Current sociology of knowledge tends to take for granted Robert K. Merton’s theory of cumulative advantage: successful ideas bring recognition to their authors, successful authors have their ideas recognized more easily than unknown ones. This article argues that this theory should be revised via the introduction of the differential between the status of an idea and that of its creator: when an idea is more important than its creator, the latter becomes identified with the former, and this will hinder recognition (...) of the intellectual’s new ideas as they differ from old ones in their content or style. Robert N. Bellah’s performance during the “civil religion debate” of the 1970s is reconstructed as an example of how this mechanism may work. Implications for further research are considered in the concluding section. (shrink)

Science is always presupposing some basic concepts that are held to be useful. These absolute presuppositions (Collingwood) are rarely debated and form the framework for what has been termed paradigm by Kuhn. Our currently accepted scientific model is predicated on a set of presuppositions that have difficulty accommodating holistic structures and relationships and are not geared towards incorporating non-local correlations. Since the theoretical models we hold also determine what we perceive and take as scientifically viable, it is important to look (...) for an alternative model that can deal with holistic relationships. One approach is to generalise algebraic quantum theory, which is an inherently holistic framework, into a generic model. Relaxing some restrictions and definitions from quantum theory proper yields an axiomatic framework that can be applied to any type of system. Most importantly, it keeps the core of the quantum theoretical formalism. It is capable of handling complementary observables, i.e. descriptors which are non-commuting, incompatible and yet collectively required to fully describe certain situations. It also predicts a generalised form of non-local correlations that in quantum theory are known as entanglement. This generalised version is not quantum entanglement but an analogue form of holistic, non-local connectedness of elements within systems, predicted to occur whenever elements within systems are described by observables which are complementary to the description of the whole system. While a considerable body of circumstantial evidence supports the plausibility of the model, we are not yet in a position to use it for clear cut predictions that could be experimentally falsified. The series of papers offered in this special issue are the beginning of what we hope will become a rich scientific debate. (shrink)

The dramatic and ongoing changes in the funding of science have stimulated interest in an economics of scientific knowledge, which would investigate the effects of these changes on the scientific enterprise. Hands has previously explored the lessons for such an ESK from the existing precedent of the sociology of scientific knowledge. In particular, he examines the philosophical problems of SSK and those that any ESK in its image would face. This paper explores this argument further by contending that more recent (...) literature in SSK exposes even deeper philosophical problems than those identified by Hands. Meaning finitism has emerged as the philosophical core of SSK. An examination of the profound problems with this position is used to show that an underlying extensionalism is the root of SSK's intractable philosophical difficulties, and to illustrate the entirely different approach of a critical philosophy that is advocated in its place. In this way, the project of an ESK is shown to depend upon a critical philosophy. (shrink)

Regulatory science, which generates knowledge relevant for regulatory decision-making, is different from standard academic science in that it is oriented mainly towards the attainment of non-epistemic aims. The role of uncertainty and the limits to the relevance of academic science are being recognized more and more explicitly in regulatory decision-making. This has led to the introduction of regulation-specific scientific methodologies in order to generate decision-relevant data. However, recent practical experience with such non-standard methodologies indicates that they, too, may be subject (...) to important limitations. We argue that the attainment of non-epistemic values and aims requires not only control of the quality of the data and the methodologies, but also the selection of the level of regulation deemed adequate in each specific case. (shrink)

Prediction markets, which trade contracts based on the results of predictions, have been remarkably successful in predicting the results of political events. A number of proposals have been made to extend prediction markets to scientific questions, and some small-scale science prediction markets have been implemented. Advocates for science prediction markets argue that they could alleviate problems in science such as bias in peer review and epistemically unjustified consensus. I argue that bias in peer review and epistemically unjustified consensuses are genuine (...) problems in science, and that current attempts to solve them fail in practical circumstances. Prediction markets do show some promise for answering scientific questions while avoiding the pitfalls of consensus and peer review. However, there are strong reasons to believe that science prediction markets will not perform nearly so well as election prediction markets, and implementing prediction markets on a large scale could have significant unintended consequences for the organization of scientific research. The promise of prediction markets to solve current problems in assessing scientific claims is therefore largely illusory. (shrink)

