Crossing Boundaries: Contexts of Practice as Common Goods

Since Thomas Kuhn introduced the idea of incommensurable paradigms as contexts of inquiry, contextualist analyses of science have abounded. However, the ways in which local and disciplinary contexts of inquiry involve common goods remain largely unexplored. Collaborative research practices clearly depend on common goods: on the one hand, scientists work together in order to increase the good of public knowledge; on the other hand, cooperation within and across research teams depends on shared epistemic values and conceptions of good science. Common goods thus structure the very practice of research. In this paper I argue that a contextualist analysis of scientific common goods casts light on the challenges of scientific communication that led Kuhn to the idea of incommensurable paradigms. I begin by clarifying two core ideas: disciplinary ethos and common good (secs. 1, 2). Drawing on research into collective intentionality, I then analyze ethos as a common good (sec 3). As a distinctive approach to the rhetorical challenges of communication within disciplines (sec. 4), contextualist, common-goods oriented analysis raises fruitful questions for the rhetoric of science, albeit without invoking the troubled specter of incommensurability (sec. 5).