Scientific Pluralism

First published Wed Nov 3, 2021

Science is a complex epistemic and social practice that is organized in a large number of
disciplines, employs a dazzling variety of methods, relies on heterogeneous conceptual and
ontological resources, and pursues diverse goals of equally diverse research communities.
Philosophers of science have often aimed to find order in this complexity through methods of
unification and reduction. Pluralism, as an explicit program in philosophy of science,
emerged from an increasing frustration with the limitations of unifying frameworks in the light
of the disunified reality of scientific practice. As philosophers of science increasingly
highlighted in the 1970s and 1980s, scientific theories often do not reduce (Fodor 1974),
there is not one universal scientific method (Feyerabend 1975), not only one fundamental
scientific ontology (Dupré 1981), and successful science requires not only epistemic but also
social diversity (Harding 1988). While scientific pluralism has often been framed in
opposition to the unity of science and “the ancient notion of philosophy as unified
knowledge” (Cat 2012), pluralist philosophy of science has become a broad platform for
negotiating post-positivist philosophy of science in the light of epistemic and social diversity.
The literature on scientific pluralism has therefore increasingly moved from a simple contrast
between monism and pluralism to debates about different ways of articulating pluralism
(Ruphy 2016). This article explores this “plurality of pluralisms” (Wylie 2015) through four
main areas of the debate about scientific pluralism: “Theories, Models, and Explanations”,
“Practices and Methods”, “Ontologies, Classifications and Concepts”, “The Social
Organization of Science”.

● 1. Historical Context
● 2. Theories, models, and explanations
○ 2.1 Intertheoretic Reduction and Antireductionism
○ 2.2 Aims and Models
○ 2.3 Explanatory Pluralism
●
● 3. Practices and Methods
○ 3.1 Diversity of Scientific Inquiries
○ 3.2 Plurality of Disciplines and Inquirers
●
● 4. Ontologies, Classifications and Concepts
○ 4.1 Natural Kinds and Ontological Pluralism
○ 4.2 Understanding Classificatory Practices
○ 4.3 Pluralism About Epistemic Concepts
●
● 5. The Social Organization of Science
○ 5.1 Feminist Philosophy of Science and Epistemic Diversity
○ 5.2 Democratization and Governance of Science
●
● Bibliography
● Academic Tools
 ● Other Internet Resources
● Related Entries

1. Historical Context
Scientific pluralism, as an explicit program in philosophy of science, is of relatively recent
origin. Motivated by cases for both historical and contemporary diversity of scientific
methods and theories (Kuhn 1962; Feyerabend 1965), post-war philosophers of science
increasingly argued that plurality is not a problem but rather a productive feature of
successful science. Contrasting this case for plurality with the ideal of unified science,
pluralism emerged as a core concept in the negotiation of the post-positivist identity of
philosophy of science. Pluralist philosophers of science share a methodological commitment
to studying scientific practices in their diachronic and synchronic complexity rather than
aiming for characterizations of the structure of science in singular and for unification as an
idealized goal. Sometimes formulated in polemic opposition to earlier positivist phases of
philosophy of science, pluralism has become an umbrella concept for philosophical
engagement with conceptual, methodological, theoretical, and social diversity in science.

While frameworks of scientific pluralism were largely formulated in the second half of the
twentieth century, the linguistic fragmentation of post-war philosophy led to relatively isolated
national discourses about scientific pluralism. For example, scientific pluralism in West
Germany emerged as a core topic in philosophy of science (Diemer 1971; Landgrebe [ed.]
1972; Ströker 1971) in the wake of the positivism dispute of the 1960s (Adorno et al. 1972)
and became widely embraced by critical rationalists in the tradition of Popper who positioned
pluralism as a crucial component of non-dogmatic fallibilism and of science in an open
society (Spinner 1968; Albert 1970). In contrast, critical theorists challenged the pluralism of
critical rationalists as propagating a free market of ideas that actually excludes emancipatory
conceptions of science (von Bretano 1971) and falsely assumes neutrality while failing to
reflect on its own normative assumptions (Habermas 1970 [1990]). In the United States, the
articulation of scientific pluralism as an explicit program for philosophy of science has often
been related to Patrick Suppes’ presidential address “The Plurality of Science” at the 1977
Philosophy of Science Association (Suppes 1978; see also Galison & Stump [eds.] 1996;
Kellert et al. [eds.] 2006a). Suppes’ address indeed marks an important point in the
development of pluralist philosophy of science, both because it synthesized a growing
discomfort with unificationist agendas in North America and because it articulated a pluralist
program that later grew into the Stanford School of Philosophy which included the works of
Nancy Cartwright, John Dupré, Peter Galison, and Ian Hacking, among others.

The early phase of scientific pluralism in the United States differed from its European
counterparts in being less engaged with the social and political organization of science and
more focused on questions of theory reduction and physicalism that were promoted both by
émigré logical positivists and a new generation of American philosophers like Nagel (1961),
Suppes’ doctoral advisor. In the United States, scientific pluralism thereby became framed
as a counter-program to unity of science (see Galison & Stump [eds.] 1996) and Alan
Richardson (2006: 3) has aptly described pluralism as a continuing key topic
 because current philosophy of science is still working out the ways in which it is
not logical empiricism anymore.

Presenting scientific pluralism as a new philosophical paradigm in direct opposition to the

unity of science movement, however, runs the risk of an oversimplified historical narrative
both because of rich traditions of pluralist thinking in the first half of the twentieth century and
because of their multifarious connections with the unity of science movement.

American pragmatism constitutes a philosophical tradition with rich pluralist resources,

ranging from James’ (1909) commitment to pluralism as a metaphysical claim about the
fundamental structure of reality to Dewey’s pluralist case for the epistemic and social
benefits of disciplinary diversity and coordination. Dewey’s “Unity of Science as a Social
Problem” (1938 [1988]), published in the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science,
illustrates the complex relations between pragmatism, unity of science movement, and
scientific pluralism (Reisch 2005). Dewey emphasized that “in the house which science
might build there are many mansions” and understood unity of science as a coordination
challenge of a plurality of scientific fields “in common attack upon practical social problems”
(1938/1955: 34 [1988: 276]). While North American philosophers of science increasingly
embraced analytic philosophy in opposition to earlier philosophical traditions (Schliesser
2013), the pragmatist roots of philosophers like Nagel challenge a simple divide between
monist and pluralist phases of philosophy of science (Pincock 2017; Schliesser 2020).

