Scientific thought often presents itself as pluralistic. Competing models, rival theories, alternative formalisms, and provisional interpretations are treated as signs of vitality rather than weakness.
And yet, plurality is rarely tolerated as a condition.
It is endured only as a phase.
Plurality as Temporary Disorder
Multiple descriptions of the same domain are permitted — provided they are understood as incomplete, provisional, or awaiting unification.
Plurality is framed as a symptom of epistemic limitation:
-
insufficient data
-
immature theory
-
unresolved disagreement
-
lack of mathematical elegance
-
historical contingency
The expectation is clear.
Plurality must converge.
The Promise of Reconciliation
Scientific explanation is guided by a powerful promise: that divergent descriptions ultimately describe the same thing, and that their differences will eventually be reconciled at a deeper level.
This promise does important work. It sustains cooperation, justifies competition, and motivates synthesis.
But it also constrains what counts as acceptable plurality.
Descriptions may differ — but not irreducibly.
When Plurality Refuses to Collapse
Some pluralities persist stubbornly:
-
incompatible formalisms with equivalent predictive success
-
mutually exclusive descriptions that cannot be combined
-
interpretations that resolve different constraints at the cost of others
-
models that work only within limited domains
-
perspectives that cannot be simultaneously held
These pluralities are not accidents. They are structural.
And they are deeply uncomfortable.
The Usual Strategies
When plurality will not collapse, scientific thought tends to manage it rather than accept it:
-
by ranking descriptions hierarchically
-
by designating one as fundamental and others as derivative
-
by treating some as merely instrumental
-
by postponing resolution to future theory
-
by appealing to metaphysical commitments outside the science itself
Plurality is not allowed to stand on its own terms.
It must be disciplined.
The Cost of Intolerance
The intolerance of plurality is not merely methodological. It reshapes ontology.
By insisting that only one description can ultimately be correct, scientific thought often erases the role of perspective in articulating phenomena. Differences in description are treated as differences in access to a single underlying reality, rather than as different cuts through a field of possibility.
Plurality becomes competition, not coexistence.
Relational Plurality
Relational ontology treats plurality differently.
Plurality is not a failure to agree on what is. It is the consequence of the fact that no single construal can exhaust a domain of possibility.
Different descriptions do not merely approximate the same reality from different angles. They actualise different aspects of a structured potential.
Incompatibility Without Error
From this stance, incompatibility does not imply that one description must be wrong.
Mutually exclusive descriptions may each be internally coherent, empirically adequate, and ontologically disciplined — while remaining irreconcilable.
Each description carries conditions under which it holds, and limits beyond which it cannot go.
Plurality and Responsibility
Plurality places a burden on the theorist.
If no single description can dominate without remainder, then choice becomes explicit. One must take responsibility for the cuts one makes: what is foregrounded, what is suppressed, what is rendered salient, what is left unactualised.
Plurality cannot be dissolved into neutrality.
The Fear Beneath the Intolerance
At its deepest level, the intolerance of plurality reflects a fear that without ultimate reconciliation, understanding fragments.
But fragmentation is not the only alternative.
Coherence need not be singular.
A field can be structured without being unified by a single view.
The Field Revisited
What scientific thought often seeks is not merely explanation, but closure.
Plurality resists closure.
It insists that understanding may consist in navigating a landscape of constrained possibilities rather than arriving at a final map.
This is difficult to accept — not because it weakens science, but because it redefines its ambition.
Plurality as Condition
Relational ontology does not resolve plurality. It makes room for it.
The world does not present itself as a single, fully articulable order awaiting description. It presents itself as a field that can be cut in multiple, incompatible, but disciplined ways.
After the Intolerances
Taken together — perspective, incompleteness, non-identity, and plurality — these intolerances trace a single tension.
Relational ontology does not oppose science. It reframes what science is doing when it succeeds.
No comments:
Post a Comment