Abstract

This book (edited by Jonathan Y. Tsou, Jamie Shaw, and Carla Fehr) offers eighteen original historical and philosophical essays focused on values in science, scientific pluralism, and pragmatism. These themes have been central in the work of Matthew J. Brown, and the book frames these topics through an engagement with Brown’s broadly ranging work on values in science. The themes of this book are integrated and unified in the pragmatic and value-laden ideal of science defended by Professor Brown in his fascinating 2020 book, Science and Moral Imagination. Brown's ideal of moral imagination prescribes that scientists should recognize the contingencies in their work as unforced choices, examine morally salient aspects of these decisions, recognize the various interests of relevant stakeholders, explore and construct alternative options, and exercise fair and warranted value judgments to guide those decisions. The interdisciplinary essays in this volume engage with different aspects of Brown's philosophical research on scientific values as well as his historical research on figures such as John Dewey and Paul K. Feyerabend. The international contributors to this volume include distinguished and familiar voices from the values in science literature (e.g., Kevin Elliott, Janet Kourany, and Don Howard) as well as newer voices. The resulting book showcases some of the latest innovative research being done on values, pluralism, and pragmatism, and it will be an important resource for researchers working on values in science. Specific topics addressed in the book include: moral imagination, inductive risk, epistemic priority, the value free ideal of science, values in the contexts of artificial intelligence and medicine, varieties of pluralism (e.g., epistemic, ethical, and cultural), and the structure of scientific communities. The book also features novel historical research on important figures in the traditions of pragmatism, pluralism, and values in science, such as John Dewey, John Stuart Mill, Paul Feyerabend, W. V. O. Quine, Ludwig Fleck, among others. The contributions to the volume represent a broad range of contemporary history and philosophy of science perspectives, which have guided Brown's own work, including socially relevant philosophy of science (SRPoiSE), history of philosophy of science (HOPOS), feminist philosophy of science, and philosophy of science in practice (SPSP). The book will be of interest to a broad audience of researchers working in philosophy of science, philosophy of medicine, history and philosophy of science, and science and technology studies.