Introduction

A whole body of work has revealed the local, the particular and the culturally variable contexts that constitute science in its various branches. The explicit promotion of the unity of science in the interwar years is best known from the Unity of Science Movement set up by the philosophers of the Vienna Circle. Otto Neurath, Rudolph Carnap and their fellows strove to unify all science into a single body of knowledge, stripped of any 'dogmatic', 'metaphysical' and otherwise unscientific contaminations. The world in which interwar pursuits of the unity of science emerged was one of deep division and splintering antagonism. Interwar unity of science pursuits, however, were distinguished by their enormous scope and their often overt political commitment. The promotion of unified science as a rational basis for social planning and international cooperation formed a collective answer to the feeling of general devastation that followed the Great War.