The Disunity of Science and the Unity of the World Presidential Address, PSA 2022

Abstract

This paper recapitulates earlier work in which I argued for the disunity of science, the plurality of partly incommensurable ways in which the world can be conceptualised for scientific purposes. It then aims to show how this plurality is intelligible, even to be expected, from the perspective of a process philosophy that sees the world as largely disorganised, but as allowing the emrgence of pockets of stability, most notably the stability provided by biological organisms. It incidentally aims to demonstrate the importance to one another of science and metaphysics.