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EGENIS seminar: "Stylistic Pluralism and Its Discontents",

Dr Matteo Vagelli (Ca' Foscari University of Venice/Harvard
University)
Egenis seminar series

An Egenis, the Centre for the Study of Life Sciences seminar

Date 20 February 2023

Time 15:30 to 17:00

Place Online via Zoom

Post-positivist philosophy of science, as it developed in the second half of the twentieth century, is characterized by a
“pluralist turn”, partially building on previous “historical” and “practice” turns. Contrary to the prevalently monist approach
espoused by mainstream philosophy of science during the first half of the twentieth century, the pluralist turn is normally
taken to emphasize the disunity of the sciences, in terms of both methods and results. However, pluralism has developed
in different directions, giving place to different ontological, epistemological, and methodological positions that are at times
in tension with one another.

One of the “pluralisms” that proliferated in Anglophone philosophy of science during the second half of the twentieth
century involves conceiving of the history of science as a history of “scientific styles”. Conflicting interpretations of “styles”
in science mainly concern whether the term implies abandonment of the realism, objectivity, and progressiveness
commonly understood to distinguish science from the arts.

Taking stock of these debates, in my presentation I aim to discuss the notion of “stylistic pluralism” in relation to some of
the forms of ontological, epistemological and methodological pluralism mentioned above. In the first part of my talk, I will
build on Ian Hacking’s theory of “styles of scientific reasoning” (Hacking 1982, 1992, 2012) and analyze some of its
shortcomings. As a second step, I aim to improve Hacking’s notion of styles by integrating insights from Hasok Chang’s
notion of “systems of practice”, considered in the more general framework of his “active normative epistemic pluralism.”
(Chang 2012) The notion of “stylistic pluralism”, thus reworked, should allow us to recognize the advances associated with
the pluralist turn without falling into the relativism and constructivism it is often taken to imply.

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