Ebook: The Unity of Knowledge

Preface
The essays here collected were presented at the fifth of Columbia University’s Bicentennial Conferences, which met at Arden House in Harriman, New York, from October 27 to October 30, 1954, to consider aspects of the question of The Unity of Knowledge. Each was prepared by a man eminent in his field for the consideration of a group of something more than sixty representatives of the arts and the sciences, of religion and philosophy, chosen from this country and abroad to represent as many varieties of opinion and experience as possible. Each therefore was written for the informed layman rather than for the specialist. Each attempts to present a point of view, sometimes a personal point of view, concerning a concept manifestly too large for complete examination in the time or space devoted to it.
In its initial state, each essay was mimeographed for circulation among participants at the conference.
The first six were read in general sessions to the group as a whole. To introduce the subject, Felice Battaglia, rector of the oldest among European universities, offered a brief summation of what unity has meant and continues to mean to the students and teachers who make up the University of Bologna; then Hermann Weyl as representative of the most respected traditions of pure science in this country and in Europe considered the possibility of unity of knowledge from the point of view of the man of science, and Sir Richard Livingstone as representative of the traditions of the great English universities approached the question from the point of view of the humanist. At a second meeting, Etienne Gilson, Niels Bohr, and John Herman Randall, Jr., explained in more detail something of the provenance of knowledge as seen by the theologian, the physicist, and the philosopher. Following these more general approaches, the conference was divided into discussion groups which met concurrently in three sessions to consider the essays which are printed in this volume in the sections on The Knowledge of Man, The Methods of Knowledge, and The Languages of Knowledge. Finally, after a plenary session at which summaries of the discussion in each of the panels were presented by Robert K. Merton, Albert Hofstadter, and Frederick Dupee, the conference adjourned to the Rotunda of the Low Memorial Library at Columbia University for a public session at which Detlev Bronk, Robert Penn Warren, and Charles H. Malik, each from his own direction—one as scientist and administrator, the next as poet, novelist, and critic, and the last as philosopher and statesman—linked the conference theme of The Unity of Knowledge to the bicentennial theme of Man’s Right to Knowledge and the Free Use Thereof.
Each of the essays has been reconsidered and in some instances revised by its author in the light of discussion among members of the conference. Some have been rather severely edited in form—never in content—to meet requirements of publication. Problems of time and distance have made it impossible to submit all such editorial revisions for the approval of every author. Although the editor has consulted men wiser than he in each of the areas represented, responsibility for errors must finally rest on him. By permission of the publisher and the university Mr. Warren’s essay appeared in the Sewanee Review in the spring, 1955, issue, and portions of Mr. MacLeish’s essay appeared in the Saturday Review for March 5, 1955.
It would be pleasant to report that as a result of our conference some conclusion was reached, some panacea discovered which would center all knowledge in unity. But the subject was large, ambitious and ambiguous, and varieties of opinion emerged. Perhaps the unity of knowledge is an ideal to which men unsure in their knowledge cling. For all its allure, perhaps it is even a frightening prospect, with intellectual, moral, and political implications to be faced at worst with resignation. Perhaps, as was suggested to us, man himself is the only unity—and that through the biological circumstance that he represents a single species in which there are no subgroups—so that instead of unity of knowledge there is possible only unity among men who search it out, a unity of spirit which has many names—tolerance, humility, persistence, devotion, love. Recognizing his limitations of mind and spirit—what one among us called his “self-shattering knowledge of his own limitations”—man is challenged as much by his ignorance as by what he has learned to create a unity amid diversity. His pride compels him, but wisdom may intervene and humility reveal the goal beyond his reach.
Cautions surrounded us as we progressed in discussion—to beware of coercion, even self-inflicted coercion, toward premature answers, to watch diligently, as one put it, lest “political or other ethnocentric factors of the moment coerce us into settling for knowledge which is less than universally human and which is directed to something less than a universally conceived advancement of human beings.” We were reminded that unity may be a word of threat as well as a word of promise, that it may signify the end of searching as well as the relentless quest. The malevolence of some attempts at unity which have threatened the world was advanced for our consideration, and the warning lest, in acknowledging as false those ideals of unity which we recognize as communist or fascist, we therefore conclude that the unity we discover is inevitably a true unity because neither fascist nor communist. But generally, except through recurrent implication, discussion centered on areas other than political, chiefly on man, his limitations and his possibilities, his mastery of technique or method, his confusion of tongues. As we talked, the bold concept of a unity of knowledge became modified to something which most members of the conference found more manageable and semantically more sound, the unification of knowledge. What agreement emerged looked not so much toward unity as toward a federated union in which different types of orientation toward knowledge are not simply juxtaposed side by side but are differentiated in function, method, and content in relation to a larger universe of orientation to the world and to society. As one participant suggested in summary, “I wonder if we cannot agree that what we
regard as desirable is not a universe of discourse but a constellation of discourses; not a basic English of all the disciplines which would be common to all but adequate to none, but a communication between discourses based on a common understanding of purposes and related to a common spirit of intelligence and humanity; whether it is not in this direction that we should look for a focus which our civilization perhaps lacks.”
Ultimately, the most valuable results of a conference like ours consist not in what is said or what is concluded but in attitudes set forward by those who participated in it. Perhaps the most important thing about the conference was that it took place—that in the middle of the twentieth century and under the auspices of a democratic university, men from many parts of the world were willing to come together, conscientiously to analyze the nature of their intellectual activities. The final unity was among men able to submit what they surmised and what they knew to the scrutiny of other men who respected both their individual limitations and their mutual integrity. The planning and execution of any conference requires unification of effort and disorganization of time on the part of many people. Members of the planning committee were Albert Hofstadter, as co-chairman, Paul Lang, Ernest Nagel, Marjorie Hope Nicolson, I. I. Rabi, and Lionel Trilling—to them is due whatever reward comes to people who work devotedly well. Horace Friess, Ernest Nagel, and Jacques Barzun cooperated in the organization and management of the panels of which they served as chairmen, and John A. Krout, Henry P. Van Dusen, Edgar Grim Miller, and Philip C. Jessup effectively presided over the general meetings. Much of the unpleasant work behind scenes at the conference or in editing these essays was accomplished by Pierre Garai and Frances Bennett. Everyone in any manner involved with Columbia University’s Bicentennial is in debt to its director, Richard E. Powell, to its assistant director, James Mal- fetti, and to their attractive and efficient staff.
LEWIS LEARY



Principal Contributors
Felice Battaglia
Niels Bohr
Detlev W. Bronk
Robert L. Calhoun
Etienne Gilson
Julian Huxley
Frank H. Knight
Alfred L. Kroeber
Harry Levin
Sir Richard Livingstone
Archibald MacLeish
Charles H. Malik
Gardner Murphy
Willard Van Orman Quine
John Herman Randall, Jr.
John von Neumann
Robert Penn Warren
Hermann Weyl