On the European side, Neo-Kantianism constitutes an influential intellectual tradition that

developed pluralist interpretations of scientific and non-scientific knowledge through
emphasis on human perspectivity rather than one absolute account of reality as it is in itself
(Cassirer 1929 [2020]; Rickert 1896; see also Flach 1994). Kant continues to be an
important point of reference for scientific pluralists especially in Europe and Latin America in
the sense that “Kant’s rediscovery of the human vantage point” is mobilized to argue for “the
situated nature of our scientific knowledge” (Massimi 2017: 165; see also Abel 1993;
Lombardi & Ransanz 2011; Torretti 2016). Furthermore, Neo-Kantianism also constitutes an
important historical link between pluralist intellectual traditions and the Vienna Circle as
reflected already in Moritz Schlick’s General Theory of Knowledge according to which

every sensible and philosophically honest worldview must be pluralistic. For the
universe is variegated and manifold, a fabric woven of many qualities no two of
which are exactly alike. A formal metaphysical monism, with its principle that all
being is in truth one, does not give an adequate account; it must be
supplemented with some sort of pluralistic principle. (Schlick 1918: 305 [1974:
333])

In the early development of positivism, Auguste Comte (1830 [1998]) distinguished himself
by rejecting the search for universal explanations or methods in science and defended, in
contrast with many later positivists of the Vienna Circle, the existence of a variety of
research methods specific to each fundamental scientific domain. Other major figures of the
French tradition of historical epistemology, such as Gaston Bachelard (1949) and Georges
Canguilhem (1965), also defended a lack of methodological unity of the sciences,
emphasizing “regionalist” modes of rationalism.
American pragmatism, Neo-Kantianism, and early positivism not only illustrate the diverse
historical roots of scientific pluralism but also its complex historical connections with logical
positivism and the unity of science movement. A simple contrast between positivist unity and
post-positivist disunity has also been challenged in other areas of the history of philosophy of
science. For example, Neurath has become widely recognized (Cartwright et al. 1996) as a
core organizer of the unity of science movement who embraced a pluralist mosaic view of
science rather than a reductionist physicalism (e.g., Neurath 1935). Furthermore, Carnap’s
(1950) pluralism of conceptual frameworks has seen a new wave of popularity debates
about both ontology and conceptual engineering (Blatti & Lapointe [eds.] 2016; Dutilh
Novaes 2020).

Rather than thinking of scientific pluralism as an entirely new paradigm that displaced the
unity of science in a linear historical development, the historical context therefore suggests a
more complex process of negotiating the identity of post-positivist philosophy of science in
metaphysical, epistemological, and social terms. First, metaphysical negotiation is
exemplified in the work of the Stanford School such as Cartwright’s (1999) account of a
“dappled world” and Dupré’s (1993) case for the “disorder of things”. This metaphysical case
for plurality focused less on logical empiricism but rather challenged post-positivist
reformulations of the unity of science thesis that heavily relied on assumptions about
intertheoretic reduction (Oppenheim & Putnam 1958; E. Nagel 1961) and increasingly
interpreted physicalism as a metaphysical thesis about what fundamentally exists (Hellman
& Thompson 1975; Smart 1978).

Second, scientific pluralism has been embraced as a framework for negotiating the
epistemology rather than the metaphysics of science (Kellert et al. [eds.] 2006a). Many
epistemological debates reflect the increased integration of philosophy with history and
social studies of science. Challenging a sharp divide between an abstract “context of
justification” and a historically contingent “context of discovery” (Schickore & Steinle [eds.]
2006), scientific pluralism can often be understood as an attempt to reconcile systematic
philosophy of science with the historization of scientific knowledge production from
Bachelard’s (1934 [1986]) and Fleck’s (1935) historical epistemologies to Kuhn’s (1962)
historical challenges of a unified scientific method. The institutionalization of both “integrated
history and philosophy of science” (Arabatzis and Schickore [eds.] 2012) and “philosophy of
science in practice” (Ankeny et al. 2011) reflects how much of this integration of historically
contingent plurality and systematic philosophical analysis has become mainstreamed in
philosophy of science.

The relation between science and society constitutes a third area of pluralist negotiation of
the post-positivist identity of philosophy of science. While early pluralist frameworks such as
Suppes (1978) remained in a depolitized frame of epistemological and metaphysical issues
that characterized analytic philosophy of science in post-war America (Reisch 2005),
scientific pluralism has become a fertile meeting ground for debates about the interaction
between epistemic and social diversity. Although European debates about scientific
pluralism were intimately connected to politics both by critical rationalists (Albert 1970) and
critical theorists (von Bretano 1971), feminist philosophy of science (Harding 1988; Longino
1987) played a crucial role in establishing questions of social and political diversity as core
topics for pluralist philosophy of science in North America. More recently, debates about
scientific pluralism have become deeply intertwined with wider debates about “science and
values” (Douglas 2009) and “science and democracy” (Kitcher 2011). Through this
expansion towards questions about the social and political organization of science, pluralist
philosophy of science has become increasingly engaged with interdisciplinary science and
technology studies (STS) as well as science governance (Jasanoff [ed.] 2004; Gorman [ed.]
2010; Latour 1999 [2004]).

Scientific pluralism would be misunderstood as a new paradigm that replaced the unity of
science movement. Instead, pluralist challenges of unification have emerged in different
contexts and led to a “plurality of pluralisms” (Wylie 2015) that reimagines post-positivist
philosophy of science along different metaphysical, epistemological, and social dimensions.
Generic commitments to “plurality” by philosophers of science are therefore not much more
informative than generic commitments to “diversity” by science administrators. The
interesting question is not whether to endorse plurality or diversity in general terms but how
to specify plurality and diversity in scientific practice. The following sections outline four
areas in which pluralist philosophy of science has made substantial contributions to
rethinking scientific practice.

2. Theories, models, and explanations

The coexistence of heterogeneous representations (including theories, models, and
explanations) is ubiquitous in scientific practice. Different branches of science offer different
theories and laws, raising questions about the nature of the (e.g., reductive and
non-reductive) relationships between them. Within a discipline, heterogeneous models or
explanations of the same phenomenon may also co-exist. Such cases of representational
plurality are now well-documented in various scientific fields. In nuclear physics, for example,
several models of an atomic nucleus are available and the same goes for fluid mechanics,
which offers various types of modelisation of turbulent flows (Morrison 2011); in economics,
a multiplicity of models exist side by side as a base for policy decisions (Rodrik 2015); in
climate science, the use of multiple simulation models is a common strategy (Parker 2006;
Edwards 2010); behavioral biology offers many examples of co-existence of multiple
explanations (Mitchell 2003; Longino 2013; Muszynski & Malaterre 2020). Various pluralist
frameworks have been developed to address such cases of plurality, which amount to
different views both on the raison d’être of these situations and on the appropriate epistemic
attitudes towards them.

2.1 Intertheoretic Reduction and Antireductionism

Scientific pluralism is often motivated by opposition to reductionism as the idea that unity of
science is achieved through the reduction of different levels of organization. In its most
straightforward intuitive formulation, reductionism assumes that the world is organized in
different physical, chemical, biological, psychological, and social levels that correspond to
different scientific disciplines. These levels are reducible in the sense that social theories can
be derived from psychological theories, psychological theories can be derived from biological
theories, and so on. At least in principle, everything can therefore be derived from
microphysical theories and the only barriers are limited computing power and limited
cognitive capacities of humans.
Debates about theory reduction in early post-war philosophy of science suggested that this
intuitive formulation required further nuance but also that it captured important insight about
the structure of science. Rather than questioning the focus on intertheoretical reduction,
much of the debate focused on specifying increasingly complex accounts of the relations
between theories across different levels of organization (Oppenheim & Putnam 1958; E.
Nagel 1961; Schaffner 1967). In contrast, scientific pluralists challenged reductionism as
fundamentally misrepresenting the relation between scientific theories and levels of
organization. Pluralist challenges largely emerged in the context of wider scientific
developments of the post-war period. For example, reductionist appeals to unification
seemed to clash with the “cognitive revolution” of the 1960s and the rapid development of
new scientific fields such as artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, and generative
linguistics (Gardner 1987). The cognitive revolution seemed to highlight that science does
not progress through unification but rather through the emergence of novel fields that further
proliferate the diversity of scientific concepts, methods, and theories.

