We thus divided human knowledge into large parts, and the parts into divisions, and the divisions into departments, and the departments into sections. As the topic of the general divisions—we proposed seven of them—it was decided to discuss the Unity of the whole field. As topic for the departments—we had twenty-four of them—the addresses were to discuss the fundamental Conceptions and Methods and the Progress during the last century; and in the sections, finally—our plan provided for one hundred and twenty-eight of them—the topics were in every one the Relation of the special branch to other branches, and those most important Present Problems which are essential for the deeper principles of the special field. In this way the ground-plan itself suggested the unity of the practically separated sciences; and, moreover, our plan provided from the first that this logical relation should express itself externally in the time order of the work. We were to begin with the meetings of the large divisions, the meetings of the departments were to follow, and the meetings of the sections and their ramifications would follow the departmental gatherings.
3. The Objections to the Plan
It was evident that even the most modest success of that gigantic undertaking depended upon the right choice of speakers, upon the value of the ground-plan, and upon many external conditions; thus no one was in doubt as to the difficulty in realizing such a scheme. Yet there were from the scholarly side itself objections to the principles involved, objections which might hold even if those other conditions were successfully met. The most immediate reason for reluctance lies in the specializing tendencies of our time. Those who devote all their working energy as loyal sons of our analyzing period of science to the minute detail of research come easily into the habit of a nervous fear with regard to any wider general outlook. The man of research sees too often how ignorance hides itself behind generalities. He knows too well how much easier it is to formulate vague generalities than to contribute a new fact to human knowledge, and how often untrained youngsters succeed with popular text-books which are rightly forgotten the next day. Methodical science must thus almost encourage this aversion to any deviation from the path of painstaking specialistic labor. Then, of course, it seems almost a scientific duty to declare war against an undertaking which explicitly asks everywhere for the wide perspectives and the last principles, and does not aim at adding at this moment to the mere treasury of information.
But such a view is utterly one-sided, and to fight against such one-sidedness and to overcome the specializing narrowness of the scattered sciences was the one central idea of the plan. If there existed no scholars who despise the philosophizing connection, there would have hardly been any need for this whole undertaking; but to yield to such philosophy-phobia means to declare the analytic movement of science permanent, and to postpone a synthetic movement indefinitely. Our time has just to emphasize, and the leaders of thought daily emphasize it more, that a mere heaping up of information can be merely a preparation for knowledge, and that the final aim is a Weltanschauung, a unified view of the whole of reality. All that our Congress had to secure was thus merely that the generalizing discussion of principles should not be left to men who generalized because they lacked the substantial knowledge which is necessary to specialize. The thinkers we needed were those who through specialistic work were themselves led to a point where the discussion of general principles becomes unavoidable. Our plan was by no means antagonistic to the patient labors of analysis; the aim was merely to overcome its one-sidedness and to stimulate the synthesis as a necessary supplement.
But the objections against a generalizing plan were not confined to the mistaken fear that we sought to antagonize the productive work of the specialist. They not seldom took the form of a general aversion to the logical side of the ground-plan. It was often said that such a scheme has after all interest only for the logician, for whom science as such is an object of study, and who must thus indeed classify the sciences and determine their logical relation. The real scientist, it was said, does not care for such methodological operations, and should be suspicious from the first of such philosophical high-handedness. The scientist cannot forget how often in the history of civilization science was the loser when it trusted its problems to the metaphysical thinker who substituted his lofty speculations for the hard work of the investigator. The true scholar will thus not only object to generalizing "commonplaces" as against solid information, but he will object as well to logical demarcation lines and systematization as against the practical scientific work which does not want to be hampered by such philosophical subtleties. Yet all these fears and suspicions were still more mistaken.
Nothing was further from our intentions than a substitution of metaphysics for concrete science. It was not by chance that we took such pains to find the best specialists for every section. No one was invited to enter into logical discussions and to consider the relations of science merely from a dialectic point of view. The topic was everywhere the whole living manifoldness of actual relations, and the logician had nothing else to do than to prepare the programme. The outlines of the programme demanded, of course, a certain logical scheme. If hundreds of sciences are to take part, they have to be grouped somehow, if a merely alphabetical order is not adopted; and even if we were to proceed alphabetically, we should have to decide beforehand what part of knowledge is to be recognized as a special science. But the logical order of the ground-plan refers, of course, merely to the simple relation of coördination, subordination, and superordination, and the logician is satisfied with such a classification. But the endless variety of internal relations is no longer to be dealt with from the point of view of mere logic. We may work out the ground-plan in such a way that we understand that logically zoölogy is coördinated to botany and subordinated to mechanics and superordinated to ichthyology; but this minimum of determination gives, of course, not even a hint of that world of relations which exists from the standpoint of the biologist between the science of zoölogy and the science of botany, or between the biological and the mechanical studies. To discuss these relations of real scientific life is the work of the biologist and not at all of the logician.
