Disunity in the philosophy of science: for and against

Relatively few scholars have explicitly denied the advisability, or even the necessity of a close synergy or cooperation between scientists and philosophers, but if this is to go beyond a simple statement without philosophical justification, it is necessary to highlight the logical-epistemological roots of the complementarity of science and philosophy. Elsewhere, starting from a particular conception of the Kantian a priori, I have argued for a new position that draws a distinction between philosophy and the sciences in a way that relates them to one another such that they not only can, but must, cooperate. In this paper I shall explore the implications of this position for the disunity of science. In spite of some fundamental points of agreement between the disunity approach and the position sketched here, there is at least one fundamental difference concerning the relationship between philosophy and the sciences. By removing all material content (even any contingent material content) from the Kantian concept of a priori, the main idea of the disunity thesis is coherently defensible. My conception of the Kantian a priori explains philosophy's unlimited openness to any subject-matter, while placing both scientific and philosophical discourse in an inter- and intra-disciplinary dialogue: the unlimited openness of philosophy goes beyond the limits of any scientific discipline or any particular philosophical discourse, and may serve as a universal medium for the attainment of a common agreement that must be assumed as possible in principle. From this point of view, it is possible both to accept, in a qualified sense, the positivist demand for unity tacitly expressed by many objections against the disunity thesis and, at the same time, the legitimacy of an opponent who denies the central thesis of the disunity approach.