that monism aimed at.
...MoreBook Weir, Todd H. (2012) Monism: Science, Philosophy, Religion, and the History of a Worldview.
Similar Citations
Book
Weber, Heiko;
(2000)
Monistische und antimonistische Weltanschauung: Eine Auswahlbibliographie
(/isis/citation/CBB000110659/)
Chapter
Gliboff, Sander;
(2012)
Monism and Morphology at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001201838/)
Article
Brakel, Jaap van;
(2013)
František Wald's Empiricism
(/isis/citation/CBB001320765/)
Article
Deltete, Robert J.;
(2010)
Thermodynamics in Wilhelm Ostwald's Physical Chemistry
(/isis/citation/CBB001230087/)
Article
Matthias Neuber;
(2018)
Monism, Naturalism, and the "Pyramid of the Sciences": Wilhelm Ostwald's Energetic Theory of Culture
(/isis/citation/CBB680355739/)
Book
Weir, Todd H.;
(2012)
Monism: Science, Philosophy, Religion, and the History of a Worldview
(/isis/citation/CBB001201833/)
Chapter
Gregory, Frederick;
(2012)
Proto-Monism in German Philosophy, Theology, and Science, 1800--1845
(/isis/citation/CBB001201835/)
Chapter
Bowler, Peter J.;
(2012)
Monism in Britain: Biologists and the Rationalist Press Association
(/isis/citation/CBB001201841/)
Chapter
Erik C. Banks;
(2018)
The Case for Mach's Neutral Monism
(/isis/citation/CBB571671358/)
Book
Keiko Sato;
(2015)
Hekkeru to shinka no fantaji: Ichigenron, ekoroji, keitouju ヘッケルと進化の夢:一元論,エコロジー,系統樹 Haeckel and the Fantasy of Evolution: Monism, Ecology, and the Genealogical Tree
(/isis/citation/CBB052999110/)
Book
Arabatzis, Theodore;
(2006)
Representing Electrons: A Biographical Approach to Theoretical Entities
(/isis/citation/CBB000741434/)
Article
Deltete, Robert J.;
(2012)
Planck, Ostwald, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics
(/isis/citation/CBB001232112/)
Book
Görs, Britta;
Psarros, Nikolaos;
Ziche, Paul;
(2005)
Wilhelm Ostwald at the Crossroads between Chemistry, Philosophy, and Media Culture
(/isis/citation/CBB001232593/)
Article
Hoßfeld, Uwe;
Olsson, Lennart;
(2003)
The Road from Haeckel: The Jena Tradition in Evolutionary Morphology and the Origins of “Evo-Devo”
(/isis/citation/CBB000340573/)
Article
Kragh, Helge;
(2013)
Superheavy Elements and the Upper Limit of the Periodic Table: Early Speculations
(/isis/citation/CBB001212074/)
Article
Sunderland, Mary Evelyn;
(2011)
Morphogenesis, Dictyostelium, and the Search for Shared Developmental Processes
(/isis/citation/CBB001221540/)
Book
Manuel DeLanda;
(2015)
Philosophical Chemistry: Genealogy of a Scientific Field
(/isis/citation/CBB641899548/)
Article
Riegner, Mark F.;
(2013)
Ancestor of the New Archetypal Biology: Goethe's Dynamic Typology as a Model for Contemporary Evolutionary Developmental Biology
(/isis/citation/CBB001320552/)
Article
Stahnisch, Frank;
(2014)
The Early Eugenics Movement and Emerging Professional Psychiatry: Conceptual Transfers and Personal Relationships between Germany and North America, 1880s to 1930s
(/isis/citation/CBB001420267/)
Chapter
Polianski, Igor J.;
(2012)
Between Hegel and Haeckel: Monistic Worldview, Marxist Philosophy, and Biomedicine in Russia and the Soviet Union
(/isis/citation/CBB001201842/)
Be the first to comment!