From Hacking's plurality of styles of scientific reasoning to "foliated" pluralism, a philosophically robust form of ontologico-methodological pluralism
Résumé
This essay aims at proposing a "philosophically important" form of scientific pluralism that captures essential features of contemporary scientific pratice largely ignored by the various forms of scientific pluralism currently discussed by philosophers. My starting point is Hacking's concept of style of scientific reasoning, with a focus on its ontological import. I extend Hacking's thesis by proposing the process of "ontological enrichment" to grasp how the objects created by a style articulate with the common objects of scientific inquiry "out there in the world". The result is "foliated pluralism", which puts to the fore the transdisciplinary and cumulative ways of proceeding in science, as well as the historical dimension of the genesis of scientific objects.