Beyond this apparent tension between ideals of reduction and the reality of scientific
diversification, pluralist philosophers emphasized the difficulties of applying reductionist
frameworks. For example, consider the assumption that psychological theories reduce to
biological theories or the related metaphysical claim that cognitive processes are ultimately
nothing but brain processes. How can such a reductionism accommodate the development
of artificial intelligence and the idea that cognitive processes could also be realized in
systems that are not constituted by organic compounds at all? How can it accommodate the
evolution of biological species with very different brain architectures or even the possibility of
life on other planets that realize cognitive processes in radically different ways? This problem
of “multiple realization” (R. C. Richardson 2009) did not merely appear in the cognitive
sciences but also extends to other fields such as economics. For example, a generalization
in economics may provide interesting insights about patterns in the social world but not
correspond to unified physical generalizations or even strict physical laws. According to
Fodor (1974), economic events can be realized through vastly different structures “whose
physical descriptions have nothing in common” (1974: 103) and the reductionist program of
unification at the level of microphysics is therefore doomed to fail.

Some pluralist frameworks articulate epistemological theses about the disunity of scientific
theories—higher-level theories cannot always be derived from lower-level theories (Fodor
1974). Other pluralist formulations are more explicitly metaphysical in appealing to a
“disorder of things” (Dupré 1993) and a “dappled world” (Cartwright 1999) that characterize
the world and not merely scientific theories as disunified. The idea of a dappled world also
extends antireductionism from vertical to horizontal levels. Reductionism fails not only in
relating different levels of organization but also as a thesis stating that a law can apply to
every phenomenon that falls in its domain. In physics for instance, Newton’s laws may apply
successfully to orderly systems as the ones we set up in the highly-controlled environments
of our laboratories (e.g., a harmonic oscillator), but it would partake of an article of faith to
believe that Newton’s laws apply to any real-world system. Making instead the case for a
“dappled world”, that is, a world displaying both nomologically ordered systems and unruly
ones, Cartwright (1999) invites scientists to resist methodological inclinations for generality
and reductionist approaches.
Controversies about reductionism have been formative of scientific pluralism and served as
a focal point for the articulation of general pluralist epistemological and metaphysical
frameworks. The fading of reductionism as a general ideology in philosophy of science,
however, has also shifted the attention of many pluralists away from intertheoretic reduction
towards heterogenous relations between explanations, aims, models, practices, and
institutions in scientific practice. In some cases, this shift towards “philosophy of science in
practice” (Ankeny et al. 2011) has led to challenges not only of reductionism but also of
antireductionism as a general account of the relations between scientific theories. Some
pluralists therefore advocate for “metaphysical abstinence” (Ruphy 2005) in the sense that
pluralists should make temporally qualified arguments in specific settings of scientific
practice rather than formulating pluralism as a general account of the structure of science
that is grounded in a general metaphysics of disunity.

2.2 Aims and Models

Pluralist accounts of scientific representation commonly start from the assumption that
models, simulations, and related media deliver partial, interest-dependent, hence contingent
representations of the world. This pluralist stance is contrasted with a monist view according
to which science ultimately aims at establishing a single, complete, and comprehensive
account of the world (Kellert, Longino, & Waters 2006b: x). An analogy with maps (Winther
2020) is often employed to explain that such a pluralist stance is compatible with some form
of “minimal” (Longino 2002a) or “modest” realism (Kitcher 2001). Which aspects of a part of
the world are represented by a cartographer depends on the intended use of the map, hence
the production of a plurality of maps, whose conformity with the real world can be assessed
on pragmatic grounds through successful use. Similarly, science produces a plurality of
partial representations of a given phenomenon, depending on various epistemic and
practical interests, whose conformity to the real world can be assessed on empirical
grounds.

This general idea of interest-dependency as a source of representational pluralism has been

developed further by specifying the nature of the varying interests. In some cases,
developing a plurality of partial models of a target system constitutes an intermediate,
pragmatic step on the way to a richer, integrative representation of the system. Consider the
representation of a radio source in astrophysics. Several models are developed, each
representing separately some specific features of the source deemed striking or puzzling by
the modeller, before being re-united to form an overall model (Bailer-Jones 2000). In other
cases, the plurality of models of a target system reflects a plurality of modelling aims. In
climate modelling for instance, the variety of modelling tasks (e.g., prediction of global
average parameters, simulation of regional climate change) explains the co-existence of
different types of simulations of the evolution of the Earth climate (Parker 2006). Situations
of representational plurality may also reflect different modelling preferences and choices
regarding causal factors. Some modellers may choose to track certain causal patterns
instead of others (Potochnik 2017). This is typically the case in the pluridisciplinary study of
human behavior. Significant differences from one modelling approach to another stem from
differences in the emphasis put on some causal factors compared to others (Longino 2006).

A key issue raised by this plurality of models is the nature of the relationship among multiple
models developed to account for the same phenomenon. In some cases, multiple models
appear complementary to the extent that each represents different features of the target
system (as maps do). Other kinds of complementarity are less straightforward. The models
aim at representing the same features, but the modellers may use different mathematical,
idealizing techniques to do so. However, the resulting multiple idealized models can all
provide useful information. This is typically the case for instance in fluid mechanics when
modelling turbulence flows (Morrison 2011). Multiplicity of complementary models of these
kinds is deemed epistemically unproblematic since it is compatible with the realist
expectation that reliable knowledge about the system under study can be derived from its
multiple models.

Epistemologically more challenging is the “problem of inconsistent models” (Morrison 2011,

2015), which refers to the use of multiple idealized models making conflicting assumptions to
account for the same phenomenon (Weisberg 2007). In contrast with situations of
complementary plurality, the existence of inconsistent models directly challenges realist
epistemic ambitions by yielding incompatible claims about the ontology and causal features
of the target system.

Various responses to the problem of inconsistent models have been proposed, reflecting
different accounts of the proper epistemic attitude to adopt. Some pluralists develop an
ontologically-laden defense of permanently inconsistent plurality by putting to the fore some
features of the world—such as its complexity or lack of ordered structure (Longino 2006,
2013; Waters 2017). Inconsistent plurality, being ontologically grounded, is thus here to stay
and one should not expect to overcome it by choosing between conflicting accounts or trying
to integrate them. Other pluralists, however, resist appeals to ontology to account for
persistent methodological and conceptual divides among research programs regarding the
same phenomenon. For example, it is sometimes argued that persistent different
approaches in biology should be traced back to persisting divergent interests rather than
conflicting commitments to states of the world (Potochnik 2017). In “historical” natural
sciences such as climate science and cosmology, the persistent co-existence of multiple
computer simulations of the evolution of a target system (e.g., the dark matter structures of
the universe) can be traced back to specific features of their building over time such as their
plasticity and path-dependency (Lenhard & Winsberg 2010; Ruphy 2011a).

