THE VALUE OF CROSS-CULTURAL POLYLOGUE IN SCIENCE

Abstract

This paper adds to much existing knowledge of reasons to be pluralist about science and its methods. The pluralism that I defend rebuts Karl Popper and some other philosophers, such as the early logical positivists, who contend (actually, often simply assume) that there are universal procedures, laws or methods that are defining of science, and so are applicable to all fields of scientific enquiry. Philosophers like Stephen Kellert and Helen Longino have defended respectively the thesis of pluralism about occidental science and the related thesis that its epistemologies (in the plural) are “local†not only within cognitive geography at a time but also historically. Building on this, I move further in this paper to defend a cross-cultural epistemic pluralism, broadening the idea of local epistemologies so that it concerns as well inquiry concerning the world in systematic indigenous societies.