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The Epistemic Division of Labor Revisited

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Johanna Thoma
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Abstract

Some scientists are happy to follow in the footsteps of others; some like to explore novel approaches. It is tempting to think that herein lies an epistemic division of labor conducive to overall scientific progress: the latter point the way to fruitful areas of research, and the former more fully explore those areas. Weisberg and Muldoon’s model, however, suggests that it would be best if all scientists explored novel approaches. I argue that this is due to implausible modeling choices, and I present an alternative ‘epistemic landscape’ model that demonstrates the alleged benefits from division of labor, with one restriction.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 82 , Issue 3 , July 2015 , pp. 454 - 472
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I owe special thanks to Conor Mayo-Wilson for helpful feedback and encouragement at all stages of this paper. Ryan Muldoon, Kevin Zollman, and Stephan Hartmann, as well as audiences at the Canadian Society for Epistemology’s Symposium on Social Epistemology in Sherbrooke and at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, also provided valuable comments. This work was supported by the University of Toronto Germany/Europe Fund.

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