If we take a look at the more than 25 centuries of the development of science we can notice that it was not a continuous, constantly cumulative process, and the expectations related to it as well as the picture of it are similarly changing. There are some outstanding epochs which are conveniently interpreted before the background of some other cultural changes. I have in mind, in particular, the alteration of metaphysical presuppositions and the variation of the institutions of communication.
I would like to prove that the process of fragmentation in science had a long-lasting metaphysical counterpart which was supported by the development of technologies of communication in the modern age. By contrast, interdisciplinarity, to-day, seems to be the evident program. In the course of my presentation I would like to find out how metaphysical presuppositions
changed together with the evaluation of the given scientific situation, or, in other words, how it could come about that – as Lakatos has put it – "the actual history is frequently a caricature of its rational reconstructions". First I am going to show how the prospering of science in the 17th century was connected, on the one hand, with the Cartesian turn and, on the other hand, with the rise of the printing press. Subsequently I will sum up those voices of cultural criticism in the 20th century which either intend to build up a new picture of science or mourn for the bygone, traditional, one. By way of conclusion, I'll try to interpret the present state of science as standing for a new kind of unity of knowledge.

In one of his letters Descartes described philosophy as a tree. Metaphysics creates the root, physics the trunk, and all the other disciplines - the main three of which are medical science, mechanics and moral philosophy - create the crown of it. The most important fruit of this tree is moral philosophy, i.e. the main benefit of philosophy depends on the last attainable discipline which is identical with the final instance of wisdom. We can see that the whole universe of disciplines is structured by striving for the final instance of wisdom. The function and the position of each discipline is determined by this striving.

This teleological hierarchy of disciplines and the dualism of Cartesian universe create an optimistic picture of science. The Cartesian cogito established ontologically the cognitive subject and the outer world which is to be known. The tree of disciplines delivers at least the ultimate purpose of each discipline. The right method⁽²⁾ guarantees the truth of knowledge. According to the Cartesian methodological prescription the investigated topic must be well-dissected and the inquiry must be linearly structured, i.e. it has to advance step by step from the simplest to the more complicated parts of the subject. The holistic structure of the universe of disciplines is made of well-defined, fragmented topics of investigation.

The distinction between humanities and sciences is not accidental - just to prepare the "two-cultures" theory. The concept of culture was born according to this dualistic picture of the world.⁽³⁾ It's main characteristics can be formulated as non-nature. Everything what human being forms, creates, and cultivates is something opposed to what is independent from his/her will, which is given, i.e. nature. Religion, state, science, arts and language are creations of human beings, i.e. non-nature

Communication-technology is supposed as something that affects the manner of cognition. On the one hand this is supported by etymological survey: "The Latin verb cogito for "to think" etymologicaily means "to shake together". St. Augustine had already noticed that and also observed that intelligo means "to select among"." - as Koestler quoted Hadamard.⁽⁴⁾ If we think of cognition with regard to this selection, it seems to be obvious that the medium of communication has a crucial importance. "To select among" ideas is quite different whether we try it by the only support of remembrance, investigating texts or surfing on the net. On the other hand there are some cultural facts which seem to support this hypothesis. The conception of primary- and secondary orality, Havelock's investigations of birth of abstract concepts in ancient Greece, and the remarks of István Hajnal on literacy - just to mention some - make explicit the difference between solely on orality based cognition and that of literacy. Alphabetical writing eliminated the technical-practical limitation of creating neutral, from human life-world distant concepts⁽⁵⁾, systematically analyzing ideas, regarding happenings as in time linearly structured history⁽⁶⁾, being able to recognize eternal human aspects⁽⁷⁾ and so the linear and complex train of thought which could be described by rules became possible.

The invention of printing press made these changes more radical.

