first science

the missing science, the theory of everything, and the arrow of time
There have been a number of deep thinkers (e.g. Bacon, Newton, Einstein, Feynman and Gödel) who have had the foresight, in one form or another, to envisage or hint at the missing science - a science more general than physics (see why).  Whereas mathematical physics assumes all of nature can be represented mathematically, the missing science does not.


Sir Francis Bacon

One of the great contributors to the establishment of modern science was the English philosopher Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626).  In 1605 he recommended that the knowledge common to all science should be incorporated into a fundamental doctrine that was to be "a receptacle for all such profitable observations and axioms as fall not within the compass of any of the special parts of philosophy or sciences, but are more common and of a higher stage."1  In his day he called this fundamental doctrine First Philosophy, an appropriate term when science was known as Natural Philosophy.  The equivalent modern term is First Science.  Bacon described First Science as the trunk of the tree of knowledge.2  He believed the introduction of First Science would lead to a deeper understanding of nature.3


Sir Isaac Newton

Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727) is one of the founders of mathematical physics.  Interestingly, he did not dogmatically believe that all of science was encompassed within mathematical physics.  Contrary to popular beliefs, Newton was interested in understanding all of Nature - not just its mechanistic, mathematical component.  His goal was knowledge of God, through the universal understanding of nature.4  In many of his earlier years, he sought to understand the self-organization of nature by searching (via alchemy) for a universal, animating, vegetative principle.5  After Newton, the mechanistic, mathematical conception of nature overshadowed its self-organizing element.  However, unlike many of his followers, Newton recognized that there might one day be a science reaching beyond the realm of mathematical physics.6


Albert Einstein

In the early 1950's, Albert Einstein (1879-1955) worried about the Arrow of Time.  According to philosopher Rudolph Carnap (1891-1970), Einstein believed there was something fundamental about the Arrow of Time that was just outside the realm of mathematical physics.7  Going one step further, this provides a hint that the Arrow of Time might be explained by a science beyond the reach of mathematical physics.

Richard Feynman

Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman (1918-1988) recognized a possible world beyond mathematical physics.  In 1964, at the end of a series of lectures, he noted: "The next great era of awakening of human intellect may well produce a method of understanding the qualitative content of equations."8  An explanation of the qualitative content of equations hints at a science beyond the reach of (quantitative) mathematical physics.

Kurt Gödel

Kurt Gödel (1906-1978), the greatest logician of the twentieth century, was a private advocate of First Science.  In 1974, he wrote: "Philosophy as an exact theory [First Science] should do to metaphysics as much as Newton did to physics...[I]t is perfectly possible that the development of such a...theory will take place within the next hundred years or even shorter."9  Mathematical philosopher Hao Wang (1921-1995), who discussed First Science with Kurt Gödel, noted: "If ...[Kurt Gödel's] project is feasible, then it would seem to be a sort of science that is even more exciting than fruitful work in fundamental science, although it is presumably also more difficult."10

Summary

Although at the outset of modern science Sir Francis Bacon outlined a manifesto for First Science, the success of mathematical physics led to modern science being initially seen as purely a mathematical discipline.  Modern science has expanded its definitions to include the complex sciences, such as biology, the mind sciences, and the social sciences, which, since they include the Arrow of Time, are not purely mathematical disciplines.  However, modern science has not recognized that there is a missing science, First Science, which is a general discipline that unifies physics and all the sciences.

1  Francis Bacon (1973), The Advancement of Learning.  G.W. Kitchen (ed.), London: J.M. Dent, p. 86.
2  Ibid, p. 85.
3  Ibid, p. 32.
4  Betty Dobbs (1991), The Janus Faces of Genius: The Role of Alchemy in Newton's Thought.  Cambridge; New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, p. 7.
5  Ibid, p. 5.
6  John Sullivan (1938), Limitations of Science.  Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, p. 180.
7  Rudolph Carnap (1963), "Carnap's intellectual autobiography," in Paul Schlipp (ed.), The philosophy of Rudolph Carnap, La Salle, Ill: Open Court, p. 37-38.
8  Richard Feynman, Robert Leighton and Matthew Sands (1964), The Feynman lectures on physics, vol. II.  Reading, Ma.: Addison-Wesley, p. 41-12.
9  Addition in Hao Wang (1974), From Mathematics to Philosophy.  London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, p. 85.  Addition revised and approved by Kurt Gödel.  Addition quoted in Hao Wang (1987), Reflections on Kurt Gödel.  Cambridge, Ma.: MIT Press, p. 1-2.
10  Hao Wang (1987), Reflections on Kurt Gödel.  Cambridge, Ma.: MIT Press, p. 152.