Abstract

A new philosophy of science has been proposed, one that especially aims at dealing with the problems of the "disunified sciences". This philosophy states, among other things, that there is a central dimension of progress in science that can be abstracted from some descriptions of early science, but that has been ignored, to all intents and purposes; the significance of this dimension of progress in science overlooked. The dimension refers to progress in the unification of the elements of science, of the findings, the theories, the problems, the methods, the organizations, as well as to progress in developing a philosophy of unification, with its goal of achieving unification. When achieved, a science's unification changes the competition of its practitioners from that of undermining each others' works to that of attempting to arrive first at generally agreed-on goals employing consensually accepted methods, within an agreed upon characterization of science. The purpose of the present paper is to describe the philosophy of unified positivism, a purpose of which is to open to our science a new field of study, that of unification psychology. 2012 APA, all rights reserved)