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The Epistemic Significance of Collaborative Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

K. Brad Wray
K. Brad Wray*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Alberta
*
Send request for reprints to the author, Department of Philosophy, University of Alberta, 4-115 Humanities Centre, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2E5, Canada.
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Abstract

I examine the epistemic import of collaborative research in science. I develop and defend a functional explanation for its growing importance. Collaborative research is becoming more popular in the natural sciences, and to a lesser degree in the social sciences, because contemporary research in these fields frequently requires access to abundant resources, for which there is great competition. Scientists involved in collaborative research have been very successful in accessing these resources, which has in turn enabled them to realize the epistemic goals of science more effectively than other scientists, thus creating a research environment in which collaboration is now the norm.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 69 , Issue 1 , March 2002 , pp. 150 - 168
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I thank David Hull, Harold Kincaid, Robert K. Merton, Lori Nash, Jean-François Auger, Allan Walstad, Jonathan Cohen, Les Burkholder, and Keith Douglas for comments on earlier drafts. I also thank the referees for Philosophy of Science for their insightful reports. Finally, I thank my audience at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science, and the philosophy departments at the University of Saskatchewan, University of Mississippi, Trent University and the University of Guelph, to whom I presented earlier versions of the paper.

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