Chemistry Reference
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extending old or developing entirely new approaches. The monist philosopher must
ignore all that or reject it as “applied” research not worth studying. Sticking to the
glorious past of less than a handful of physical theories, monist philosophy has
developed an extreme conservatism without contact with contemporary science and
its enormous creativity. In contrast, pluralist philosophy can not only appreciate this
aspect but also study its manifold dynamics.
When the division of labor is not so clear-cut, such that different approaches are
required to collaborate in a multi-aim project, they can share and combine their
resources. Pluralism provides the analytical resources to understand possible bar-
riers of interdisciplinarity, in terms of their different conceptual and methodological
views, and mediate between them, whereas the only monist answer to such prob-
lems is the hierarchical order by way of impossible discipline reduction. Moreover,
combining resources and perspectives has the further advantage that it can create
new conceptual and methodological approaches. Because scientific research is all
about creating novel understanding, pluralism thus provides the best framework for
the methodology of discovery and innovation. In contrast, monist methodologies
have largely focused on the futile search for a universal logical method for the
retrospective justification of what is already known, e.g., the support of a theory.
That, however, considerably differs among disciplines as diverse as, say, geology
and mathematics, and among specific research fields, depending on their respective
research aims and methods as well as the intended usage of their theories.
Surely competition plays an important role in pluralist science too. Two
approaches or models may compete with each other on which is the best one to
achieve a certain aim. Such debates help sharpen and elaborate the approaches, or
inspire entirely new ones. It may turn out that their aims and areas of intended
applications differ more than was expected at first, such that they can supplement
each other. If the difference is more fundamental, competition continues, which
might result in different research schools and traditions that each develop valuable
conceptual and methodological resources further. Because the future of science is
for reasons of principle not predictable, including future aims and research ques-
tions, final decisions on such competitions would be an unreasonable strategy in
science. However, monist philosophy requires such a decision, because there is
supposed to be only one “truth”. It imposes the inappropriate winner/loser metaphor
on science to purge it from the valuable conceptual and methodological resources
of the alleged losers. In contrast, pluralist philosophy cannot only study the various
ways of solving competitions, but also appreciate continuing competition for
epistemological reasons. The more approaches we have, the richer is our perspec-
tival understanding of the world; and the more precisely the approaches are limited,
the more reliable is our knowledge. Thus, pluralism allows for two-dimensional
progress in science, whereas monism makes the unreasonable demand that scien-
tists produce both methodological and content-based knowledge that would most
likely have to be dropped in the future.
Finally, pluralism provides valuable lessons for philosophy of science drawn
from the pluralist constitution of science in general and of chemistry in particular. If
a philosopher makes general statements about science, the pluralist asks: for which