: This paper seeks to contribute to the development of a sociological understanding of scientific change. It first presents a conceptual framework for defining and understanding the conditions that give rise to episodes of cumulative change (both as the selective reconstruction of events and as the patterned structuring of innovations over time and across different settings). It argues that one of the most powerful structuring mechanisms is the existence of standardized research technologies. Then, the development of electroencephalography (EEG) is presented (...) as an illustrative case study. The EEG supported a dramatic episode of development in brain science, and did so primarily through technological standardization and reliability. The case shows how standard and manipulable technologies provide a framework for orderly change both in retrospective accounts and in specific historical periods of scientific practice. (shrink)

General science literacy contributes to good public decision‐making about technology and medicine. This essay explores the kinds of science literacy currently developed by public education in the United States of America. It argues that current curricula on “science as inquiry” (formerly the “nature of science”) need to be brought up to date with the inclusion of discussion of social epistemological concepts such as trust and scientific authority, scientific disagreement versus science denialism, the role of ideology and bias in scientific research, (...) and the importance of peer review and responsiveness to criticism. (shrink)

Born to Rebel is an innovative and important work with much to say to philosophers of science, as well as historians and sociologists of science. Sulloway uses, successfully, quantitative statistical methods that others have despaired of using to analyze the complexities of historical change. In particular, he investigates scientific decision-making during scientific controversies with a multivariate analysis. The goal is to discern, precisely, the contribution of factors such as religious belief, social class, age, years of education, nationality, sex and personality.

Born to Rebel is an innovative and important work with much to say to philosophers of science, as well as historians and sociologists of science. Sulloway uses, successfully, quantitative statistical methods that others have despaired of using to analyze the complexities of historical change. In particular, he investigates scientific decision-making during scientific controversies with a multivariate analysis. The goal is to discern, precisely, the contribution of factors such as religious belief, social class, age, years of education, nationality, sex and personality.

One way to compare different theoretical approaches to the study of technologies is to see what the difference is between their narratives of the construction of a particular technology. In this paper, we re-narrate the bicycle construction from the perspective of actor-network theory (ANT), comparing to SCOT’s first account of the construction. Although SCOT has moved closer to actor-network theory later by paying more attention to co-construction and materliaty, Pinch and Biker have not modified their account of the bicycle development (...) according to these theoretical changes, despite the fact that one decade later Bijker allocated one chapter, ‘king of the road’, to Safety bicycle development again. An ANT’s narrative of bicycle development can provide a basis for a concrete comparison between ANT and the classic version of SCOT. Or it could be argued that this narrative could complement the story of Pinch and Biker of bicycle development. While we present a new narrative of bicycle development in comparison with SCOT’s one, we offer a methodological framework in the ANT literature that can be considered as a methodological procedure to the study of artefacts in general; this framework has three elements: 1. Phenomenal Bracketing, 2. Collective construction, and 3. Co-construction. (shrink)

Abstract: This essay critically examines whether there are ethical dimensions to the way that expertise, knowledge claims, and expressions of skepticism intersect on technical matters that influence public policy, especially during times of crisis. It compares two different perspectives on the matter: a philosophical outlook rooted in discourse and virtue ethics and a sociological outlook rooted in the so-called third-wave approach to science studies. The comparison occurs through metaphilosophical analysis and applied claims that clarify how the disciplinary orientations appear to (...) lead to different judgments about matters related to Robert Paarlberg's condemnation of activists who advise African politicians to ban genetically modified food. (shrink)

Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, philosophers of various sorts, including Helmholtz, Avenarius, Husserl, Russell, Carnap, Neurath, and Heidegger, were united in promulgating a new, “scientific” philosophy. This article documents some of the varieties of scientific philosophy and argues that the history of scientific philosophy is crucial to the development of analytic philosophy and the division between analytic and continental philosophy. Scientific philosophy defined itself via criticisms of old-fashioned systematic metaphysics and, in the twentieth century, of Lebensphilosophie. It (...) offered a modernist vision of philosophy participating in a progressive, problem-solving, piecemeal, and collaborative scientific ethos. The article argues that the rise of scientific philosophy indicates a change of the conception of science as well as philosophy in the late nineteenth century and notes some tensions in the accounts of science offered by scientific philosophers. The article offers some preliminary lessons for the interpretation of logical empiricism and phenomenology as episodes within a larger history of scientific philosophy. (shrink)

