"The significance of the contention that the laws of the several sciences are discontinuous appears chiefly when you thus regard the sciences as corresponding to stages in the process of evolution. ...that means that at certain points in the evolutionary sequence matter begins to behave in essentially new ways, develops novel properties and methods of action which were in no true sense contained in or implied by its earlier characteristics and performances. If, on the other hand, all the laws of biology and chemistry are ultimately reducible to, and deducible from, the laws of some fundamental branch of physics, that means that, in a very thorough-going sense, the first morning of creation wrote what the last dawn of reckoning shall read."

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Added on April 10, 2026
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Original Language: English

Sources

Arthur O. Lovejoy, "The Unity of Science" (1912)

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Unification_in_science_and_mathematics