Vol.1 No.1 2008
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Article:Science and society, or research institution and journal: A historical retrospection (M. Akamatsu, et al.)−65−Synthesiology - English edition Vol.1 No.1 (2008) was necessary to organize the evidences within a detailed classification system, as much as the accumulation of sufficient amount of knowledge. Therefore, elementalism accompanied segmentation of knowledge, and as a result, academic journals became necessary for each segmented region of nature as places for accumulating knowledge. In the 19th century, societies for different scientific disciplines were established and academic journals for each discipline were published one after the other, as Baconian knowledge classification system solidly took hold.To pursue knowledge, researches were conducted by dividing the subject into elements, and drifted away from full knowledge that was the original goal of natural philosophy. An English scholar, William Whewell, created the word “scientist” with which we are very familiar in the 19th century. It was a word created by combining the Latin “scientia” which meant “knowledge” and Greek “ist” which meant person with special ability. Unlike a philosopher who aimed for full knowledge, a “scientist” was knowledgeable only in his specialized field, but the term was accepted by natural scientists and continues to be used to the present. There is a long history behind the attitude often seen among science and technology researchers who think it is perfectly okay to be content in the water of their specialization only.Segmented scientific research is only targeted to part of the whole that is composed by the elements. However, researchers conduct researches believing that that element is the essential to the whole. However, as elements increase, it seems that there is a long road before research of individual elements can make contributions to society.7 Integration of scientific knowledgeSegmentation of knowledge was unavoidable if the reductionist methodology of science was followed, and at the same time, segmentation of subjects was promoted to warrant originality of research, or in other words, as proof of research ability. To maintain originality of the papers sent to the journals, one must claim novelty of knowledge, but that also meant segmentation of the subject. Pushed by the social behavior of scientists who submitted several papers to journals to present their research ability, science followed the path of segmentation.The word “system”, which had the opposite meaning to segmentation, was used in the 17th century. However, a knowledge system here was how to neatly classify or categorize, and it was an understanding by classification or how to position knowledge as encouraged by Bacon (Figure 3). Although it was difficult to understand unclassified knowledge as a whole, it could be understood as knowledge organized as small classification in medium classification A belonging to large classification I.Although systematizing knowledge would help understanding, understanding here meant to understand positioning (Figure 4). However, understanding of knowledge by systematization was, after all, understanding of segmentation, and was not a bridge connecting scientific knowledge for the good of society. Classification and organization of phenomena were to collect things with equivalent quality, and was not to clarify relationship among phenomena. To create things that will be useful to people and society, it is necessary to seek relationship among evidences and phenomena, and integrate and compose them. However, hardly anything can be learned from the history of science so far concerning activities to obtain “useful knowledge” and “making knowledge useful”. The knowledge that natural science pursued was knowledge of evidences of nature, and basic scientific methodology for gaining evidential knowledge was reductionist de-composition of elements. Understanding of evidential knowledge is understanding of “what it is”, and is not functional or compositional understanding of “what it can do”. For scientific knowledge to be useful to society, it is necessary to understand what can be done with the knowledge. Yet in the process of pursuing evidence by elemental de-composition, de-composition was conducted according to specific functional characteristic of the phenomenon, so there was no accumulation of what kind of functional and compositional characteristics a phenomenon had in the form of scientific knowledge.Since functional and compositional characteristics of the phenomenon were diverse, expectation and delusion may occur in the process of converting them into knowledge. Fig. 3 Interior of the Worm’s Museum.[14]The museum was established in the 17th century by Ole Worm, a physician of Copenhagen. It contained stuffed animals as well as collection of artifacts such as stone tools. The collection seems random but actually is classified according to Worm’s thinking.

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