Recently, a growing body of literature has been investigating whether perspectivism can
provide resources to address the challenges raised by multiple inconsistent models.
Perspectivism comes in many shades in various branches of philosophy. In philosophy of
science, perspectivism has been advocated as a promising third way between monism and
relativism (Giere 2006; van Fraassen 2008; Massimi & McCoy [eds.] 2019). Current debates
focus on the possibility of maintaining realist positions when facing situations of coexistence
of multiple models. Some authors argue that a perspectival understanding of models is
compatible with realism (Massimi 2018). Others stress difficulties of defending the epistemic
virtues of having multiple models without adopting an instrumental take on models (Morrison
2011, 2015), or provide alternative, non-perspectival accounts of the explanatory virtues of
idealized models (Rice 2019).

The burgeoning literature on representational pluralism also raises questions about the
distinguishability of pluralism and relativism. While pluralism is often presented as a third
way between monism and relativism, rejections of “anything goes” anarchy tend argue
against a strawman rather than more sophisticated forms of epistemic relativism in
contemporary philosophy of science (Kusch 2020a). Still, many philosophers of science
insist on a distinction between epistemic pluralism and relativism in the sense that the former
is taken to provide contextualized normative resources while the latter is assumed to insist
on claims of equal validity that undermine the formulation of evaluative standards. At the
same time, epistemic relativists commonly accept contextual standards of evaluation,
leading to a contested and muddy boundary between epistemic pluralism and relativism
(Veigl forthcoming)

2.3 Explanatory Pluralism

Explanatory pluralism can be understood as a special case of representational pluralism with

important consequences for interdisciplinary approaches that are linked to the prospects of
relating different types and levels of explanations. The diversity of explanatory strategies in
scientific practice is well-documented across a wide range of scientific fields such as biology
(Braillard & Malaterre 2015) cognitive science (Dale, Dietrich, & Chemero 2009) and
paleobiology (Grantham 1999). This diversity may reflect heterogeneous views on what may
count as an explanation (see section 4.3 on pluralism about epistemic concepts) or/and a
diversity of views on what the proper grain or level of explanation should be.

A common account of the sources of explanatory pluralism is pragmatic: which type, which
level or grain of explanation is sought depends on the questions being asked (e.g., van
Bouwel, Weber, & De Vreese 2011; McCauley & Bechtel 2001), which vary with epistemic
and practical interests. A more radical take on the issue goes further by contending that
there is no objective reason to prefer macro-explanations over micro-explanations (or
vice-versa), such a choice being a matter of taste (Sober 1999: 551).

Widely discussed in the pluralist literature is the nature of the relationship between various
available explanations of a given phenomenon. Consider for example the study of health
inequalities. Two main levels of explanation are offered by social epidemiology and
molecular epidemiology. What is the relationship between these two types of explanation? Is
it an instance of “competitive” pluralism or of “compatible” pluralism, in Mitchell’s terminology
(1992)? For proponents of “competitive” pluralism, the co-existence of competing
explanations is temporary, allowing scientific communities to keep open several lines of
research until one of them can be identified as the right one (Beatty 1987; Kitcher 1990). By
contrast, compatible pluralism does not consider the existence of alternative types of
explanations temporary but reflecting the complexity of multilevel, multicomponent target
systems, lending themselves to integration rather than competition (Mitchell 2003, 2009). A
more fine-grained typology distinguishes six types of explanatory pluralism covering various
kinds of relationships (or lack thereof) between explanations (anything goes pluralism,
isolationist pluralism, interactive pluralism, integrative pluralism, temporary pluralism and
explanatory reductionism) (Van Bouwel 2014, building on further distinctions developed by
Mitchell [2003] and Longino [2013]). More domain specific typologies have also been
proposed, such as Marchionni’s (2008) distinction between “weak complementarity” and
“strong complementarity” of explanations available on macro and micro levels in the social
sciences. To what extent these options are compatible depends, not surprisingly, on the
exact content assigned to them.
Given the ubiquitous institutional pleas for more interdisciplinary research, a crucial task for
pluralist philosophers is to investigate when interactive and integrative approaches may be
more successful than isolationist or reductionist ones. Most attempts at addressing this issue
have been domain specific and often push at the end for integration of explanations (e.g.,
McCauley & Bechtel 2001 on psychology and neuroscience, Kendler 2005 on psychiatry,
Mitchell 2009 on social insect behavior). By contrast, limitations to integrative tendencies
have been identified as resulting from general considerations on the very structure of
explanations (Gijsbers 2016). In any case, much more philosophical work needs to be done
on the notion of integration, what exactly it amounts to in practice and under which
conditions it may succeed (Muszynski & Malaterre 2020).

3. Practices and Methods

3.1 Diversity of Scientific Inquiries

While it is a truism that scientists employ diverse methods, pluralism as a methodological

thesis articulates stronger claims about the inevitability or epistemic benefits of diverse
research methods. In his discussion of the doctrine of the unity of method, Hacking (1996)
distinguishes between scientific method understood as logic of justification and scientific
method understood as methodology, that is, as a way of finding out about the world. When
attacking

the opinion generally accepted that the various sciences named are
fundamentally distinct in respect of subject matter, sources of knowledge and
technique, (Carnap 1931/34 [1995: 32])

Carnap was actually solely concerned with issues of justification. What mattered to him was
to establish that everything that can be said in science about the world lends itself to the
same type of justification, hence the unity of the domain of the sciences. His motivation for
the reconstruction of all scientific sentences within a common linguistic framework was to
abolish differences in terms of epistemic access, especially between the human and the
natural sciences. As is well known, Carnap’s project was not successful. More generally, not
much progress has been made since the heyday of logical positivism when it comes to the
elaboration of a complete and unified account of empirical justification in science,
notwithstanding the much-discussed prospects of the Bayesian approach (Earman 1992: x).
Some philosophers challenge the very project of a universal inductive scheme (Norton 2003)
and the debate mainly amounts to assessing the cogency of the quest for a unified analysis
of inductive inferences.

By contrast, on the methodological side of the notion of scientific method, pluralist

approaches have given rise to a multiplicity of concepts aiming at describing and making
sense of the diversity of scientific practices. Influenced by “science and technology studies”,
“integrated history and philosophy of science”, and “philosophy of science in practice”, many
efforts have been made to grasp both the diachronic and synchronic varieties of styles of
scientific inquiries, in the vein of classical propositions such as Foucault’s “épistémé” (1966),
Fleck’s “Denkstil” (“thought style”) (1935) or Kuhn’s “paradigm” (1962). A seminal
contribution in this domain is Hacking’s multifaceted concept of “styles of scientific
reasoning” (1982, 1992a, 2012). Drawing on the work of the historian of science Crombie
(1994), who identified six main “styles of thought”, that is, six main modes of “scientific
inquiry, argument and explanation” in the European scientific culture, Hacking’s ambition is
to provide a concept that combines methodological, ontological and social dimensions in
order to account for long-term aspects of scientific development. Hacking conceives each
style as being both the product of the evolution of human cognitive capacities and the result
of specific features of human cultural history. A style of scientific reasoning is characterized
as introducing new kinds of objects, new types of propositions, new types of explanations
and is “self-authenticating”, that is, it defines its own standard of validity. One line of
discussion of Hacking’s proposition is whether his concept of style of scientific reasoning is
too inclusive. In light of the above characterizations, it might be argued that certain types of
reasoning such as religious thinking qualify as a style of scientific reasoning. Another line of
discussion addresses the “foliated pluralism” (Ruphy 2011b) that follows from the current
co-existence of different styles of scientific reasoning and specifies its main characteristics in
terms of transdisciplinarity, synchronicity, nonexclusiveness and cumulativeness.

