Historical Contingency and the Impact of Scientific Imperialism

Abstract

In a recent article in this journal, Steve Clarke and Adrian Walsh propose a normative basis for John Dupré's criticisms of scientific imperialism, namely that scientific imperialism can cause a discipline to fail to progress in ways that it otherwise would have. This proposal is based on two presuppositions: one, that scientific disciplines have developmental teleologies, and two, that these teleologies are optimal. I argue that we should reject both of these presuppositions and so conclude that Clarke and Walsh's proposal is insufficiently warranted for it to provide a normative basis for criticisms of scientific imperialism.

Acknowledgements

I offer my thanks to Tom Bunce, Steve Clarke, James McAllister, Gregory Radick, and an anonymous referee for very helpful comments on a previous version.