## 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; Stroker 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 Dupre, 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
emigre 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 Dupre'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'etre* 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" (Dupre 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
"*episteme*" (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 (Grune-Yanoff
2016).



Another line of debate about interdisciplinary interactions relates to
"imperialist" incursions of one discipline into other ones
(Maki 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
(Dupre 2002; Longino 2013). At the same time, the distinction
between inadequate scientific imperialism and productive
interdisciplinary exchange remains contested and allows for
heterogenous formulations (Maki, Walsh, & Fernandez
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 & Maki 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 (Dupre 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-Pineros 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-Pineros 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-Martin & 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 (Dellsen & 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; Fernandez 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.