Relativism in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge Revisited 1

Abstract

This paper revisits, from a new angle, some of the debates over the relativism of the "Sociology of Scientific Knowledge" (=SSK). The new angle is provided by recent work on relativism in epistemology and the philosophy of language. I defend three theses. First, SSKrelativism is not an instance of Paul Boghossian's well-known "template" for relativism. Second, SSK-relativism is therefore not directly threatened by arguments targeting this template position. And third, SSK-relativism is nevertheless in the vicinity of this template, and it offers at least sketches of arguments for distinctive and original relativist theses.

Ludwik Fleck’s reasonable relativism about science

“…Many candidate middle-way philosophies, be they examples of relativism, sociology of knowledge, feminist epistemology, perspectivism or pragmatism, share many of the themes discussed in the literature of relativism about science (Kusch, 2020b, p. 64). Several recent books have been published on relativism in science, revealing that the possibility of a non-silly form of relativism is still a live topic of discussion (Baghramian & Coliva, 2020;Kusch, 2019Kusch, , 2020b. Although there are many forms of relativism, they by and large share a set of characteristics.…”

“…According to Baghramian the claim is that "there can be more than one equally true, rational or justified, but mutually incompatible, judgement on a given topic or in a given domain" (Baghramian, 2019; see also Baghramian & Coliva, 2020, p. 9). According to Kusch, however, the claim is that "the different epistemic frameworks (their standards and the judgements they license) are all equally valid" (Kusch, 2019b; see also Kusch, 2020aKusch, , p. 196, 2020b). Kusch takes this latter formulation of equal validity to entail that any set of putative facts that are accepted by a group of researchers is just as correct as any other set of putative facts, which is the hallmark of silly relativism.…”

“…In both the philosophy of science and the philosophy of medicine, philosophers are searching for a middle-way account of science that rejects traditional aspirations of realism and objectivity, whilst avoiding the pitfalls associated with relativism and constructivism (Chang, 2016;Gagné-Julien, 2021;Giere, 2006;Kusch, 2020b;Longino, 2002;Veigl, 2021). On the traditional account of science, the objects and facts described are understood to be independent of human culture, and part of the world-initself (Gagné-Julien, 2021).…”

“…Although overlooked in the recent literature on relativism (Baghramian & Coliva, 2020;Kusch, 2019Kusch, , 2020b, Ludwik Fleck's epistemology (Fleck, 1979) provides just such a reasonable relativism about science. In Sect.…”