Crossing Boundaries: Contexts of Practice as Common Goods

Rehg, William (2009) Crossing Boundaries: Contexts of Practice as Common Goods. In [2009] SPSP 2009: Society for Philosophy of Science in Practice (Minnesota, June 18-20, 2009).

Abstract

In the literature on scientific practices, one finds sustained analyses of the contextualist elements of inquiry. However, the ways in which local and disciplinary contexts of practice function as common goods remain largely unexplored. In this paper I argue that a contextualist analysis of scientific practices as common goods can shed light on the challenges of scientific communication and interdisciplinary collaboration, albeit without invoking Kuhn's problematic notion of incommensurability.