Scientific disputes about how often different processes or patterns occur are relative frequency controversies. These controversies occur across the sciences. In some areas—especially biology—they are even the dominant mode of dispute. Yet they depart from the standard picture of what a scientific controversy is like. In fact, standard philosophical accounts of scientific controversies suggest that relative frequency controversies are irrational or lacking in epistemic value. This is because standard philosophical accounts of scientific controversies often assume that in order to be (...) rational, a scientific controversy must reach a resolution and be about a scientifically interesting question. Relative frequency controversies rarely reach a resolution, however, and some scientists and philosophers are skeptical that these controversies center on scientifically interesting questions. In this paper, I provide a novel account of the epistemic contribution that relative frequency controversies make to science. I show that these controversies are rational in the sense of furthering the epistemic aims of the scientific communities in which they occur. They do this despite rarely reaching a resolution, and independent of whether the controversies are about scientifically interesting questions. This means that assumptions and about what is required for a controversy to be rational are wrong. Controversies do not need to reach a resolution in order to be rational. And they do not need to be about anything scientifically interesting in order to make valuable epistemic contributions to science. (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)