In 1991, the myotonic dystrophy gene was cloned by researchers from Cardiff, London, and elsewhere overseas. This article examines the relationships between the different research groups. It shows that the scientific collaboration on the myotonic dystrophy research was not a constant, stable feature of scientific progress but a process whereby the relationships among the scientists altered over time according to the stage of the research. This process was mediated by vested interests, by personalities, by the power differentials of the groups, (...) by the resources of the groups, by subcollaborations, and by interactions with those outside the main research network. The collaboration can be seen as a continuum, ranging from full cooperation with all parties to selected revelations to specific parties to intense competition. These cooperative and competitive relationships are seen primarily from the perspective of one research group, with whom intensive field research was conducted. (shrink)

This article offers a critical review of various ontological-relativist arguments, mostly deriving from the work of W. V. Quine and Thomas K hn. I maintain that these arguments are (1) internally contradictory, (2) incapable of accounting for our knowledge of the growth of scientific knowledge, and (3) shown up as fallacious from the standpoint of a causal-realist approach to issues of truth, meaning, and interpretation. Moreover, they have often been viewed as lending support to such programmes as the 'strong' sociology (...) of knowledge and the turn towards wholesale cultural-relativist doctrines, whether of the Wittgensteinian ('language-games') or Heideggerian (depth-hermeneutic) varieties. Thus Richard Rorty recommends that we should henceforth drop all that old-fashioned talk of 'truth', 'knowledge', or 'reality', since whatever warrants those descriptions from time to time is just the product of some currently favoured language-game or range of elective metaphors. Such ideas have little in common with Quine's general outlook of robust physicalism, nor again - though the case is less clear - with Kuhn's reconsidered approach to these issues as set forth in his 1969 Postscript to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions . However, both thinkers have left themselves open to misconstrual by adopting a sceptical-relativist fallback position in response to the well-known problems with logical empiricism. This essay therefore reviews those problems with reference to alternative, more adequate accounts of what is involved in the process of scientific discovery and theory-change. (shrink)

Mainstream analytic epistemology regards knowledge as the property of individuals, rather ‎than groups. Drawing on insights from the reality of knowledge production and dissemination ‎in the sciences, I argue, from within the analytic framework, that this view is wrong. I defend ‎the thesis of ‘knowledge-level justification communalism’, which states that at least some ‎knowledge, typically knowledge obtained from expert testimony, is the property of a ‎community and possibly none of its individual members, in that only the community or some ‎members (...) of it collectively possesses knowledge-level justification for its individual members’ ‎beliefs. I address several objections that individuals, qua individuals, have or are able to ‎acquire knowledge-level justification for all the beliefs they obtain from expert testimony. I ‎argue that the problem I identify with individualism is invariant under any specific account of ‎justification, internalist or externalist. ‎. (shrink)

These reflections range over some distinctive features of the journal Science & Education, they acknowledge in a limited way the many individuals who over the past 25 years have contributed to the success and reputation of the journal, they chart the beginnings of the journal, and they dwell on a few central concerns—clear writing and the contribution of HPS to teacher education. The reflections also revisit the much-debated and written-upon philosophical and pedagogical arguments occasioned by the rise and possible demise (...) of constructivism in science education. (shrink)

This paper examines the limits and possibilities of topological approaches in the social analysis of technology. It proposes that topology should be considered not just as a theory to be adopted, but equally as a device that is deployed in social life in a variety of ways. Digital technologies help to make clear why: these technologies have facilitated the spread of a topological imagination, but they have also enabled a weak form of topological imagination, one that leaves in place deterministic (...) ideas about technology as the principal driver of social change. This paper examines this situation and alternatives to it through an empirical case, that of smart electricity meters. On the one hand, these technologies enable only a limited ‘expansion of the frame’ on technology, one in which the primacy of technology is maintained. But they are also used to render relations between technology and society more complexly. I explore topological devices deployed in this second way, such as the digital visualization tool of tag clouding and propose that this device enables an empirical mode of critique: here, topology does not just help to foreground the entanglement of the social and the technical, it also helps to dramatize the contingent, non-coherent unfolding of issues. (shrink)

Infrastructure management has traditionally been based on a logic of predict and provide in which rising demand was met with an increase in infrastructure capacity. However, recent changes in political, economic, and environmental priorities mean that projects such as new roads, which simply expand supply, have become more controversial, and that reducing demand is now a key challenge. This article is about the different ways in which infrastructure managers have tried to achieve reductions in demand, as well as the range (...) of plans that blend various proportions of technological and institutional innovation. For the sociology of science, the controversies over these urban environment plans are interesting not just because they are scientific controversies but because they are controversies over the relationships between science, expertise, technology, and society. As a result, the authors argue that sociologists of science have a contribution to make as experts in their own right. This article argues that the sociology of scientific knowledge needs to move beyond symmetry and neutrality and outlines some of the ways in which SSK can make a difference by repositioning itself at the center of contemporary policy debates. (shrink)

