Editing Logical positivism (section)

===Unity of science===

{{See also|Unity of science}}

Logical positivists were committed to the vision of a [[unity of science|unified science]] encompassing all scientific fields (including the [[special sciences]], such as [[biology]], [[anthropology]], [[sociology]] and [[economics]], and ''the fundamental science'', or [[fundamental physics]]) which would be synthesised into a singular [[epistemology|epistemic]] entity.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Gregory |last=Frost-Arnold |url=https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00002005/01/PSA2004Short.rtf |title=The Large Scale Structure of Logical Empiricism: Unity of Science and the Elimination of Metaphysics |journal=Philosophy of Science |volume=72 |issue=5 |year=2005 |pages=826-838 |doi=10.1086/508113}}</ref><ref name=Suppe/> Key to this concept was the doctrine of ''theory reduction'', according to which the covering law model would be used to interconnect the special sciences and, thereupon, to [[reductionism|reduce]] all laws in the special sciences to fundamental physics.<ref>{{cite book |last=Kuhn |first=Thomas S. |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226458106.001.0001 |title=The Structure of Scientific Revolutions |date=1996 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-45808-3}}</ref>

The movement envisioned a universal scientific language that could express statements with common [[semantics|meaning]] intelligible to all scientific fields. [[Rudolf Carnap|Carnap]] sought to realise this goal through the systematic reduction of the linguistic terms of more specialised fields to those of more fundamental fields. Various methods of reduction were proposed, referring to the use of [[set theory]] to manipulate logically [[primitive notion|primitive concepts]] (as in Carnap's ''Logical Structure of the World'', 1928) or via [[analytic and synthetic|analytic]] and ''a priori'' deductive operations (as described in ''Testability and Meaning'', 1936, 1937). A number of publications over a period of thirty years would attempt to elucidate this concept.<ref>{{cite book |last=Hinst |first=Peter |chapter=Carnap, Rudolf: Der logische Aufbau der Welt |date=2020 |title=Kindlers Literatur Lexikon (KLL) |pages=1–2 |doi=10.1007/978-3-476-05728-0_9509-1 |location=Stuttgart |publisher=J.B. Metzler |isbn=978-3-476-05728-0}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Sarkar |first=Sahotra |chapter=Rudolf Carnap Testability and Meaning |year=2021 |title=Logical Empiricism at its Peak |pages=200–265 |doi=10.4324/9781003249573-13 |location=New York |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-003-24957-3}}</ref>