Von den Einheits-Wissenschaften zu den Wissenschafts-Einheiten: 250 Jahre moderne Wissenschafts-Synthesen

Abstract: It is the purpose of this small paper to present some highlights in the history of modern attempts of knowledge integration. Three significant episodes are dealt with, namely the French Encyclopedia, the idea of a unified science as it hasbeen proposed by the Vienna Circle and, finally, the contemporary encyclopedic potentials which are able to utilize the successful emergence of both complex and transdisciplinary model families. Moreover, the history of modern knowledge integration can be described in terms of a long-term phase transition which has followed a trajectory from an initial state of accumulation of all relevant empirical and theoretical components to a mode of structural encoding, in which all relevant knowledge canbe produced by suitable applications of a comparatively small set of complex modeling traditions.