Regulatory science, which generates knowledge relevant for regulatory decision?making, is different from standard academic science in that it is oriented mainly towards the attainment of non?epistemic (practical) aims. The role of uncertainty and the limits to the relevance of academic science are being recognized more and more explicitly in regulatory decision?making. This has led to the introduction of regulation?specific scientific methodologies in order to generate decision?relevant data. However, recent practical experience with such non?standard methodologies indicates that they, too, may be (...) subject to important limitations. We argue that the attainment of non?epistemic values and aims (like the protection of human health and the environment) requires not only control of the quality of the data and the methodologies, but also the selection of the level of regulation deemed adequate in each specific case (including a decision about which of the two, under?regulation or over?regulation, would be more acceptable). (shrink)

This article contributes to the development of a rhetorical approach to the public understanding of science or science literacy. It is argued that rhetoric promises an alternative approach to deficit models that treat people as faulty scientists. Some tensions in the relevant rhetorical literature need resolution. These center on the application to science of an Aristotelian conception of rhetorical reasoning as enthymematic, without breaking from the Platonic/aristotelian division between technical and public spheres. The former opens science to the potential of (...) public critique; the latter closes this, effectively reinstating a deficit model. Gross’s writings are used to bring this point out sharply. A resolution is proposed, building on a view of rhetoric as socially constitutive and leading to a conception of public understanding as witcraft. Here, Billig’s rhetorical psychology provides the basis for reconfiguring the enthymeme in a manner that construes the division between spheres as itself rhetorically constituted. Creationism is used to provide brief illustration. (shrink)

The philosophy of science has witnessed continuous controversy since the mid-twentieth century regarding the justification of science’s privileged position, and which has also reverberated in the philosophy of science education. This contribution brings to the discussion the viewpoint of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. I suggest that by relating to the idea of the fallibility of knowledge, Gadamerian philosophy provides a compromise between the extreme positions in the aforementioned debate. Gadamerian hermeneutics also has implications for science education: from the Gadamerian perspective, (...) science education should (1) induce experiences of negation that familiarize learners with their own pre-understanding and (2) introduce learners to the fallibility of knowledge. Finally, I argue that both instances (1) and (2) aim to cultivate non-dogmatism in learners. (shrink)

There is growing need for hybrid curricula that integrate constructivist methods from Science and Technology Studies (STS) into both engineering and policy courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. However, institutional and disciplinary barriers have made implementing such curricula difficult at many institutions. While several programs have recently been launched that mix technical training with consideration of “societal” or “ethical issues,” these programs often lack a constructivist element, leaving newly-minted practitioners entering practical fields ill-equipped to unpack the politics of knowledge (...) and technology or engage with skeptical publics. This paper presents a novel format for designing interdisciplinary coursework that combines conceptual content from STS with training in engineering and policy. Courses following this format would ideally be team taught by instructors with advanced training in diverse fields, and hence co-learning between instructors and disciplines is a key element of the format. Several instruments for facilitating both student and instructor collaborative learning are introduced. The format is also designed for versatility: in addition to being adaptable to both technical and policy training environments, topics are modularized around a conceptual core so that issues ranging from biotech to nuclear security can be incorporated to fit programmatic needs and resources. (shrink)

Scientists continually face public concerns over the potential risks of biotechnology. This article reflects on the 1970s when leading molecular biologists established a moratorium, and initiated the second international Asilomar conference, on recombinant DNA molecules. Since then, this event has been widely perceived as an important historical moment when scientific actors took into account public concerns. Yet, by focusing on the history of the Public Understanding of Science discourse, we gain new insight into how ‘‘science’’ and the ‘‘public’’ have in (...) the meantime been framed in political discourses as homogeneous but antagonistic concepts. This sheds new light on the ways scientific, political, and administrative actors in biotechnology perceive the events, which occurred in the 1970s. Through interviews, we found that, with the Asilomar II conference serving as a quasi role model, the quest to reconcile ‘‘science’’ and the ‘‘public’’ is being traced back to a moment in history when such divisions had yet to be considered. This leads us to ask whether the politics of PUS contributed as much to the production of these two entities as it is claimed to have done in bridging the differences between them. (shrink)