Accounts of different styles of scientific reasoning interact with wider debates in philosophy,
history, and social studies of science that aim to understand the heterogeneity of scientific
practices through different “scenes of inquiry” (Jardine 2000) and “epistemic cultures”
(Knorr-Cetina 1999). Rather than aiming to theorize “the structure of science” in singular,
such accounts emphasize that scientific inquiry is shaped by its embedding and interaction
with heterogenous cultures that contribute to equally heterogenous practices. However, case
study-based approaches (Chemla & Keller [eds.] 2017) also highlight that distinctions
between scientific cultures require a dynamic picture that acknowledges shared concepts
and constant interactions with both other scientific cultures and external factors.

Empirical accounts of the existing plurality of scientific cultures can be complemented with
normative arguments in favor of heterogenous forms of inquiry. Such a normative case for
pluralism has been most famously articulated in Feyerabend’s (1975) plea for anarchism in
science and finds more recent expressions in what Chang (2012) calls “active normative
epistemic pluralism”. This pluralism takes an active normative stance in the sense of
advocating for the cultivation of multiple systems of practice in the same field of study to
reap benefits of toleration (different practices producing different valuable results) and
benefits of interaction (interactions of practices jointly produce valuable results).

3.2 Plurality of Disciplines and Inquirers

The plurality of scientific methods and practices is socially organized through a plurality of
disciplines and institutions. Relationships between disciplines may take various forms
(multidisciplinarity, pluridisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity), depending on the
nature of the connections and the retained degree of autonomy, and have been extensively
studied in history and social studies of science. On the philosophical side, key issues are the
benefits of disciplinary integration as well as epistemic, ontological, and social tensions of
such integration processes.

Cooperation between scientists was already a central concern in the International

Encyclopedia of Unified Science. For Neurath, the motivation for connecting laws of different
scientific fields was explicitly practical. Taking the example of the control of a forest fire, he
argues that a successful intervention requires connecting chemical, biological and
sociological laws, and the unity of the language of science was supposed to facilitate these
connections (Neurath 1983). In his contribution to the Encyclopedia, Dewey emphasizes the
societal need for cooperation between scientists working in different fields, calling for

unifying the efforts of all those who exercise in their own affairs the scientific
methods so that these efforts may gain the force which comes from united
efforts. (Dewey 1938/1955: 32 [1988: 274])

For Dewey, this social form of connection between scientists was more important than
unifying their language.

Integration of distinct disciplines may take various forms, depending on the object of
integration: explanations, models, experimental methods, bodies of data, concepts,
theoretical frameworks, instruments and tools, research infrastructures, etc. (Hacking 1992b;
Rueger 2005; O’Malley 2013; Grantham 2004). It is commonly assumed that integration
constitutes a standard of success of interdisciplinary endeavors (Holbrook 2013). However,
this assumption has been challenged on the ground that interdisciplinary success can
sometimes be achieved without integration of disciplines. Heterogenous actors can
cooperate in interdisciplinary “trading zones” (Galison 1997) in which actors “hammer out a
local coordination, despite vast global differences” (1997: 783). Case studies such as
evolutionary game theory show that productive interdisciplinary interactions can develop
while fields keep developing distinct concepts, methods, explanations, and ontologies
(Grüne-Yanoff 2016).

Another line of debate about interdisciplinary interactions relates to “imperialist” incursions of

one discipline into other ones (Mäki 2013; Clarke & Walsh 2013). For example, economic
and evolutionary models of human behavior are commonly criticized as imperialistic and
inadequate attempts to expand the explanatory scope of models beyond their disciplinary
boundaries. Evolutionary models of gender behavior constitute a prominent case as they run
the risk of obscuring social negotiations of gender norms through a narrow focus on
evolutionary adaptations. Scientific pluralists commonly contrast such a scientific imperialism
with inclusive perspectives on human behavior that emphasize the value of diverse
qualitative and quantitative methods from both social and natural sciences (Dupré 2002;
Longino 2013). At the same time, the distinction between inadequate scientific imperialism
and productive interdisciplinary exchange remains contested and allows for heterogenous
formulations (Mäki, Walsh, & Fernández Pinto 2017).

Interactions between academic and non-academic stakeholders have become another

growing concern that is reflected in frameworks of transdisciplinarity, citizen science,
participatory research, public engagement, open science, and so on. The notion of
transdisciplinary emerged in the 1970s (Jantsch 1972) and has been driven by policy
demands of research at the interface of science and society. For example, a recent OECD
report on 50 years of transdisciplinarity claims a “paradigm shift in research practice” (2020:
9) that orients research towards complex multi-stakeholder interactions in addressing equally
complex challenges such as climate change, food security, global health, and sustainable
energy production. Philosophers of science have more recently connected debates about
scientific pluralism with transdisciplinary appeals to epistemic and social diversity (Koskinen
& Mäki 2016). Epistemologically, transdisciplinarity comes with opportunities of accessing
novel sources of non-academic expertise but also raises complex questions about vastly
different methods of knowledge production between academic and non-academic actors
(Bedessem & Ruphy 2020; Gibbs 2015). Politically, transdisciplinarity promises more
inclusive research that reflects the concerns of heterogeneous stakeholders but also often
reproduces existing hierarchies and colonial legacies in the relations between stakeholders
and the organization collaborative processes (Healy 2019; Ludwig & El-Hani 2020).

4. Ontologies, Classifications and Concepts

Metaphysical realism is often formulated as the idea of one fundamental description of reality
as it is in itself. Given such an appeal to an “absolute conception” of “the world as it is
independent from our experience” (Williams 1985 [2011: 139]), science may appear as the
best candidate for a purely objective description of the world that is independent of
subjective human interpretation. In contrast with such a monist ideal of one absolute “view
from nowhere” (T. Nagel 1986), pluralist philosophers have emphasized the diversity of
scientific concepts and ontologies that are influenced by heterogenous interests and values
of scientists. A substantial part of contemporary philosophy of science aims to make sense
of this plurality and its implications both for philosophical debates and scientific practices.

4.1 Natural Kinds and Ontological Pluralism

In philosophy of science, the metaphysical ideal of an absolute conception of the world has
often been formulated within the “tradition of natural kinds” (Hacking 1991). Scientists do not
invent arbitrary concepts but discover natural kinds that are constituted by objective
discontinuities in nature. For example, consider biological species as paradigmatic natural
kinds. Biologists do not distinguish between species along randomly selected criteria such
as “animals born on a Tuesday” or “plants with beautiful flowers”. Instead, biological
taxonomy progresses through empirical discoveries about the structure of the biological
world that connects phylogenetic relations between populations with gene flows and
reproductive patterns that affect their morphological properties, ethological profiles, and
ecological roles. Species concepts reflect empirical insights into these structures and
species are therefore natural kinds that are discovered in the world rather than the product of
linguistic conventions.