"Before print, writing itself encouraged some sense of noetic closure. By isolating thought on a written surface, detached from any interlocutor, making utterance in this sense autonomous and indifferent to attack, writing presents utterance and thought as uninvolved with all else, somehow self-contained, complete. Print in the same way situates utterance and thought on a surface disengaged from everything else, but it also goes farther in suggesting self-containment. Print encloses thought in thousands of copies of a work of exactly the same visual and physical consistency."⁽⁸⁾ This last mentioned feature of print in opposition to manuscript suggests "to discard inherited schemes, collect fresh data and build improved models on them".⁽⁹⁾ I would like just to mention here the positive effect of the exact multiplication of illustrations, maps and diagrams as well as the birth of learned journals in regard of the development of sciences.⁽¹⁰⁾ But there are some interesting ambivalence: The importance of observation and the question of reliability of sensory data, the distrust of inherited knowledge as well as constructions and the aspiration to create new ones. The importance of observation and the distrust of heritage are in close relation with the reliability of printed text - opposed to manuscript -, the question of the authenticity of sensory data has a great importance in regard to the aim to create the right i.e. true picture of the world, and the last mentioned aspiration seems to be a long lasting demand on a speculative theory of the universe, i.e. a teleologically arranged order of things. Print as a new, reliable and effective instrument for scientific communication creates firm basis for the development of modern science which is thought from the beginning well-distinct in regard of its subject. Despite of this kind of fragmentation of sciences the teleological ideal of the holistic picture of disciplines was strong enough not to let the temptation to reconstruct the building of disciplines. Philosophical constructions seemed to be capable of living for a long time. For example it can be certified by the concept of University of Berlin.⁽¹¹⁾ It is a speculative construction of an ideal university which among special conditions is able to take care of literacy and moral. The instance of moral as the final end of the development of human race can be revealed for a long time in philosophical treatises on history.

Anxiety about the state of erudition and literacy arose quite early - we could say such anxiety existed since cultural reflection was possible. The speculative, teleological ordering of the world can serve with firm basis for cultural criticism. The critical attitude toward technological development and the status of literacy and cultivation of moral along the second half of the 20^th century partly changed. Beside the pessimistic criticism occurred less normative and in respect of cultural change more reflexive analysis of present state of affairs. Pessimistic criticism called attention to the dominance of calculating reasoning opposed to the contemplating one - as Heidegger did -, to the new kind of scientist i.e. the "modern Barbarian" who lost all of his/her connection with other parts of science and the general interpretation of universe by terms of Ortega. C. P. Snow writes about the dangers of "two cultures". "Persons educated with the greatest intensity we know can no longer communicate with each other on the plane of their major intellectual concern. This is serious for our creative, intellectual, and above all, our moral life. . . . Between these two groups - the scientists and the literary intellectuals - there is little communication and, instead of fellow-feeling, something like hostility."⁽¹²⁾ These kind of criticism are based on the old teleological and normative presuppositions which presume a kind of unity of the world which is grasped along dualistic structures.

A different perspective can be noticed in Gellner's treatise on crisis in humanities. Gellner evaluates contemporary crisis as follows:

"The underlying problem is the crisis of the caste of humanist intellectuals and the crisis in verbal knowledge, which is their defining expertise. . . . The heightened sense of language, the self-consciousness in the employment of it, the sense of an abyss of meaninglessness ever yawning, and viciously camouflaged, under our feet - all this springs from the fact that the humanist culture itself, the life of the word, the confidence in its capacity to relate to reality, is threatened."⁽¹³⁾ "It is the chasm, perhapse intolerable, between real knowledge and identity which is the fundamental question. The vernacular of life is now not even translatable into the Sacred Language of truth.

The problem is serious and must be faced, and it is sociological as well as philosophical: it concerns 'cultures' and their styles of thought and life, their cognitive potential so to speak, and the manner in which knowing and being related within them."⁽¹⁴⁾ This evaluation is much more nearer to the everyday practice then to speculative presuppositions. It concerns the capacity of disciplined knowledge - mainly humanities whose language "is incomparably closer to what we are, to the life we live, than is the language of science"⁽¹⁵⁾ - in regard of it's integrative force and relatedness to everyday life.

Beside the strongly critical investigations of mass-media - I have here Marcuse, Adorno and Horkheimer in mind - occurred the theory of secondary orality which systematically investigated the changes in noetical as well as in social world caused by the variation of communication-technology. Along this survey reflexivity strengthens due to the revealing of communicational habits of the long past, and that of today.

The philosophy of science and the sociology of knowledge do not speak about crisis, but show a new picture of science which is opposed it's modern comprehension. The newly revealed science is not thought as an objective, linearly developing, from the everyday life independent phenomena, but on the contrary it comprehended as being deeply embedded in society, developing not continual also linearly and working inevitably with presuppositions. This orientation on the one hand originates from scientists near to the scientific praxis, and on the other hand from sociological point of view.