The past twenty years have been an incredibly productive period in science studies. Still, because recent work in science studies puts a spotlight on agency and enabling situa tions, many practitioners in the field ignore, underplay, or dismiss the possibility that historically established, structurally stable attributes of the world may systemically shape practice at the laboratory level. This article questions this general position. Draw ing on data from a participant observation study of a university biology laboratory, it describes five features (...) of the institutional landscape that shape this laboratory's practice. (shrink)

This article examines a scientific controversy that raged for twenty years in physical organic chemistry during the second half of the twentieth century. After explaining what was at stake in the non-classical ion debate, I attempt—by examining the methodological reflections of some of the participants—a partial explanation of what sustained this controversy, particularly during its early stages. Instead of suggesting a breakdown of scientific method or the unavoidable historical contingency of scientific development, the endurance of this controversy instead reveals the (...) heuristic and pragmatic character of many of the explanations and predictions generated by theoretical organic chemistry. The results in this case are used to suggest a new role for the study of scientific controversies in revealing the economics of scientific inquiry. 1 Introduction2 The Non-classical Ion Debate3 Models for the 2-Norbornyl System4 Soft Theories and Reasoning by Analogy5 Scientific Controversy and the Non-classical Ion Debate6 Conclusion. (shrink)

Although Wes Shrum advertised my critics as representing quite distinct points of view, they nevertheless managed to converge on a set of concerns that revolve around the meanings of "rhetoric," "politics," and "multiculturalism" in the project of social epistemology. Either the critics were not chosen correctly or the book under discussion is quite obviously flawed! Rather than make that Hobson's choice, I will address my critics' concerns in a way that I hope will prove illuminating to other normatively oriented theorists (...) in the social sciences who want to take the challenge of postmodernism seriously but who also realize that postmodernism may soon become the orthodoxy, rather than the challenger, in cultural politics. (shrink)

Speaking with conversational AIs, technologies whose interfaces enable human-like interaction based on natural language, has become a common phenomenon. During these interactions, people form their beliefs due to the say-so of conversational AIs. In this paper, I consider, and then reject, the concepts of testimony-based beliefs and instrument-based beliefs as suitable for analysis of beliefs acquired from these technologies. I argue that the concept of instrument-based beliefs acknowledges the non-human agency of the source of the belief. However, the analysis focuses (...) on perceiving signs and indicators rather than content expressed in natural language. At the same time, the concept of testimony-based beliefs does refer to natural language propositions, but there is an underlying assumption that the agency of the testifier is human. To fill the lacuna of analyzing belief acquisition from conversational AIs, I suggest a third concept: technology-based beliefs. It acknowledges the non-human agency-status of the originator of the belief. Concurrently, the focus of analysis is on the propositional content that forms the belief. Filling the lacuna enables analysis that considers epistemic, ethical, and social issues of conversational AIs without excluding propositional content or compromising accepted assumptions about the agency of technologies. (shrink)

Patrick Heelan, with background in quantum theory and in hermeneutic phenomenology, investigated not only the hermeneutical philosophy of science but also the parallels between quantum mechanics and human experience in general and the logic of changes of worldview. Heelan’s closeness to Aristotle and Lonergan, often neglected, is discussed, and issues concerning Heelan’s treatment of the social context of science are raised.

One can know how to ride a bicycle, play the cello, or collect experimental data. But who can know how to properly ride a tandem bicycle, perform a symphony, or run a high-energy physics experiment? Reductionist analyses fail to account for these cases strictly in terms of the individual know-how involved. Nevertheless, it doesn't follow from non-reductionism that groups possess this know-how. One must first show that epistemic extension cannot obtain. This is the idea that individuals can possess knowledge even (...) when others possess some of the epistemic materials generating it. I show that only knowledge-that can be epistemically extended, not knowledge-how. Appeal to epistemic extension is a viable way of avoiding group knowledge-that ascriptions but not group knowledge-how ascriptions. Therefore, groups can know how. (shrink)