In its strongest formulation, the tradition of natural kinds leads to the idea of one fundamental
species ontology that reflects the structure of the biological world independently of any
subjective human interests and values. In contrast, ontological pluralists have argued that
there is not only one correct way of carving up the natural world and that different scientific
interests and values lead to different but equally valid ontologies. Again, biological species
can illustrate the argument. Indeed, biologists discover many details about the structure of
the biological world, including an ever-increasing amount of knowledge about the ecological,
ethological, genetic, morphological, reproductive, and phylogenetic properties of organisms.
However, this knowledge does not culminate into one uncontested and objective division of
the biological world. Biologists do not have access to one objective “view from nowhere” but
their taxonomies reflect diverging perspectives that are shaped by diverse (e.g., ecological,
ethological, evolutionary) research interests and attention to heterogenous (e.g., bacteria,
dinosaurs, mosses) organisms. Given this diversity of research questions and reference
organisms, biologists pay attention to different properties of organisms and operationalize
species in different ways. The reality of biological research practices does not seem to
support the idea of convergence towards one absolute scientific conception of the biological
world.

While ontological pluralism has become widely endorsed in philosophy of science, pluralist
perspectives take various forms. One area of disagreement is how far the case for
ontological pluralism reaches. In the context of biological taxonomy (Ereshefsky 2000), for
example, more moderate forms of pluralism only accept species taxa that are monophylectic
(Mishler & Donoghue 1982) while more radical pluralist proposals insist on the legitimacy of
non-historical taxa (Kitcher 1984a) or even of non-academic kinds that divide the biological
world along diverse non-historical (e.g., morphological, behavioral, ecological) and pragmatic
(e.g., culinary, economic, medicinal, aesthetic) criteria (Dupré 1999; Magnus 2012). For
example, more recent debates about indigenous ontologies push the boundaries of
ontological pluralism by addressing ontologies that are shaped by epistemic and social
concerns of local communities rather than the concerns of academically trained researchers
(Kendig 2020; Ludwig & Weiskopf 2019; Robles-Piñeros et al. 2020; Weiskopf 2020).

A second area of disagreement concerns the fate of natural kinds. Many scientific pluralists
aim to reimagine the tradition of natural kinds in pluralist terms (Ereshefsky 2018; Kendig
[ed.] 2015; Barberousse et al. 2020). One common strategy departs from a recognition of
property clusters (Boyd 2021; Slater 2015) or nodes in causal networks (Khalidi 2018) that
shape scientific ontologies. For example, classic examples of natural kinds such as gold,
tiger, or water come with clusters of causally connected properties that make them suitable
for scientific inquiry and distinguish them from gerrymandered entities such as the
disjunctive kind gold-or-tiger. Scientists can learn a lot about gold and they can learn a lot
about tigers but there is little to learn about the disjunctive kind gold-or-tiger. Current
accounts of natural kinds commonly hold that these insights about the cluster structure of the
world can be embraced by pluralists while insisting that the prioritization of specific
properties and clusters responds to contingent research interests and does therefore not
converge on one absolute conception of the world (Franklin-Hall 2015). However, not all
pluralists consider the tradition of natural kinds worth saving. Hacking (2007) influentially
suggested that the tradition “is in disarray and is unlikely to be put back together again” and
a number of philosophers have suggested to move on without natural kinds (Chakravartty
2017; Ludwig 2018; Brigandt forthcoming).

A third area of disagreement concerns the fate of realism. If scientific kinds inevitably reflect
interests and values of scientists, is it still possible to be a realist about kinds? The answer
depends on what is meant with “kind realism”. Ontological pluralism implies the rejection of
traditional formulations of kind realism that appeal to the idea of one fundamental and
mind-independent representation of the world as it is in itself (Chakravartty forthcoming). At
the same time, scientific pluralists tend to accept wider realist claims in the sense that
scientific concepts are understood to reflect empirically discovered structures of the natural
world even if their conceptualization inevitably entails contingent interests and values.

4.2 Understanding Classificatory Practices

While the heterogeneity of scientific ontologies raises metaphysical questions about the fate
of natural kinds and realism, it also highlights epistemological questions about the role of
classifications in scientific practice. A major concern among scientific pluralists is therefore to
understand how diverging concepts are productive in science rather than a problem that
calls for unification (Kendig [ed.] 2015). A large body of literature has emerged that
addresses taxonomic plurality in fields such as astrophysics (Ruphy 2010), bioinformatics
(Leonelli 2012), cognitive sciences (Ludwig 2015), chemistry (Chang 2012), genetics
(Griffiths & Stotz 2013), geography (Winther 2020), microbiology (O’Malley 2014), or
psychiatry (Bueter 2019).

While this literature emphasizes the productivity of classificatory plurality in science, it also
raises complex questions about its functions and limitations. One issue of increasing
concern is the role of social and other non-epistemic values in classificatory practice (Ahn
2020; Ludwig 2016; Winther & Kaplan 2013). Much of the older pluralist literature on issues
such as biological taxonomies focuses on the heterogeneity of epistemic interests:
researchers with different explanatory interests pay attention to different patterns and
therefore classify their target domains in different ways. However, explanatory priorities of
scientists have non-epistemic grounds and non-epistemic values also often affect more
directly classificatory choices. The burgeoning philosophical literature on psychiatric
classification can illustrate not only the plurality of classificatory practices but also the
entanglement of epistemic and non-epistemic concerns. For example, different iterations of
the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) illustrate the flexible and
shifting boundaries of psychiatric categories (Wilson 1993; Tsou 2015; Zachar, Regier, &
Kendler 2019) through the interplay between epistemic and non-epistemic values. On the
one hand, substantial parts of the literature address psychiatric categories as natural kinds
(Kincaid & Sullivan [eds.] 2014) by aiming to identify dysfunctions through epistemic criteria
of explanation, prediction, and intervention (Tekin 2016). On the other hand, it has been
widely argued that the epistemic and non-epistemic aims of psychiatry are inseparably
intertwined (Bueter 2019; Cooper 2020; Zachar 2014; Solomon 2020) and that psychiatric
classification also responds to more direct pragmatic concerns from applicability in practice
to normative concerns about pathologization and medicalization of society.

Negotiating classificatory practices through heterogeneous epistemic and non-epistemic

values raises complex methodological questions. A more restricted pluralism may accept
non-epistemic values when epistemic considerations alone are not sufficient to come to a
decision. While this “epistemic priority” view of non-epistemic values as tiebreakers follow
prominent accounts in debates about theory choice (Steel 2017), one may also adopt a “joint
satisfaction” view that conceives epistemic and non-epistemic values equally important in
shaping classificatory norms (Conix 2020). Cases from the human sciences such as
psychiatry may even motivate a more radical “social priority” view that puts concerns such as
“well-being” at the center of psychiatric classification and integrates epistemic concerns
insofar as they contribute to better explanation, prediction, and intervention in the service of
socially desirable psychiatric practice.

Another methodological challenge for pluralist accounts of classificatory practice are the
virtues of standardization in scientific practice. Ontological pluralism is often embedded in a
wider critique of the metaphysical ideal of an absolute conception of the world. The move
from ontology to classification, however, introduces further pragmatic considerations about
standardization. Even steadfast ontological pluralists need to acknowledge that unified
classificatory standards are often of pragmatic value in establishing common frameworks
and terminologies (Sterner, Witteveen, & Franz 2020). For example, debates about
“taxonomic governance” are motivated by concerns that the disorder of species
classifications affects negatively epistemic progress (Conix 2019) and ultimately reduces
“the effectiveness of global efforts to halt biodiversity loss” (Garnett & Christidis 2017: 26).
However, attempts to standardize biological taxonomies (and scientific classifications more
generally) also come at costs. One crucial benefit of taxonomic plurality is the ability to
incorporate diverse epistemic and non-epistemic concerns that can drive different
classificatory decisions. Governance of classificatory practices is therefore inevitably political
by raising the question whose concerns are authoritative and how tensions are negotiated in
the development of standards. One emerging area of research, for example, concerns the
plurality of classificatory practices in cross-cultural perspective and the risk of marginalizing
locally adapted classificatory practices through dominant standards from biological taxonomy
(Robles-Piñeros et al. 2020) to psychiatry (Popa 2020).

