This article is no more or less than a record of contemporary trends in thinking on the unity of knowledge (as the truth, science as knowledge, religion as knowledge and politics as knowledge). It points to the need for humanity to consciously work to de-fragment and reconnect knowledge back into one towards a divinely Governed Observable Universe or world following the failure of Man, Homo sapiens to govern himself.

The thesis statement of this article is: Knowledge, truth, science, faith and politics are interconnected and intermingle in one spectrum of human knowing of God, His creation and his Word (the Bible).

Unity of the totality of knowledge

Emmet (1946) declared that the Unity of knowledge is supposed to be the especial interest and concern of philosophers. Early ancient philosophers pursued knowledge as one. Thales, who is often considered the first Western philosopher, the Stoics, Skeptics and ancient Greek philosophers opened the doors to a particular way of thinking that provided the roots for the Western intellectual tradition. This intellectual tradition was rooted in the unity of knowledge. However, following the Aristotelian knowledge fragmentation process that saw disciplines arising, disunity of knowledge has been the rule rather than the exception.

Aristotle arranged the “sciences” into three divisions: the theoretical sciences (metaphysics, mathematics and physics), the practical sciences (e.g. ethics and politics) and the productive sciences (poetry and rhetoric) – that is, he divided the sciences according to their purposes.

Theoretical sciences are concerned with knowledge alone and for its own sake; practical sciences are for doing; and productive sciences are for making. Despite these divisions, however, Aristotle’s image of the sciences was one of unified hierarchy. The sciences constituted a system. However, as one writer put it, “We are no longer trying to construct “a system;” we are not looking for “the foundations” of a single structure; we have abandoned the belief in completeness and in our capacity to make everything cohere”.

While there are now many philosophers and writers who emphasise the disunity of science (e.g. Dupre, 1993), there is an increasing number of philosophers emphasising the unity of science knowledge such Edward O. Wilson (1998) who prefers the word consilience to coherence. 

Consilience is agreement or harmony among two or more disparate scholarly disciplines regarding concepts or underlying principles. Consilience occurs when inductive explanations of two or more different kinds of phenomena are discovered separately, but unexpectedly lead scientists to the same underlying causes. The dictionary definition of coherence is “the quality of forming a unified whole” or the quality of being logical and consistent”.

Unity of the sciences

When we say the sciences we mean Natural Science, the Arts or the Humanities and Social Science. However, the structure and function of a university is such that knowledge in a monocultural academic environment organises knowledge in three, almost non-interacting academic territories: the Arts or Humanities, Social Science and Natural Science. Of the three only Natural Science is recognised structurally and functionally as science. In each academic territory are numerous non-interacting disciplines of knowledge, also called academic tribes. In each discipline education is pursued hierarchically in terms of teaching and learning. This has been the case since Aristotle created disciplines in the era of post-Socratic philosophical manifestation of knowledge creation and transfer.

Francis Bacon was the most forthright in pushing the idea of unity of the sciences and hence of knowledge and truth. The first of Bacon’s writings was on the nature of science and the scientific method. It was entitled “The Advancement of Learning” He also had a view of the unity of knowledge, both scientific and non-scientific. Interestingly he did not extricate God from the totality of knowledge. He craved for universal knowledge and universal truth and the freedom to gain wisdom out of the unification of all sciences and leaning.

From his intellectual discourse we do not only deduce the ideas that science is one, knowledge is one and the truth is one, but also that science and non-science are interconnected and that both are integral to learning. He criticised the ancient Greek professors of wisdom as pretenders who gave the impression that they were impressionists of teaching a universal knowledge when the opposite was the case. His academic interests traversed the academic territories.

Bacon was many things in one: lawyer, statesman, essayist, historian, intellectual reformer, philosopher and champion of modern science.

One thing was a great limiting factor to the unity of the sciences and hence of knowledge and truth: religion. In Baconian times, religion drew a thick line between itself and science. What this meant was that the divine and the natural were separated by religious practice, which at the time was Catholicism. This implied that all those knowledges that were not natural would belong to the humanities (Arts) and Social Science, and all those which would not fit in the two sciences would be belong to natural science.

