Abstract
In recent years, several authors have debated about the justifiability of so-called scientific imperialism. To date, however, widespread disagreements remain regarding both the identification and the normative evaluation of scientific imperialism. In this paper, I aim to remedy this situation by making some conceptual distinctions concerning scientific imperialism and by providing a detailed assessment of the most prominent objections to it. I shall argue that these objections provide a valuable basis for opposing some instances of scientific imperialism, but do not yield cogent reasons to think that scientific imperialism in general is objectionable or unjustified. I then highlight three wide-ranging implications of this result for the ongoing philosophical debate about the justifiability of scientific imperialism.
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Notes
This list encompasses the most cited and influential objections to SI. Not all of these objections have been proposed to ground principled opposition to SI. Still, all those objections have been put forward to identify what features allegedly make SI unjustified and to articulate why one should resist SI contributions (see e.g. Clarke and Walsh 2009; Dupré 1995; Mäki 2013).
I focus on disciplinary boundaries as opposed to boundaries between units of analysis other than disciplines (see e.g. Darden and Maull 1977, on fields, and Lakatos 1970, on research programs) because in this paper I prevalently discuss interactions between different disciplines. My remarks concerning prominent objections to SI may be reformulated so as to target interactions between units of analysis other than disciplines.
The set of systematic cross-disciplinary applications of theories and methods that directly intrude in the modelling and explanatory practices of the targeted disciplines may be regarded as more or less broad depending on how one interprets the terms ‘systematic’ and ‘applications’. However, this interpretative concern does not make my characterization of SI overly broad or uninformative. For on most interpretations of ‘systematic’ and ‘applications’, a few occasional or isolated instances of cross-disciplinary interaction fall short of constituting instances of SI.
In recent years, some authors attempted to provide more fine-grained partitions of the set of epistemic and non-epistemic values (see e.g. Douglas 2013). I mention these attempts in passing since the cogency of my evaluation does not rest on what position one takes concerning such attempts. For a critical discussion of the distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic values, see e.g. Longino (1996). For a proposal to regard such distinction as a continuum in some scientific contexts, see e.g. Rooney (1992).
Whether the modelling and explanatory benefits yielded by SI contributions are plausibly taken to justify these contributions may depend on a number of evaluative issues (e.g. how such benefits are distributed across the imperializing and the targeted disciplines; see also point 2.4 above). As a result, many judgments about the justifiability of SI contributions are contestable. This, however, implies neither that all judgments about the justifiability of SI contributions are equally plausible nor that disagreements about such judgments are irresolvable.
Philosophers have proposed various indicators of cross-disciplinary unification, which encompass a range of ontological, axiological, and methodological elements of the involved disciplines (see e.g. Grantham 2004; Wylie 1999). Here I focus on the unity of methods, evidential standards, and categorizations since most proponents of the objection from the disunity of science focus on these elements.
Kitcher has more recently endorsed a more ‘modest’ unificationist view, according to which scientific theorists and practitioners should aim at “finding as much unity as [they] can” (1999, p. 339) while acknowledging that there are limits to the extent science can be unified. My reference to Kitcher’s earlier works (e.g. 1981) does not commit me to endorse his later ‘modest’ unificationist view.
I am not concerned here with discussing which of these two argumentative strategies should be pursued by the proponents of the objection from cumulative constraints. For my evaluative purposes, I just note that my appraisal of Mäki’s constraints differs from other appraisals (see e.g. Davis 2012), which hold that since these constraints are unlikely to be satisfied, endorsing such constraints supports an exceedingly conservative position regarding the justifiability of SI contributions. To be sure, one might agree that a literal interpretation of Mäki’s constraints could yield implausibly restrictive verdicts about the justifiability of SI contributions. This, however, does not exclude that a more nuanced reading of those constraints may avoid this pitfall. In particular, it does not imply that Mäki’s strategy of evaluating SI contributions by specifying constraints on cross-disciplinary interactions is “itself [...] problematic” (Davis 2012, p. 216).
The causal and structural interpretations do not exhaust the set of possible interpretations of the ontological constraint, so my critical evaluation of these two proposed interpretations does not exclude that one may provide precise and plausible interpretations of this constraint. Even so, my critical evaluation challenges the proponents of such constraint to provide more precise and plausible interpretations. In the absence of such interpretations, my critical evaluation can be provisionally taken to cast doubt on the informativeness of the ontological constraint.
To give one example, consider Mäki’s claim that “within an appropriate institutional framework there is little reason to worry about imperialistic trespassing” (2013, p. 337). This claim seems prima facie plausible, yet specifies neither what an ‘appropriate’ institutional framework consists in nor by means of what criteria one is supposed to establish whether any given institutional framework is ‘appropriate’ in the to-be-specified sense. As a result, different authors may nominally endorse such claim and yet radically disagree as to what SI contributions are justifiable and what criteria one should employ to assess the justifiability of SI contributions.
This informativeness concern exacerbates when one examines the proffered attempts to apply the institutional constraint in concrete situations. By way of illustration, consider Mäki and Marchionni’s claim that “too much homogeneity and closed dogmatism [...] would discourage the creation and pursuit of [...] possibly fruitful lines of inquiry [whereas] too much heterogeneity and criticism would also be inadvisable” (2010, p. 12). This claim seems prima facie plausible, yet clarifies neither what ‘too much’ homogeneity and heterogeneity consist in nor by means of what criteria one is supposed to establish whether the homogeneity or heterogeneity found in specific cross-disciplinary contexts is ‘too much’. As a result, different authors may nominally endorse such claim and yet radically disagree as to what SI contributions are justifiable and what criteria one should employ to assess the justifiability of SI contributions.
The fact that social epistemologists’ SI contributions do not subject all their background assumptions to criticism and revision has led some to criticize these SI contributions for relying on questionable background assumptions (see e.g. Alexander et al. 2015). Still, most of the critics concur that the justifiability of those SI contributions depends not so much on whether their proponents subject all their background assumptions to criticism and revision, but rather on the actual empirical and normative plausibility of such assumptions.
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Acknowledgements
I thank J. McKenzie Alexander, Cristina Bicchieri, Stephen Downes, Uskali Mäki, Wendy Parker, Adrian Walsh, Petri Ylikoski and two anonymous referees for their comments on previous versions of this paper. I also benefited from the observations of audiences at the University of Mainz, the Finnish Centre of Excellence (Helsinki), the University of Durham, the University of Lausanne, the University of Pistoia, the University of Pennsylvania, and the 25th Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association.
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Fumagalli, R. Who is afraid of scientific imperialism?. Synthese 195, 4125–4146 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1411-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1411-2