4.3 Pluralism About Epistemic Concepts

Debates about ontological and classificatory pluralism are largely concerned with the objects
of scientific research such as biological species or mental disorders. A related but distinct
debate focuses on epistemic core concepts that scientists use during their investigation:
explanation, experiment, evidence, knowledge, model, understanding, objectivity,
observation, probability, and so on. Philosophical analysis of such epistemic core concepts is
often characterized by monist ambitions of developing general and unified definitions with
necessary and sufficient conditions.

History of science has become one of the major sources of destabilization for such unifying
ambitions. The project of historical epistemology (Feest & Sturm 2011; Arabatzis &
Schickore [eds.] 2012; Rheinberger 2018) aims to historize the epistemic core concepts in
science by analyzing their shifting boundaries and roles in scientific practice. For example,
historians of science have argued that appeals to objectivity have served a wide range of
epistemic functions. Scientists have appealed to objectivity to emphasize different epistemic
values of their research from the goal of being true to nature through idealization to the goal
to purify science through mechanical elimination of subjectivity to the aim to improve
scientific judgment through skills of trained experts (Daston & Galison 2007).

Scientific pluralism converges with historical epistemology in emphasizing the variability of

epistemic core concepts. Objectivity, for example, may not only be historically variable but
also have different meanings in different contexts of current scientific practice. Douglas
(2004) distinguishes between three dimensions: objectivity1 is conceived metaphysically as
a grasp of the real objects in the world, objectivity2 refers to an epistemic position of
detachment from personal interests and values, and objectivity3 identifies the social process
of organizing science to reduce individual biases and idiosyncrasies. Similar strategies of
conceptual diversification are common regarding other epistemic core concepts. For
example, the expansive debates about explanatory pluralism (section 2.3) suggest that
“explanation” does not have one general definition across all scientific disciplines and
contexts of application. Instead, philosophical accounts of explanation need to account
 for different ideal types of explanation, i.e., different exemplary accounts of what
an explanation consists of, which are good as means of classification of different
types of explanatory activities that are offered in different domains. (Mantzavinos
2015: 306)

Epistemic concepts such as “explanation” and “objectivity” are embedded in widely different
research programs and attempts to provide general definitions run the risk of obscuring this
diversity by being biased towards certain domains of research from which the definition is
derived. However, pluralism about epistemic concepts is not a truism and can be challenged
both from unificationist and eliminativist angles. First, unificationist attempts to develop
general definitions may reduce contextual accuracy but come with the benefit of highlighting
commonalities of different uses of epistemic core concepts. Despite all of their contextual
variability, claims of objectivity may still involve a distinct form of epistemic endorsement: to
call something objective is to rely on it and to suggest that others should rely on it (Koskinen
2020). Second, pluralism can also be challenged from an eliminativist angle that treats
conceptual plurality as evidence of fragmentation that ultimately undermines the usefulness
of a concept. If “objectivity” is used to highlight heterogenous epistemic values, it may be
more helpful to analyze these values directly (Ludwig 2017) rather than to rely on an
ambiguous and vague notion of objectivity that provides not much more than an abstract
honorary label (Hacking 1999).

5. The Social Organization of Science

5.1 Feminist Philosophy of Science and Epistemic Diversity

Feminist philosophy of science has played an important role in the development of scientific
pluralism by broadening its agenda towards debates about the relation between epistemic
and social diversity in science. Much of the earlier pluralist literature (e.g., Suppes 1978;
Fodor 1974; Kitcher 1984b) argued for the irreducible plurality of theories, methods, or
concepts without relating to the social organization of science. While post-positivist
philosophies of the relation between science and society emerged in different academic
communities (Canguilhem 1977 [1990]; Feyerabend 1978; Freire 1968 [1970]; Habermas
1968 [1972]; Janich, Kambartel, & Mittelstrass 1974; Klimovsky 1975), they remained largely
outside of the mainstream of North American philosophy of science. Feminist philosophers
of the 1980s (Harding 1988; Haraway 1988; Longino 1987) challenged this mainstream by
exploring how diverse theories, methods, or concepts relate to diverse social positions and
values of scientists. Standpoint theory (Harding 1992; Wylie 2012) and feminist empiricism
(Longino 2002a; Anderson 2004) emerged as two major theoretical strands with lasting
influence on scientific pluralism.

Feminist standpoint theory can be described as combining a thesis of situated knowledge

and a thesis of epistemic advantage (Wylie 2003; Intemann 2010). First, knowledge is
assumed to be situated in the sense that it is shaped by social positioning of actors and their
experiences (Haraway 1988). Second, the social positioning of marginalized groups creates
epistemic advantages as it can contribute to challenging biases in science (Harding 1992).
While the second condition has sometimes been interpreted (and strategically
misinterpreted) as making obscure claims about epistemic superiority of women, standpoint
theory does not attribute automatic epistemic privilege to specific social groups (Wylie 2003).
For example, women do not always know more or better but are often able to bring attention
to neglected facts (e.g., about sexual health or labor conditions), to methodological biases
(e.g., in survey samples or interview guides) or to fruitful research questions (e.g., about
neglected social causes of human behavior or of health disparities) that have been
marginalized by dominant actors in scientific practices.

Feminist standpoint theory has been of lasting influence on pluralist frameworks in

philosophy of science by contributing to a wide range of research programs that explore the
knowledge of marginalized stakeholders and challenge dominant scientific perspectives as
being grounded in the standpoints of dominant actors in scientific practice. For example,
Wylie’s (2015) work connects standpoint theory with debates about indigenous knowledge in
archaeological research. As also increasingly recognized in philosophy of science more
broadly (Kendig 2020; Ludwig 2017; Weiskopf 2020; Whyte 2013), indigenous people are
experts about local environmental and social systems while indigenous knowledge remains
widely marginalized both in research and policy. By emphasizing the situated knowledge of
indigenous people, philosophers of science have therefore more recently articulated
accounts of epistemic injustice in science (Koskinen & Rolin 2019) and explored the
challenges of approaching epistemic plurality from a global perspective (Ludwig et al. [eds.]
2021; Zambrana & Machaca Benito 2014). Harding’s work (2015) has connected standpoint
theory to debates about post- and decolonial perspectives on science that emphasize that
situated knowledge in the Global South remains largely marginalized in the mainstream of
academic knowledge production (Mavhunga 2017; Mignolo 2010; Santos & Meneses [eds.]
2009).

