Pluralism, Truth and Synthesis

Abstract

How far can we tolerate differences between approaches to scientific research of the same phenomena? When do differences become conflicts which researchers need to resolve? Scientific pluralists argue that we should tolerate many approaches, because plurality makes science objective and successful. On this view, the structure of scientific practice is uniformly plural. Pluralists seek a middle way between relativism, where there is no epistemic objectivity or success in science, and monism, where there is only one correct approach to scientific research about some phenomenon.

Scientific pluralism has three core commitments: the philosophy of science should be empirical; philosophers should not assume that scientific research will reach a particular outcome; plurality is constitutive of successful science.

Chapter 1 introduces those commitments and raises a theoretical problem for scientific pluralism. It looks at two epistemologies of science, from Longino and Chang, which draw a distinction between different and conflicting approaches. However, neither epistemology firmly separates itself from relativism.

Chapter 2 raises an empirical problem. It studies the evolutionary synthesis (c. 1920-1950), a period when there was a plurality of approaches. However, a close reading of work by Sewall Wright, R. A. Fisher, and Theodosius Dobzhansky shows that plurality is not met with tolerance in scientific practice, but with friction and conflict.

Chapter 3 argues that we can solve both problems by dropping the third core commitment. To do justice to criticisms of scientific monism, we should also say that there is no uniform structure to successful science. We may call this view methodological monism. The structure of scientific practice is variable, moving through stages of relativity, plurality and unity in a nonlinear fashion. But, drawing on Peirce and Price, scientific practice nonetheless has an overarching goal: striving for truth, aided by the friction between different approaches.