Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

The historical fact of scientific theory change has been diagnosed epistemologically in a number of ways. A central cleavage exists between diagnoses that characterize scientific knowledge as in some sense relative to historically conditioned contexts or frameworks, and those that allow for some form of robust continuity of knowledge over time. The idea of context relativity has also arisen in connection with scientific knowledge at any given time, in considerations of the apparent independence of many branches of the sciences from one another, and the routine use of mutually inconsistent models even within branches. In this paper, I consider these notions of diachronic and synchronic context relativity, and suggest that as an alternative to the scepticism about knowledge they might otherwise entail, both can be squared with the idea of context-independent knowledge. The key to squaring these circles is a proposal for dealing with ontological “what questions”: questions regarding the ontological character of entities and processes of scientific interest.