I have argued that political values are beliefs informed, more or less well, by the evidence of experience and that, where relevant and well-supported by evidence, the inclusion of political values in scientific theorizing can increase the objectivity of research. The position I endorse has been called the “values-as-evidence” approach. In this essay I respond to three kinds of resistance to this approach, using examples of feminist political values. Solomon questions whether values are beliefs that can be tested, Alcoff argues (...) that even if our values are beliefs that can be tested, testing them might not be desirable because doing so assigns these important values a contingency that weakens their normative force, and Yap argues that the approach is too idealistic in its articulation of the role of evidence in our political deliberations. In response, I discuss the ways that values can be tested, I analyze the evidential strength of feminist values in science, and I argue that the evidence-based nature of these values is neither a weakness nor an idealization. Problems with political values affecting science properly concern the dogmatic ways that evaluative beliefs are sometimes held—a problem that arises with dogmatism toward descriptive beliefs as well. I conclude that scientists, as with the rest of us, ought to adopt a pragmatically-inclined appreciation of the fallible, inductive process by which we gather evidence in support of any of our beliefs, whether they are described as evaluative or descriptive. (shrink)

The case of the Arabian babblers is a controversial and significant one in ethology that troubles standard sociobiological theories of the evolution of behaviour. In this chapter from her book Naissance d'une théorie éthologique, Vinciane Despret examines the divergent models and methods of the scientists studying the babblers, their different epistemologies and ontologies that are only truly visible and understandable if one takes into account their particular ways of comporting themselves with the birds, and the babblers’ active role in writing (...) their own scripts. In so far as it resembles the immersive participation and individual biographing of anthropological and primatological methods, and pays skilful attention to the reasons for their actions, Zahavi's way of relating to and questioning the babblers gives them the opportunity to respond. (shrink)

Following Mr. Bixby and some other 19th century scientist-philosophers such as Claude Bernard, relevant scientific actions should, as a matter of primary importance, be explained with reference to the competence and not to the intentions of those involved. The background is a reliabilist virtue approach - a widespread tendency in 19th century epistemology and philosophy of science. Bixby's approach includes a critique of some constructivist arguments and establishes a mutually supportive connection to conceptions of scientific progress.

Following Mr. Bixby and some other 19th century scientist-philosophers such as Claude Bernard, relevant scientific actions should, as a matter of primary importance, be explained with reference to the competence and not to the intentions of those involved. The background is a reliabilist virtue approach - a widespread tendency in 19th century epistemology and philosophy of science. Bixby's approach includes a critique of some constructivist arguments and establishes a mutually supportive connection to conceptions of scientific progress.

The history of laboratories may become controversial in social sciences. In this paper, the story of Sciences Po Médialab told by Venturini et al. is discussed and completed by demonstrating the incoherence in the choice of digital methods at the Médialab from the actor network theory perspective. As the Médialab mostly used web topologies as structural analysis of social positions, they were not able to account for the propagation of ideas, considered in actor network theory as non-humans that have their (...) own agency. The main arguments in favour of the ‘more continuous social’ developed at the Médialab proved to be as misleading as the network metaphor. The distribution of agency that actor network theory so successfully expands was paradoxicallty reduced to structures and individual preferences, to the detriment of the agency of replications that circulate entities in the form of messages, content or memes, and that should now become the next step for actor network theory-style digital methods. (shrink)

Positivism and, especially, Max Weber's vision of the modern disen chantment of the world are incoherent because they separate human culture from the environment in which human agents pursue their life- projects. The same problem is manifested, more blatantly, in current social studies of science, which take the project of disenchantment further by disenchanting science itself. A different image of science is traced to classical empiricism, whose paradigm of learning is belief and, more specifically, the practical nature of the believer's (...) experience of the environment of his or her actions. The believer's ecological imagery of the world, as it was elaborated by classical empiricism, provides the means to transcend the disenchanted image of the world and its prob lems. (shrink)

Using the Burgess Shale controversies as a case-study, this paper argues that controversies within different domains may interact as to create a situation of "complicated intricacies," where the practicing scientist has to navigate through a context of multiple thought collectives. To some extent each of these collectives has its own dynamic complete with fairly negotiated standards for investigation and explanation, theoretical background assumptions and certain peculiarities of practice. But the intellectual development in one of these collectives may "spill over" having (...) far reaching consequences for the treatment of apparently independent epistemic problems that are subject of investigation in other thought collectives. For the practicing scientist it is necessary to take this complex web of interactions into account in order to be able to navigate in such a situation. So far most studies of academic science have had a tendency to treat the practicing scientist as members of a single (enclosed) thought collective that stands intellectually isolated from other similar entities unless the discipline was in a state of crisis of paradigmatic proportions. The richness and complexity of Burgess Shale debate shows that this encapsulated kind of analysis is not enough. (shrink)