Abstract
Although Longino and Solomon are interested in what social conditions will produce better science, neither philosopher has provided a sufficient analysis of the social character of science. For instance, neither considers the social character of discovery as well as that of justification, or that an individual scientist’s social status and social relations may be important for understanding her role in both processes. The contributors to Schmitt’s volume are interested in whether the terms that refer to social entities can be reduced to or eliminated in favor of terms referring to individuals. Their analyses, which proceed largely by testing their intuitions against imaginary examples, could benefit from paying more attention to actual social science and real-world social problems. Ideally, these social metaphysicians should be engaged with philosophers of science in a joint effort to investigate whether a social account of scientific knowledge can explain something that an individualist account leaves out