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Redefining Reality - The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science

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One way <strong>of</strong> making progress in science is to come up with new<br />

theories or discover new phenomena, but another way is to unify the<br />

theories we have to cover new ranges <strong>of</strong> phenomena. A major goal <strong>of</strong><br />

<br />

that brings together all four <strong>of</strong> the known forces in the universe, showing<br />

them to be different elements <strong>of</strong> a single force. <strong>The</strong> leading candidate for this<br />

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<br />

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19 th <br />

“consilience,” that is, the ability to bring together results and make<br />

<br />

<br />

<br />

into a single explanatory scheme.<br />

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Earlier, René Descartes had undertaken to rebuild all <strong>of</strong> human<br />

knowledge in a clear, systematic way. Indeed, his famous dictum<br />

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truth—the existence <strong>of</strong> the self as a thinking thing—that he would<br />

use in this project. He would go on to apply this unifying project<br />

outside <strong>of</strong> philosophy when he combined algebra and geometry into<br />

what we call analytic geometry.<br />

Newton extended Descartes’s analytic geometry in the creation<br />

<br />

<br />

<strong>of</strong> mechanics and gravitation—that replaced Aristotle’s separate<br />

theories <strong>of</strong> terrestrial physics and astronomy.<br />

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