MASTERARBEIT / MASTER’S THESIS Titel der Masterarbeit / Title of the Master’s Thesis „Scientific Pluralism – A call for Action? Reassessing Darwinism and Lamarckism“ verfasst von / submitted by > Sophie Juliane Veigl BSc BA MSc < angestrebter akademischer Grad / in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (MA) Wien, 2016 / Vienna, 2016 Studienkennzahl lt. Studienblatt / A 066 944 Degree programme code as it appears on the student record sheet : Studienrichtung lt. Studienblatt / Interdisziplinäres Masterstudium degree programme as it appears on Wissenschaftsphilosophie und the student record sheet: Wissenschaftsgeschichte Betreut von / Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Martin Kusch Inhalt 1 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 1 2 The Plurality of Pluralisms .................................................................................................................... 4 2.1 Chang’s Pluralism .......................................................................................................................... 4 Why Pluralism? ................................................................................................................................ 5 Active, Epistemic, Normative Pluralism ........................................................................................ 12 Realism, Monism, Relativism ......................................................................................................... 12 Consequences of Chang’s Pluralism .............................................................................................. 14 2.2 Discussing Plurality ...................................................................................................................... 17 Outline: Dupré – Pluralist Stance .................................................................................................. 17 Reception of the Different Positions ............................................................................................. 24 2.3 Commitment to Action – A New Classification?.......................................................................... 26 Realism .......................................................................................................................................... 28 Monism .......................................................................................................................................... 29 Relativism ...................................................................................................................................... 30 Pluralist Action .............................................................................................................................. 31 3 Pluralism – A Call for Action? – Critique ............................................................................................. 34 3.1 The Historical Debate: Chang – Kusch – Klein ............................................................................. 34 Was There a Revolution?............................................................................................................... 35 Sociological Explanations of the Chemical Revolution .................................................................. 37 3.2 The Philosophical Debate: Kitcher ............................................................................................... 41 4 Lamarck/Darwin Revisited .................................................................................................................. 50 4.1 1809-2010 – The Big Picture........................................................................................................ 51 Lamarck and his Philosophie Zoologique ....................................................................................... 52 Origin of Species, Neo-Darwinism and Neo-Lamarckism .............................................................. 59 Epigenetics – Laarck’s Revival? .................................................................................................. 65 Concluding Remarks – Scientific Revolutions, Experieters’ Regress ........................................ 68 4.2 A Case for Pluralism? ................................................................................................................... 74 Justification vs. Pluralism? ............................................................................................................. 74 Re-assessing Chang: How Much Pluralism Can We Really Afford? ............................................... 81 5 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................... 87 6 Sources ............................................................................................................................................... 89 7 Appendix ............................................................................................................................................. 93 1 Introduction What does a pluralist’s practice in science look like? How could historical and epistemological work of historians and philosophers of science be integrated in science policy 1 and laboratory life? In his latest work Is water H2O? – Evidence, Realism and Pluralism Hasok Chang introduces his conception of scientific pluralism, which he characterizes as epistemic, normative and active. Chang tries to show that the theory of phlogiston was prematurely discarded after the rise of Lavoisierian chemistry. For doing so, the practice of “complementary science” which he introduced in his 2004’s Inventing Temperature – Measurement and Scientific Progress renders an important tool for reexamining the phlogistonist’s case. Through reassessing the Chemical Revolution, Chang aims at making a case for scientific pluralism in a scenario, where all preceding historians of science – for example Thomas Kuhn – have unanimously awarded Lavoisierianism with the winning trophy. By fighting the claim that scientists were more than justified in omitting phlogistonist theories by the end of the 18th century, Chang aims at opening the arena for more investigations of this sort. Importantly, the topics of the disunity of science as well as of pluralism have been very prominently discussed in the last decades by several scholars. Two famous publications advocating a pluralist approach are John Dupré’s 1993’s The Disorder of Things - Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science2 and Helen Longino's, Stephen Kellert's and C. Kenneth Water's 2006's co-edited volume Scientific Pluralism. Strikingly, the individual notions of and the suggested approaches towards pluralism of the authors just mentioned are highly diverse. Whereas Chang’s pluralism can be delineated as normative-active, Dupré’s argues for metaphysical pluralism whereas Longino, Kellert and Waters canvass their pluralist stance rather cautiously on empirical grounds. It is a common practice for scholars to demarcate different versions of pluralism by referring to their “modesty” vs. their “radicalness” (Kellert et al., 2006, xiff). Thus, Dupré’s and Chang’s stances would be placed in the radical camp, whereas Longino’s, Kellert’s and Water’s case would take a tentative position in the middle of the scale. In this scheme modest pluralism is represented as a position, which interprets pluralism in science as symptomatic for shortcomings of our theories and methods but 1 In the following, this monograph will be referred to as Is Water H2O? 2 In the following, this monograph will be referred to as The Disorder of Things 1 believes it will be resolvable in the future. On the other hand, radical pluralism is taken as the position, that there are numerous accounts of the world, whose correctness cannot be decided (Kellert et al., 2006, xiff). Thus applying such a scale on the aforementioned positions leads to a misrepresentation of Chang and Dupré as – in contrary to what is suggested by the scale - those positions seem to be fundamentally different (see Fig. 1): Figure 1 Radical and Modest Pluralist Positions I claim that classifying pluralist positions by their extent of radicalness / modesty is not only strange wording but does also miss intrinsic features of the positions. Additionally, radical pluralists are often accused of being relativists in disguise and modest pluralists are characterized as undecided monists (Kellert et al., 2006, xiff). Thus, this scheme might not be able to capture the features of the various pluralist positions as tendencies towards relativism and monism might not be satisfactorily informative. Therefore, I also criticize the end-points of the presented scale. In my thesis I propose that finding other ways of classification will help to gain a better insight into the discrepancies and similarities of the many approaches towards pluralism. One way of demarcating the different position I envision is assessing them for the degrees of activity they demand and based on which calls for pluralist practice they imply. The aims of this master thesis are threefold. First I will try to contrast Chang’s pluralism with Dupré’s metaphysical Disorder of Things and the “Pluralist Stance” of Kellert, Longino and Waters. This will aim at developing demarcation criteria for the broad scope of pluralist notions. In the course of this, positions towards relativism, realism and monism will be discussed.