Feminist empiricism constitutes another major influence on scientific pluralism (Anderson

2004; Longino 2002a; Kourany 2010; Solomon 2006b) that has developed in productive
tension with standpoint theory (Intemann 2010). Rather than focusing on the knowledge of
specific social groups such as women or indigenous communities, feminist empiricism
departs from methodological considerations about the role of social values in scientific
practice. Commonly contrasted with the ideal of value-free science (Elliott 2017), feminist
empiricists have argued that social values cannot be eliminated from scientific practice
including theory choice. For example, Longino (1990) influentially argued that the
underdetermination of theories through empirical evidence requires social and other
contextual values in theory choice.

While feminist empiricism makes the case for the legitimacy of feminist values in science, it
has also shaped scientific pluralism more broadly by fostering a debate about the
methodological dimensions of value plurality and dissent in science. Longino (1993), for
example, aims to replace the ideal of value-free science with a different set of procedural
criteria according to which science should provide (1) forums for criticism that allow the
formulation of scientific dissent, (2) uptake of criticism in the sense that dissent is actively
discussed in scientific discourse, (3) standards that are publicly recognized and allow for the
evaluation of dissenting positions, (4) equality in the sense that different epistemic
communities are recognized as having equal authority.

Longino’s criteria illustrate the contributions of feminist empiricism to scientific pluralism

beyond explicit concerns with gender by aiming to articulate a general framework for
epistemic and value diversity as conditions of successful science. In fact, one of the common
criticisms of Longino’s framework has been that it is not feminist at all but rather opens the
door for arguments in favor of the inclusion of anti-feminist or otherwise anti-egalitarian
voices in research (Crasnow 2013; Hicks 2011; Kourany 2010). As such, feminist empiricism
has contributed to the development of a social epistemology of scientific knowledge
production that addresses the complexity of epistemic and value plurality in practice
(Grasswick & Webb 2002; Solomon 2006a; Biddle 2007). For example, climate science has
become a focus of debates both in relation to the role of values in theory choice and the role
of dissenting opinions in scientific practice (de Melo-Martín & Intemann 2018; Keller 2017;
Lewandowsky, Cook, & Lloyd 2018). Simple narratives about the epistemic benefits of
plurality may fail to account for epistemically detrimental forms of dissent as exemplified by
climate skepticism (Biddle & Leuschner 2015). For scientific pluralists, hard cases such as
climate skepticism indicate the need to carefully articulate what types of dissent,
disagreement, and diversity are desirable in scientific practice (Dellsén & Baghramian
forthcoming; Hauswald 2017; Intemann 2011; Leuschner 2018; Rolin 2017).

5.2 Democratization and Governance of Science

Traditional perspectives on science as self-regulating through politically neutral epistemic

norms (Merton 1942; Wilholt 2012) suggest that research requires little governance. For
example, Bush’s (1945) government report Science—The Endless Frontier has been widely
portrayed as a landmark for American science policy after World War II that treated science
as a neutral and objective foundation from which applied technologies and commercial
innovations derive. While North American philosophy of science largely adopted this
depoliticized vision of science (Reisch 2005), scientific pluralism can be positioned in a wider
intellectual shift of rethinking the relation between science and society that has been driven
by the rapid technological and scientific transformation of post-war societies including their
existential risks from industrial disasters in Bhopal or Chernobyl to public controversies
about genetic modification or climate change (Macnaghten 2020).

In philosophy of science, Kitcher’s (2001, 2011) model of well-ordered science provides an

influential proposal for aligning science and society through democratic negotiation of
agenda setting and application. Rather than endorsing direct democratic control of scientific
agendas through voting, Kitcher imagines an idealized deliberative process that involves a
public that is tutored by the relevant scientific evidence and pluralistic in a fair representation
of sometimes incompatible preferences of stakeholders. Well-ordered science therefore
aims to articulate a “third way” (Kitcher 2002) between pathologies of direct democratic
control of science and an expert-driven technocracy that separates science from society.

While the moderate pluralism of well-ordered science has been widely discussed in
philosophy (Cartwright 2006; Fernández Pinto 2015; Kusch 2020b; Van Bouwel 2009), its
highly idealized model of public deliberation has only limited appeal to science governance
scholars who have become more closely aligned with science and technology studies (STS)
and research on public deliberation under non-ideal conditions (Hagendijk & Irwin 2006;
Kearnes 2009). One major contribution from STS is the notion of “sociotechnical
imaginaries” that approaches scientific agendas not through ideal deliberation but
heterogeneous national cultures of imagining and negotiating futures (Jasanoff & Kim 2009).
In their comparative study of nuclear energy in the US and South Korea, for example,
Jasanoff and Kim argue that the American imaginary reflects a discourse of containment
between the potentials of nuclear superpower and its existential risks, while the South
Korean imaginary incorporated nuclear energy into a narrative of scientific and technological
progress in the ascent of an “underdeveloped nation” into a modern society. Thinking about
the international plurality of scientific agendas through sociotechnical imaginaries therefore
challenges scientific pluralists to address democratization not merely as an ideal in which all
preferences and stakeholders are equally represented but as a non-ideal process that
unfolds in interaction with heterogeneous discourses, identities, institutions, and
technologies.

In science governance, “responsible research and innovation” (RRI) has emerged as an

increasingly influential approach for addressing stakeholder plurality and public deliberation
under such non-ideal conditions (Doezema et al. 2019; von Schomberg 2013; Wittrock et al.
2021). RRI approaches such as the AIRR framework aim to align science and society
through governance that is oriented through four dimensions of

● (A) anticipation,
● (I) inclusion,
● (R) reflexivity and
● (R) responsiveness. (Stilgoe, Owen, & Macnaghten 2013)

For example, anticipatory exercises such as scenario building and reflexive practices such
as focus group discussions aim to open-up imagination about different scientific agendas.
Inclusion is approached through a wide variety of institutional mechanisms from affirmative
action to open access requirements as well as inclusive strategies of organizing research
processes through citizen science, participatory research, or transdisciplinarity.

While philosophers of science have increasingly turned to science governance (Douglas

2009; Eigi 2017; Tuana 2010), it remains contentious how far pluralist demands for diversity,
participation, and representation should reach. Science governance comes with
heterogenous perspectives on public engagement and inclusion (Macnaghten 2020). For
example, “grand challenges” models in science governance emphasize the crucial role of
science in addressing pressing societal problems from climate change to food security to
public health (Efstathiou 2016). While grand challenges models include diverse publics in the
agenda setting of science, they tend to leave the epistemic core of scientific knowledge
production to scientists as long as they adhere with socially negotiated ethical constraints.
Debates about well-ordered science can often be interpreted along grand challenges
science that articulates pluralist perspectives on public deliberation for early stages of
agenda setting and final stages of application but not for the research process itself. In this
sense, Longino (2002b: 574) argues that “Kitcher wants to democratize science policy, not
science”.

In contrast, “co-production” models (Macnaghten 2020) reflect a more radically pluralist

tradition in STS that emphasizes the inseparability of epistemic and social aspects of
research. For example, Jasanoff and Simmet’s (2017) co-production model argues that not
only scientific agendas and applications but also scientific facts have to be understood as
normative in public. According to Jasanoff and Simmet, public facts always interact with
social negotiations of whose realities and values matter, what can be contested in a
democratic process, and what can be articulated in a given sociotechnical imaginary. While
these points resonate with standpoint theory (Wylie 2003) and feminist empiricism (Longino
2002a) as described in the previous section, many of these connections remain implicit and
point towards a challenge of a more explicit integration of pluralist philosophy of science with
interdisciplinary research in science governance.

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