Science is in need of a new foundation establishing unity and order in knowledge.
Specialised research has long outrun synthesis and during this century has entered realms
lying outside the scope of earlier fundamental principles. Only the discovery of a theoretical
principle more comprehensive than any of the past can reveal the significance of the facts
which are already known.
The need is equally great in physics, in biology, and in psychology, though for
different reasons. Physics has had a reliable foundation, but has outgrown it. The problems
with which physical research is now occupied require fundamentally new conceptions, but
these have not yet been found, and theory has to make do with Newtonian ideas, modifying
them to meet situations for which they are unsuited. The result is not surprising: the axioms
of physical theory are now abstract formulae without immediate physical significance,
fundamental theory has become embarrassingly complex, and the mathematics used is often
intractable. These are signs that new methods are necessary.
The position in biology is different. We may here neglect the vitalitic and overteleological schools of thought which have rightly emphasised the working unity of the
organism, but have made little contribution to exact knowledge. Apart from these the modern
science of biology rests mainly on foundations supplied by physics. But a critical moment has
been reached. Theoretical biology now faces the task of explaining the general properties of
organisms, such as synthesis, differentiation, cyclic function, self-regulation, and adaptive
modification, in terms of the structural patterns of living protein.
The problem of the relation of organic properties to physical structure must now be
solved, if biology is to advance.
Yet here there is a curious situation. At the very moment when exact biology has come
into a closer relation to physical theory than ever before and has a special need of clear
physical principles, physics has lost its own fundamental clarity. Biology looks to physics,
but physical theory cannot give an adequate lead, for it is occupied in a basic re-organisation
and does not yet see its own way ahead.
However, this coincidence of two crises may be a favourable sign. Many biologists
have suspected that the foundations of classical physics lack some element which is essential
to biological theory, for the value of every physical model has sooner or later been exhausted,
and the nature of biological organisation still remains obscure. It is therefore possible that the
crisis in physics is related to the crisis in biology, and that both sciences must now move
together on to a new common foundation.
In psychology there is a similar but more complex situation. Psychological theory has
so far lacked a unified foundation, and has relied on ideas, drawn mainly from three sources:
subjective experience, biological theory, and the methods of exact- science. These methods of
approach emphasise three aspects of man: the subjective and teleological, the functional and
adaptive, and the physical and quantitative aspects respectively. Each aspect is necessary, and
psychological theory continues to use ideas drawn from these three independent sources.
This confusion of concepts is now obstructing progress. Yet the different aspects of
human psychology which are covered by the subjective, biological, and physical approaches
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cannot be combined into a single theory, because of the conceptual dualism of mind and
body. Both the practising psychiatrist and the psychological theorist are aware of the need of
concepts which avoid the distortion inherent in the dualistic language. But the transformation
to a single view cannot be accomplished by a movement within psychology alone, for the
relations of psychology to biology and to physics are also deeply involved.
It seems that what is required is not the discovery of a new fundamental law lying
within the present field of any one of the three major sciences, but the identification of a
principle underlying all three, and providing a new -foundation for the whole of science. The
new unifying principle must go beneath the shaken foundations of physics to find a broader
basis for a unified science.