CULTURAL PLURALISM AND METHODOLOGICAL TOLERANCE
Keywords:
Carnap, Feyerabend, Rationality, Pluralism., Tolerance, UnityAbstract
This paper presents an analysis of scientific knowledge presupposing the concepts of ‘method’ and ‘scientific rationality’ from the following question: to what extent can we say that the scientific enterprise is a rational one? Should there be a single pattern, something like empirical control, objectivity and logical justification? Should we question the limits of distinctions scientific / non-scientific; rational / irrational; science / history of science? Are these distinctions contextual or should they be contextualized? Thus, epistemological anarchism, understood as methodological pluralism, leads us to a new way of discussing scientific rationality, notably contextualized rationality. Uniformity is tedious, we agree with Feyerabend, but it has nothing to do with objectivity. We understand that objectivity is a condition for the possibility of science from the perspective of scientific unity, but it is not conditioned by uniformity, which restricts the freedom of its practices. An anarchist methodology that aims for theoretical proliferation is a good alternative to uniformity but not to the unity of science, which serves another purpose, that of logical justification. Therefore, cultural pluralismo and methodological tolerance are compatible. And not an ‘ocean of mutually incompatible alternatives’.
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