Consequently, natural scientists believed logic belonged to them and metaphysics, ethics and politics belonged to the others. Education began to sow the lie that science, faith and politics were diametrically opposed; that although science, faith and politics belonged to Man Homo sapiens, the knowledge, truth and faiths they embodied were separate.

McRae (1957) reminds us that the craze for systematically organising knowledge in form of Dictionaries and Encyclopedias started long ago: in the 17th and 18th centuries. He also tells us that  the period was also the time when the Unity of the Sciences acquired a special significance in relation to the ideals of the Enlightenment in Europe. The Unity of the Sciences opened up the possibility of the universality of all knowledge as one.

The Brains behind the reform of knowledge through reuniting knowledge were Francis Bacon and Descartes, especially in the 17th century. They saw the unity of the sciences as an essential aspect in knowledge reform.

Therefore, when I start my topic with “Reintegrating knowledge and truth”, I am not the first to get concerned with the splitting of knowledge and truth. My concern is that despite the pioneering effort by Francis Bacon and Descartes to reunite the sciences or knowledge, and hence pursue the truth as one truth, human intellectual and academic effort since then has been focused more on splitting than uniting the sciences and hence the truth.

Disciplines have proliferated and the knowledge system or culture of multidisciplinarity has prospered at the expense of knowledge systems and cultures that seek to implement the vision of Bacon, Descartes and later, Leibniz, who, like the other two, contributed greatly to the philosophy of the idea of the unity of the sciences: Interdisciplinarity, crossdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and extradisciplinarity (non-disciplinarity). 

Totality of knowledge without science knowledge integration

Way back in 1961, Prof Alexander Brody wrote two articles relevant to the human crusade to reintegrate the sciences: ‘Towards the Totality of Knowledge’ and ‘On the Totality of Knowledge.’ In the article ‘On the Totality of Knowledge,’ he wrote thus:

“The search for a more harmonious balance between the natural sciences, social sciences and the humanities is not, of course, new. But the Second World War and its aftermath gave it greater urgency……the Western World became increasingly conscious of questions involving moral values, social integration and preservation of its traditions. There has been a re-emphasis on the social sciences, on the humanities and on the humanistic approach to science…The problem is how to apply knowledge and particularly specialised knowledge without doing violence to moral and social values. Otherwise there is the danger of divorcing technical knowledge from the aims of social welfare…. There is a growing concern that science, technology and specialisation adversely affect social cohesion and stability”.

Unfortunately, in Uganda in particular and Africa in general, there is no such rethinking, 62 years after Brody’s On the Totality of Knowledge was published. In Uganda, for example, universities are retrenching the rigid boundaries between the sciences and between the disciplines within them. In the meantime, President Tibuhaburwa Museveni is using money and political pressure on the universities to emphasise the natural science at the exclusion of the other sciences purely for political reasons of conquest and domination. He has been able to bring about intellectual death on the university campuses and in the whole country. Even practically, the national budget and political thinking and action is in favour of the natural sciences.

What is happening has not yet been recognised by the majority of Ugandans as a major source of social disintegration and instability. Additionally, President Tibuhaburwa Museveni is using money bonanzas to disintegrate the universities and the whole Ugandan society further. In the universities the so-called scientists, in pursuit of pure science, are being paid much higher than their counterparts in the humanities and the social sciences. Money bonanzas are being given to a few, usually partisan individuals, at the expense of whole communities, guided by the falsehood of trickledown socioeconomic fertilisation arising from the supposed riches of the targeted few individuals.

There is no doubt that knowledge has increased through knowledge adding, not knowledge integration, via the numerous disciplines in the three academic territories. However, it is doubtful that the totality of human knowledge and wisdom has simultaneously increased. We are still building small wisdoms in small knowledges, which is n anti-thesis of the totality and unity of knowledge.

