Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T06:02:40.353Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From Hacking's Plurality of Styles of Scientific Reasoning to “Foliated” Pluralism: A Philosophically Robust Form of Ontologico-Methodological Pluralism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Stéphanie Ruphy
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay develops a form of scientific pluralism that captures essential features of contemporary scientific practice largely ignored by the various forms of scientific pluralism currently discussed by philosophers. My starting point is Hacking's concept of style of scientific reasoning. I extend Hacking's thesis by proposing the process of “ontological enrichment” to grasp how the objects created by a style articulate with the common objects of scientific inquiry. The result is “foliated pluralism,” which puts to the fore the transdisciplinary and cumulative ways of proceeding in science, as well as the historical dimension of the genesis of scientific objects.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 78 , Issue 5 , December 2011 , pp. 1212 - 1222
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Crombie, Alistair C. 1988. “Designed in the Mind: Western Visions of Science, Nature and Humankind.” History of Science 24:81–92.Google Scholar
Crombie, Alistair C.. 1994. Styles of Scientific Thinking in the European Tradition. London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
Giere, Ronald N. 2006. “Perspectival Pluralism.” In Scientific Pluralism, ed. Kellert, S. H., Longino, H. E., and Waters, C. K., 26–41. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Hacking, Ian. 1982. “Language, Truth and Reason.” In Rationality and Relativism, ed. Hollis, M. and Lukes, S., 48–66. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hacking, Ian. 1992a. “The Self-Vindication of the Laboratory Sciences.” In Science as Practice and Culture, ed. Pickering, A., 29–65. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hacking, Ian. 1992b. “Statistical Language, Statistical Truth and Statistical Reason: The Self-Authentification of a Style of Scientific Reasoning.” In The Social Dimensions of Science, ed. McMullin, E., 130–57. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Hacking, Ian. 1992c/2002. “‘Style’ for Historians and Philosophers.” Studies in History and Philosophy 23:1–20. Repr. in Historical Ontology, 178–99. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hacking, Ian. 2003. “Des styles de raisonnement scientifique.” Lectures presented at the Collège de France, Paris, January–April.Google Scholar
Longino, Helen. 2006. “Theoretical Pluralism and the Scientific Study of Behavior.” In Scientific Pluralism, ed. Kellert, S. H., Longino, H. E., and Waters, C. K., 102–31. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Sandra. 2009. Unsimple Truths. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richardson, Alan W. 2006. “The Many Unities of Science: Politics, Semantics and Ontology.” In Scientific Pluralism, ed. Kellert, S. H., Longino, H. E., and Waters, C. K., 1–25. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Strawson, Peter. 1950. “On Referring.” Mind 10:320–54.Google Scholar