Commentary

Rouse begins by addressing possible qualms coming from the side of the so-called “disunifi ers”—that is, those among the advocates of the practice turn who argue that science should not be seen as producing an image of the world at all. Yet the dis-unifi ers, just like Sellars, believe that scientifi c understanding is based on representation. The dis-unifi ers thus conclude, contra Sellars, that there is no “scientifi c image” of the world, in the sense of a single unifi ed scientifi c representation of it. Rouse points out, instead, that what the practice turn really teaches us is that scientifi c understanding is not primarily representational, while naturalists themselves have so far tried to naturalize scientifi c understanding by naturalizing mental or linguistic representations. The outline of Rouse’s anti-representationalist account of science can be captured in terms of a series of oppositions between the old philosophical understanding of science and the new understanding issued from the practice turn. According to the old view: 1) Scientifi c understanding consists in an empirically justifi ed fabric of beliefs, or in a position in an intralinguistic space of reason; 2) scientifi c understanding is disembodied

from social, historical, technological, biological contexts; 3) correlatively, the world, as the objective correlate of scientifi c knowledge, is endowed with a fi xed unchangeable structure; 4) scientists strive to reach consensus; 5) scientifi c understanding expresses itself through retrospective compilations enjoying the consensus of scientists. In contrast, according to the view of scientifi c understanding based on the study of scientifi c practices: 1) Scientifi c understanding is essentially “research activity/enquiry” and, as such, it is incorporated in social, technical, practical, institutional contexts; 2) scientifi c understanding, along with its practical, interactional, and linguistic performances, is part of a perceptual and practical involvement with the world; 3) the world itself is involved in this interaction and changes in a way that does not amount only to the invention and construction of material artifacts in and out of the laboratory, because the very structure of what is phenomenally salient, of what the world is for us (à la Kuhn), is continuously modifi ed; 4) scientists strive less for the construction of consensus than for making progressive development possible; 5) nowhere do we fi nd the recapitulation of an alleged scientifi c worldview shared by scientists, for scientifi c literature is, at all levels, future-oriented in the sense that its principal aim is to foster further research. In particular, results matter primarily for their being a source of promising future development (Chapter 9, this volume, p. 284) .