Perspectivism in current epigenetics
- PDF / 1,178,022 Bytes
- 18 Pages / 439.642 x 666.49 pts Page_size
- 17 Downloads / 274 Views
Perspectivism in current epigenetics Karim Bschir1 Received: 21 October 2019 / Accepted: 2 March 2020 / Published online: 17 September 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Discussions about perspectivism in the current philosophical literature often focus on questions concerning perspectival modeling or the compatibility between perspectivism and realism. In this paper, I propose to extend the debate on perspectivism by taking into account the social dimension of scientific perspectives. Scientific perspectives are always adopted and advocated for by individual scientists and groups of scientists with different epistemic affinities. I describe an example of a current and ongoing controversy in the field of epigenetics in order to illustrate that diverging scientific perspectives on open scientific questions are often not fully explained by empirical underdetermination or diverging theoretical approaches alone. Opposing perspectives frequently arise from differences in systems of practice and the scientific socializations of the involved scientists, including differences in training, experimental skills, and epistemic priorities. The paper ends with a discussion of the important epistemic function of perspectives in scientific discovery. Ultimately, perspectivism is described as a valid philosophical position that explains how scientific knowledge is generated in situations of empirical underdetermination and why trust in science can be justified even in the absence of a community consensus. Keywords Perspectivism · Epigenetics · Systems of practice · Disagreement
1 Introduction: from perspectival models to perspectival practices The basic idea of perspectivism in the philosophy of science is to highlight the perspectival character of scientific knowledge. Another way to put it would be to say that perspectivism is a philosophical position that views all scientific knowledge claims as essentially contextual. Or to frame it negatively: perspectivism denies the existence This article belongs to the Topical Collection: Perspectivism in science: metaphysical and epistemological reflections Guest Editor: Michela Massimi Karim Bschir
[email protected] 1
University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland
41
Page 2 of 18
European Journal for Philosophy of Science (2020) 10: 41
of what Ernest Nagel famously called a “view from nowhere” that would provide a neutral and objective standpoint from which diverging scientific knowledge claims can be judged (Nagel 1986). The consequence of denying the existence of such an objective standpoint is to say that all scientific knowledge, all scientific theories and frameworks, provide perspectives on reality from within specific contexts. Michela Massimi describes perspectivism as a “family of positions that in different ways place emphasis on our scientific knowledge being situated” (Massimi 2018c, p. 164). One may also try to capture the essence of scientific perspectivism by looking at its predecessors in the philosophical tradition. Perspectivism has two main historical
Data Loading...