The foregoing answers also at once an objection which might seem more justified at the first glance. It has been said that we were undertaking the work of bringing about a synthesis of scientific endeavors, and that we yet had that synthesis already completed in the programme on which the work was to be based. The scholars to be invited would be bound by the programme, and would therefore have no other possibility than to say with more words what the programme had settled beforehand. The whole effort would then seem determined from the start by the arbitrariness of the proposed ground-plan. Now it cannot be denied indeed that a certain factor of arbitrariness has to enter into a programme. We have already referred to the fact that some one must decide beforehand what fraction of science is to be acknowledged as a self-dependent discipline. If a biologist were to work out the scheme, he might decide that the whole of philosophy was just one science; while the philosopher might claim a large number of sections for logic and ethics and philosophy of religion, and so on. And the philosopher, on the other hand, might treat the whole of medicine as one part in itself, while the physician might hold that even otology has to be separated from rhinology. A certain subjectivity of standpoint is unavoidable, and we know very well that instead of the one hundred and twenty-eight sections of our programme we might have been satisfied with half that number or might have indulged in double that number. And yet there was no possible plan which would have allowed us to invite the speakers without defining beforehand the sectional field which each was to represent. A certain courage of opinion was then necessary, and sometimes also a certain adjustment to external conditions.
Quite similar was the question of classification. Just as we had to take the responsibility for the staking-out of every section, we had also to decide in favor of a certain grouping, if we desired to organize the Congress and not simply to bring out haphazard results. The principles which are sufficient for a mere directory would never allow the shaping of a programme which can be the basis for synthetic work. Even a university catalogue begins with a certain classification, and yet no one fancies that such catalogue grouping inhibits the freedom of the university lecturer. It is easy to say, as has been said, that the essential trait of the scientific life of to-day is its live-and-let-live character. Certainly it is. In the regular work in our libraries and laboratories the year round, everything depends upon this democratic freedom in which every one goes his own way, hardly asking what his neighbor is doing. It is that which has made the specialistic sciences of our day as strong as they are. But it has brought about at the same time this extreme tendency to unrelated specialization with its discouraging lack of unity; this heaping up of information without an outer harmonious view of the world; and if we were really at least once to satisfy the desire for unity, then we had not the right to yield fully to this live-and-let-live tendency. Therefore some principle of grouping had to be accepted, and whatever principle had been chosen, it would certainly have been open to the criticism that it was a product of arbitrary decision, inasmuch as other principles might have been possible.
A classification which in itself expresses all the practical relations in which sciences stand to each other is, of course, absolutely impossible. A programme which should try to arrange the place of a special discipline in such a way that it would become the neighbor of all those other sciences with which it has internal relation is unthinkable. On the other hand, only if we had tried to construct a scheme of such exaggerated ambitions should we have been really guilty of anticipating a part of that which the specialistic scholars were to tell us. The Congress had to leave it to the invited participants to discuss the totality of relations which practically exist between their fields and others, and the organizers confined themselves to that minimum of classification which just indicates the pure logical relations, a minimum which every editor of encyclopedic work would be asked to initiate without awakening suspicions of interference with the ideas of his contributors.
The only justified demand which could be met was that a system of division and classification should be proposed which should give fair play to every existing scientific tendency. The minimum of classification was to be combined with the maximum of freedom, and to secure that a careful consideration of principles was indeed necessary. To bring logical order into the sciences which stand out clearly with traditional rights is not difficult; but the chances are too great that certain tendencies of thought might fail to find recognition or might be suppressed by scientific prejudice. Any serious omission would indeed have necessarily inhibited the freedom of expression. To secure thus the greatest inner fullness of the programme, seemed indeed the most important task in the elaboration of the ground-plan. The fears that we might offer empty generalization instead of scholarly facts, or that we might simply heap up encyclopedic information instead of gaining wide perspectives, or that we might interfere with the living connections of sciences by the logical demarcation lines, or that we might disturb the scholar in his freedom by determining beforehand his place in the classification,—all these fears and objections, which were repeatedly raised when the plan was first proposed, seemed indeed unimportant compared with the fear that the programme might be unable to include all scientific tendencies of the time.