Recently I read a book, Forms of Truth and the Unity of Knowledge, edited by Vittorio Hösle (2014). It addresses a philosophical subject – the nature of truth and knowledge – but, as Hosle says, treats the subject in a way that draws on insights beyond the usual confines of modern philosophy. This ambitious collection includes contributions from established scholars in philosophy, theology, mathematics, chemistry, biology, psychology, literary criticism, history, and architecture. It represents an attempt to integrate the insights of these disciplines and to help them probe their own basic presuppositions and methods.

I am now reading  the book The Wisdom of Our Ancestors: Conservative Humanism and Western Tradition by Graham James McAleer and Alexander S. Rosenthal-Pubul (2023). These authors begin with an overview of the conservative thought world, situating their proposal relative to two major poles: liberalism and nationalism. They move on to show that conservatism must fundamentally take the form of a defense of humanism, the “master idea of our civilization.” The ensuing chapters articulate various aspects of conservative humanism, including its metaphysical, institutional, legal, philosophical, and economic dimensions. Largely rooted in the Anglo-Continental conservative tradition, the work offers fresh perspectives for North American conservatism. As I read the book a question keeps on arising in my mind: After so much cultural and spiritual penetration and erosion of the bio-cultural, bio-spiritual landscape of Africa by Western colonialism and neocolonialism, can we speak of an African conservatism” any more today than we did yesterday?

Towards Knowledge Integration and Reintegration: The Role of Faith

 Not long ago, I read online “Expressions of Contemporary Trends: towards an Integrated Knowledge” by Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti and A. Strumia’s (2002) in Unity of Knowledge in the Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science. I have personally written widely on new knowledge production and knowledge integration towards the reshaping of higher education curricula, to produce graduates who can engage in critical thinking, critical reasoning and critical analysis, genuine interaction academically and intellectually in integrated teams and are professionally future-ready. Many of these articles are currently published by Panama Books in Five Volumes under the title “Writings, Thoughts and Meditations of Oweyegha-Afunaduula: A Comprehensive Exploration of A Ugandan Mind”.

Tyson Paul (2017), the author of the book, De-Fragmenting Modernity: Reintegrating Knowledge with Wisdom, Belief with Truth, and Reality with Being and the director of an interdisciplinary centre  focusing on science, religion, and society at an Australian University, states thus:

“We live in a strangely fragmented lifeworld. On the one hand, abstract constructions of our own imagination – such as money, mere facts, and mathematical models – are treated by us as important objective facts. On the other hand, our understanding of the concrete realities of meaning and value in which our daily lives are actually embedded – love, significance, purpose, wonder – are treated as arbitrary and optional subjective beliefs. This is because, to us, only quantitative and instrumentally useful things are considered to be accessible to the domain of knowledge. Our lifeworld is designed to dis-integrate knowledge from belief, facts from meanings, immanence from transcendence, quality from quantity, and “mere” reality from the mystery of being”. His book explores two questions: Why should we, and how can we, reintegrate being, knowing, and believing?” By extension we can ask, “How can we reintegrate knowledge with truth”? More specifically, we should ask:  How can we reintegrate science, faith and politics – the three areas of knowledge and practice that directly affect our being, knowing, thinking and interactions in our real world”?

Reviewing Tyson’s book, Knut Alfsvag, Professor of Systematic Theology at VID Specialised University, Stavanger, Norway, and author of the book What No Mind Has Conceived says this:  “Modern science, focusing on facts and power, is neither coherent nor existentially adequate. Instead of this crumbling edifice, the author of this book erects a new one – which actually is the old one – founded on the wonder of existence and the appreciation of finding ourselves in a world that makes sense. The solution he offers is not only intellectually satisfying; it is even essential for solving the scientific, political, and moral challenges of our time.” 