What I'm trying to say is that recently interpretations and explanations draw their force rather from factual, historical and empirical data than speculative arguing. That is the fruit on the one hand of the well fragmented universe of disciplines and on the other hand of the new media of communication, i.e. the new ways of "select among" ideas.

Gelner reflected partly on the fact that language became into the focus of philosophy. The deeper cause of the phenomena was thought as a crisis of the ability grasping verbally reality without any reflection on important characteristics of the medium that is the written language. As Pattison stresses it:

"What is written leaves him, and what is written is never an adequate realization of that part of the world it discusses. Man the writer sees his life ebbing away in a stream of imperfect actualizations. Each piece of writing merely reinforces the feeling that the language is no longer a fluid connection with reality but instead a kind of imperfect eulogy for thoughts, events and passions that never captures the wholeness of the thing written about."⁽¹⁶⁾

Recently communication became a very important issue from several point of view. What could be the reason for it? As Mallarme pointed out - there is some similarity with Gelner's view - culture was changing too rapidly so "Language in its traditional forms therefore becomes less and less complementary to the world it is supposed to represent."⁽¹⁷⁾ Communication-technology was changing at such pace that the manner of living wasn't be able to follow it. So language and the way of life as conservative establishments relying on habits show some backwardness towards the changing of the life-world. Perhaps, watching it from the actual state of affairs, this is the reason of the long-lasting metaphysical tradition which seems to be either naive and romantic or blind to facts. Several texts give token of resistance against the new medium of communication.⁽¹⁸⁾ Due to the efficiency in formulating as well as handling ideas of new medium it survives⁽¹⁹⁾ and affects changes in cognitive and social habits.⁽²⁰⁾ This is the scenario of the forming of letter-writing, print culture and the so called information society.

Criticism was often in connection with the critique of specialization of science.⁽²¹⁾ However recently interdisciplinarity seems to be an evident phenomena, what's more it always existed by Koestler's theory.

"Even this short and breathless gallop through the twenty-six centuries since the dawn of scientific thought, ought to be sufficient to show that the progress of science is neither gradual nor continuous. Each basic advance was effected by a more or less abrupt and dramatic change: the breaking down of frontiers between related territories, the amalgamation of previously separate frames of reference or experimental techniques; the sudden falling into pattern of previously disjointed data."⁽²²⁾

On the one hand interdisciplinarity could be thought as inevitable - as Koestler suggested - the very nature of cognition is associative "shakes together" different kinds of ideas which belong to different horizons. And on the other hand by nature of present medium of communication which supports non-linear, associative cognition.

Recently metaphysical presuppositions rooted in modern age become transparent and seem to be inadequate to grasp reality as well as the medium of cognition is changing quite rapidly and seems to be sufficient to support cognition as "shaking together" ideas. So we can notice some kind of unity of knowledge as is taking form along the praxis of communication and the praxis of interdisciplinarity.

1. I. Lakatos, Proofs and Refutations. The Logic of Mathematical Discovery, Cambridge/London/New York/Melbourne: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1976, p. 84

2. Cf. the function of logic by Aristotle. Here I just notice that the Aristotelian division of disciplines suggests a differentiation among disciplines in respect of the subject which does not take overlapping into account. Logic is the only exception which has no place among disciplines because it makes possible the right manner of thinking.

3. The term culture originates from the ancient Latin word colore, which means take care of, entertain, look after, build, decorate, honour, etc.. It's meaning has narrowed to the cultivation of mind due to Cicero. (As he drafted in Tusculanae Disputationes - "cultura animi … philosophia est".) This kind of usage strengthened during the 16^th -17^th century. In the time of Enlightenment nature-culture opposition gained central role in philosophy of history. Nature-culture opposition in regard of disciplines see H. Rickert, Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft, Tübingen: Mohr, 1921 and H. Marcuse, "Bemerkungen zu einer Neubestimmung der Kultur". In: Kultur und Gesellschaft, vol. II. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, (1965) 1968.

4. Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation, Hutchinson of London, 1964. p. 120

5. See W. J. Ong, Orality and Literacy. The Technologizing of the Word, London/New York:Methuen, (1982)1983 especially p. 31-57 and 103-112; E. A. Havelock, The Greek Concept of Justice.From its Shadow in Homer to Its Subtance in Plato, Cambridge; Massachusetts and London: Harvard Univ. Press, 1978 and E. A. Havelock, The Muse Learns to Write. Reflexions on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present, New Haven; London: Yale Univ. Press, 1986.

6. See Ong, Orality…, p. 143; P.Gendolla, "Punktzeit. Zur Erfahrung in der Informationsgesellschaft" in: Im Netz der Zeit, ed.: R. Wendorf, Stuttgart: S. Hirzel, 1989.

7. See I. Hajnal, "Európai kultúrtörténet - Írástörténet" in: Technika, mvelõdés. Tanulmányok, ed.: F. Glatz Budapest, 1993, p. 18.

8. W.J.Ong, Orality and Literacy. The Technologizing of the Word, London/New York, (1982)1983. p. 132.

9. E.L. Eisenstein, The printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communication and Cultural Transformation in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1979, p. 476. "The idea observing natural phenomena directly and carefully was as old as Aristotle or Galen. The phrase 'ego vidi' was not lacking in many scholastic commentaries. Manuscript margins show skillful renderings of species of recognizable insects and birds. But the chance to discard inherited schemes, collect fresh data and build improved models on them came only after print. In view of the output of corrupted data ('of human books copied badly') during the first century of printing and in view of the new possibility of duplicating fresh records, a reaction of some new kind against accepted texts, fixed lecture and received opinion was almost inevitable." (Eisenstein, pp. 475)

10. See Eisenstein pp. 460. The first learned journals - Journal des Scavan, Philosophical Transactions - was first published in 1665.

11. See about University of Berlin J.-F. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: Report on Knowledge, Mineapolis: Univ. of Minesota Press, 1984 p. 31-37, see also R. Münch, Die Kultur der Moderne, I-II. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1986, vol. II. chapters 2.1 - 2.2.2.

12. C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures: And a Second Outlook. An Expanded Version of The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1963, p. 59.

13. E. Gellner, "The Crisis in the Humanities and the Mainstream of Philosophy", in: Crisis in the Humanities, ed.: J.H. Plumb, London: Cox & Wyman Ltd, 1964, p. 73.

14. Ibid. p. 79

15. Ibid. p. 79

16. R Pattison, On Literacy. The Politics of the Word from Homer to the Age of Rock, Oxford, 1982, p. 59.

17. O.B. Hardison, Disappearing Through the Skylight. Culture and Technology in the Twentieth Century, New York, 1989, p. 153.

18. Cf. Plato against writing in Phaedrus 278a,and VII. Letter, 341d; Hieronimo Squarciafico argued against book printing with very familiar arguments as Plato argued against writing. See Ong, Orality …, p. 80; against telegraph Thoreau, J. C. Calhoun quoted by P. Miller, The Life of the Mind in America, New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1965 p. 307 via J. W. Carey, Communication as Culture, London, New York: Routledge, (1989) 1992 p. 17 See also the critique of mass media by Horkheimer and Adorno.

19. Cf. the self-masking character of technological framework (M. Heim, Electric Language: A Philosophical Study of Word Processing, New Haven & London: Yale Univ. Press, 1987 p. 131) "Technological culture is constantly introducing useful materials and objects into the world. Because they are useful, they are accepted without thought. Sometimes they are so retiring that they are hardly noticed unless they are being used. Their relative invisibility has very little relation, however, to their influence on the shape of consciousness." Hardison, Disappearing ... p. 83.

20. Cf. in regard of print - "A truly new technology refuses to stay classic. Even if it was first created for a classic function, it eventually becomes expressive and reshapes the function." (Hardison, Disappearing ... p. 237) See Hajnal's notions on social changes caused by literacy, and also Ong.

21. Think of objectivational theories, Ortega's concept of "modern barbarian", Heidegger on science - see "Wissenschaft und Besinnung", in: Vorträge und Aufsätze, vol. I. Verlag Günter Neske Pfullingen, 1967, p. 37-63.

22. Koestler, The act of …, p. 229.