ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the squadrons of American scientists returning in 1945 from war research that had given science both a new form of work and a novel place for physics, chemistry, engineering, psychology, and sociology in the world. Gerald Holton, a participant from early on, has recalled that the assembly of the American Unity of Science movement at Harvard began with Philipp Frank's organization of an "Inter-Scientific Discussion Group" in 1944. Indeed, both in the prewar and postwar Unity of Science efforts, modern science, and not only physics, loomed large. The hierarchy of a Comtian picture of science would be replaced by the orchestration of different instruments, each distinct but brought together to accomplish something bigger than any could do individually. Famously, Otto Neurath invoked the image of a forest fire to illustrate how necessary it was to organize the various sciences into an effective unit.
