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Abstract
John Dupré argues that ‘scientific imperialism’ can result in ‘misguided’ science being considered acceptable. ‘Misguided’ is an explicitly normative term and the use of the pejorative ‘imperialistic’ is implicitly normative. However, Dupré has not justified the normative dimension of his critique. We identify two ways in which it might be justified. It might be justified if colonisation prevents a discipline from progressing in ways that it might otherwise progress. It might also be justified if colonisation prevents the expression of important values in the colonised discipline. This second concern seems most pressing in the human sciences.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Howard Sankey, James McAllister, and two referees of this journal for some very helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.
Notes
[1] Also Smolin (Citation2007) complains about the imperialism of string theory within physics.
[2] Cartwright is also an antireductionist and is also opposed to horizontal unification. She refers to horizontal unification as ‘cross‐wise reduction’ (Cartwright Citation1999).
[3] Mid‐twentieth‐century proponents of the unity of the sciences proposed a variety of different ways in which the sciences might be unified. Similarly, late‐twentieth‐century advocates of the disunity of science movement propose various ways in which science may be said to be disunified. Hacking (Citation1996) provided a helpful disambiguation of many of these. In addition to being a proponent of the methodological disunity of science Dupré (Citation1993a, Citationb) is a proponent of the metaphysical disunity of science. Our focus here is on his commitment to methodological disunity because, on Dupré's account of scientific imperialism, the colonisation of one science via another occurs by the transmission of methods (Dupré Citation2001, 128).
[4] We have understood Dupré's methodological pluralism to amount to the claim that there is no one method that is the method of science. Perhaps though, Dupré's methodological pluralism could be interpreted as also involving the claim that there are particular but distinct methods that are the correct methods for particular sciences (thanks to an anonymous referee for pointing out this possibility). On this reading there would be an additional reason for an advocate of methodological pluralism to oppose scientific imperialism, namely that it can result in a failure of a science to be conducted via the use of the correct methods.
[5] Dupré (Citation1993b) has other concerns about the explanatory record of economics within its home territory.
[6] Detailed accounts of the process of relating idealisations to reality can be found in Krajewski (Citation1977) and Nowak (Citation1980).
[7] In addition to these objections to imperialism, many critics have objected to the attitudes associated with imperialism. They point to the hubris that is often exhibited by those who colonise other peoples or to the attitudes of superiority concomitant with the view that imperialists have a right to colonise other peoples.
[8] For more on the transformation of population ecology see Ginsburg and Colyvan (Citation2004) and Kingsland (Citation1995).
[9] Indeed, it has recently been argued that the field of ecology is currently overreliant on null hypothesis significance testing and needs to undergo substantial statistical reform (Fidler et al. Citation2004).
[10] For a recent account of progress in science see Niiniluoto (Citation1999).
[11] Discussion of these is beyond the scope of this paper. For a recent response to the relativist see Boghossian (Citation2006).