In another review of Tyson’s book, Phill Mullin (2020) observes thus: “Tyson sharply criticises the patterns of thought predominant in modernity and proposes a recovery of an ontological perspective”. Says Mullin (2020), “[Tyson’s] book argues for a programme of ontological recovery rather than epistemological reform. It raises interesting questions and provides a sweeping moral and sociopolitical critique of modernity that contrasts with Polanyi’s more modest diagnosis of the modern crisis. Although Polanyi’s work is twice mentioned in passing, Tyson does not seem to have seriously engaged science as Polanyi constructively construes it in terms of persons with tacit powers, communities, a hierarchical ontology and emergence. But it would be interesting to hear his response to a deep reading of Karl Polanyi”. He adds that Tyson’s clarion call is to “re-think knowledge and belief in such a manner that it could be integral with a meaningful ontology of reality”.

Tyson himself argues that it is necessary to ground knowing in (prior) meaning (resident in the cosmos), rather than vice-versa, and that such a move will recover truth and make clear that faith and belief are not merely subjective whims. His constructive proposal is thus a reformed conceptual framework in which knowing, ontology, and believing are deeply linked to each other. But what is ontology?

Ontology, at its simplest, is the study of existence. But it is much more than that. Ontology is also the study of how we determine if things exist or not, as well as the classification of existence. It attempts to take things that are abstract and establish that they are, in fact, real.

Otherwise a dictionary definition of ontology is that it is the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being. In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being. It investigates what types of entities exist, how they are grouped into categories, and how they are related to one another on the most fundamental level.

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, identity, time, and space. Philosophy is a good guide to thinking and reasoning.

Otherwise, thinking and reasoning, long the academic province of philosophy, have emerged over the past century as core topics of empirical investigation and theoretical analysis in the modern fields of cognitive psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuroscience.

Philosophical reasoning then, at its root, is about engaging in discourse – one that asks the participants to argue a point, a thought, an issue, with logic.

In another book of his, Faith’s Knowledge Paul Tyson seeks to address questions such as:

• Can we know truth even though certain proof is unattainable?
• Can we be known by Truth?
• Is there a relationship between belief and truth, and if so, what is the nature of that relationship?
• Do we need to have faith in reason and in real meaning to be able to reason towards truth?

Tyson argues that all knowledge that aims at truth is always the knowledge of faith. If this is the case, then against our modernist cultural assumptions about knowledge, truth cannot be had by proof as orthodox science demands. Yet, if this is true, then mere information and simply objective facts do not exist. Knowledge is always embedded in belief and knowledge and belief are always expressed in relationships, histories, narratives, shared meanings and power.

Hence, a theological sociology of knowledge emerges out of these explorations in thinking about knowledge as a function of faith (Tyson, 2017).

However, in his book Science, Faith and Society, Michael Polanyi (1964) aims to show that “science must be understood as a community of inquirers held together by a common faith”. Science, he argues, is not the use of “scientific method” but rather consists in a discipline imposed by scientists on themselves in the interests of discovering an objective, impersonal truth. That such truth exists and can be found is part of the scientists’ faith. Polanyi maintains that both authoritarianism and scepticism, attacking this faith, are attacking science itself.

• A Tell report / By Oweyegha-Afunaduula / Environmental Historian and Conservationist Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis (CCTAA), Seeta, Mukono, Uganda.

About the Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis (CCTAA)

The CCTAA was innovated by Hyuha Mukwanason, Oweyegha-Afunaduula and Mahir Balunywa in 2019 to the rising decline in the capacity of graduates in Uganda and beyond to engage in critical thinking and reason coherently besides excellence in academics and academic production. The three scholars were convinced that after academic achievement the world outside the ivory tower needed graduates that can think critically and reason coherently towards making society and the environment better for human gratification. They reasoned between themselves and reached the conclusion that disciplinary education did not only narrow the thinking and reasoning of those exposed to it but restricted the opportunity to excel in critical thinking and reasoning, which are the ultimate aim of education. They were dismayed by the truism that the products of disciplinary education find it difficult to tick outside the boundaries of their disciplines; that when they provide solutions to problems that do not recognise the artificial boundaries between knowledges, their solutions become the new problems. They decided that the answer was a new and different medium of learning and innovating, which they characterised as “The Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis” (CCTAA).