I criticize conceptual pluralism, as endorsed recently by John Dupre and Philip Kitcher, for failing to supply strategies for demarcating science from non-science. (..) I will argue that long-overlooked aspects of logical empiricism, in particular the views of Otto Neurath, provide resources to effectively demarcate pseudo-science from genuine science. (..) Two ways to specify the unity of science [sc properties shared by all scientific disciplines or theorie] and establish a boundary demarcating science from non-science. The first I call "simple unification" (or "simple demarcation") as imagined by Popper or early logical empiricism. (..) The second way to specify the unity of the sciences begins with identifying these interconnections among them. Call this "network unification" (or "network demarcation"). (..) Kitcher (1993, 195): impossibility of articulating a criterion for distinguishing genuine science. Dupré (1993,222): Science, to borrow an important idea from the later Wittgenstein, is best seen as a family resemblance concept (characteristic features of parts of science, but none will have all. (..) In general, pluralists believe neither that the sciences are unified, nor that they ought to be unified. (..) cf their contributions to ongoing debate about the problem of species-concepts. (..) K&D assume that since the biological world is ontologically plural, our biological sciences should be pluralistic (and disunified) as well. (..) Unification, for pluralists, is not a paramount scientific ideal. (..) Metaphysical pluralism supports creation-science by suggesting that its concepts correspond to real, ontologically robust objects in the world. (..) My argument draws upon the work of Otto Neurath, who was also a self-avowed pluralist. But there are some important differences between Neurath's pluralism, which I will sketch and recommend here, and Kitcher's and Dupre's pluralisms. (..) Neurath did not believe that philosophy of science would play any special role in unifying the sciences. (..) From Neurath's point of view, therefore, the Unity of Science Movement would remain embedded within historical processes. (..) "Metaphysical" language is "isolated" from science. (..) Network demarcation should be a scientific [not a philosophical] problem. (..) Neurath anticipated today's naturalism (see, e.g., Uebel 1991, 1992) and deflationism (Fine 1986) which sees science as a practice that has a life independent of philosophy. |