THE CONFORMITY PRINCIPLE AS A FACTOR OF UNIFICATION OF PHYSICAL THEORIES
The article shows that the conformity principle serves as a factor of unification of physical theories playing both a negative role and a positive one. Its role depends on the purpose of unification which is either an attempt to reduce new data and new conceptions to those which are already accepted or a tendency to elaborating a theory which should include these data and conceptions as a special case. Both situations occur in the course of the development of physical knowledge, but the second one is the most effective in elaborating fundamental theories, while the first one seems to be more reasonable in solving specific scientific problems.