Relativism and Darwinism Comments to Rotkirch & Roos

Författare

• Samuel Fuller

Abstract

I have never regarded myself as a relativist in the sense Rotkirch and Roos decry in their recent article (Tieteessä tapahtuu 2/2006). Rather, I am a ’meta‐relativist’ – that is, someone who believes that relativism itself needs to be treated relativistically, not as a universal doctrine. In that more limited sense, relativism is vital for understanding the specific social factors that promote and inhibit various points‐of‐view. But my ultimate aim is to identify intellectual positions that deserve to be carried forward beyond the contexts that originally sustain them. This process does not happen ’naturally’ but by the active intervention of scientists and other intellectuals who serve to sharpen the distinction between what the positivists used to call the contexts of discovery and justification.