Thinking Crossroads: from Scientific Pluralism to Pluralist History of Science: Introduction

It is difficult not to notice the enthusiasm that has surrounded pluralism in recent years. Beginning with the fields of anthropology and sociology (Despres 1968; Newman 1973; Young 1976), the word “pluralism” has taken hold as an early twenty-first century watchword in domains like political theory (Gatson 2002; Flathman 2005) and legal theory (Krisch 2010). The concept has also entered the philosophical arena, which now acknowledges ontological (Turner 2010), epistemic (Coliva and Pedersen 2017), ethical (Stocker 1991; Kekes 1993), and even logical (Beall and Restall 2006) forms of pluralism. Moreover, the “pluralist turn” in philosophy of science now characterizes the current paradigm of post-positivist philosophy of science, following the earlier “historical turn” (Bird 2008) and “practice turn” (Soler et al. 2014). As a variety of this larger pluralist turn in contemporary theory, this growing interest in scientific pluralism has both nourished and been influenced by other forms of pluralism originating in the philosophical and non-philosophical domains (Kellert et al. 2006). The proliferation of pluralisms in science studies can be seen as a reaction against the prevalently monist approach of mainstream philosophy of science during the first half of the twentieth century.