Polarisation in extended scientific controversies

towards an epistemic account of disunity

Gabor A. Zemplén

pp. 47-69

in: Giovanni Scarafile, Leah Gruenpeter Gold (eds), Paradoxes of conflicts, Berlin, Springer, 2016

Abstract

The essay focuses on controversies where the debated issues are complex, the exchange involves several participants, and extends over long periods. Examples include the Methodenstreit, the Hering-Helmholtz controversy (Turner 1994) or the debates over Newton's or Darwin's views. In these cases controversies lasted for several generations, and polarisation is a recurring trait of the exchanges. The reconstructions and evaluations of the partly (but not only) polemical exchanges also exhibit heterogeneity and polarisation. Although I pick an early example of the Newtonian controversies, Darwin's argument in The Origin of Species can also be variously reconstructed (Morrison 2000: 192–196). When scientific controversies that involve complex utterances (i.e. not single claims) are investigated, a specific problem arises, as in these situations the protagonist presenting a bundle of claims to a non-unified audience cannot fully control meaning-attribution of his utterances, and, given what we know about individual cognition, the more heterogeneous audience he succeeds in persuading, the less clear the meaning becomes. While the acceptance of a position increases potential for action, the growth in consent comes together with a fuzzy content. To problematise the role of polarisation, the significance of this description with respect to knowledge-production is investigated from both an individual and a social epistemological standpoint to answer the question: How is rhetoric epistemic in cases when at least two views on a given issue are seen as persuasively supported by communities? If engaging in a controversy is a means-to-an-end activity aimed at persuasion, directed at achieving attitude-change in recipients, how does the argumentative goal of an individual translate to epistémé in extended scientific controversies?