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Philosophy is, it seems to me, often in danger of preferring the abstract to the concrete and of concentrating on methodology to the near exclusion of content. That said, methodology is important and what appropriate methodology is or should be in specific subfields of philosophy does not go without saying. In recent years I have addressed various issues in naturalized philosophy of science, a discipline distinguished from traditional epistemology both in its core research questions and its goals.¹ Here I turn to the methodology of naturalized philosophy of science. The methodology I propose is largely constituted by a theory of evidence that construes evidence holistically, and holism generously to include claims and theories informed by social beliefs and values. An implication of holism, construed generously or not, is that it is science communities rather than scientists qua individuals that are the appropriate loci of philosophical reconstructions and explanations of scientific practice. A broader implication of holism is that naturalized philosophy of science is a normative and not simply a descriptive enterprise. My case for construing evidence generously to include claims and theories informed by social beliefs and values builds on developments in feminist science scholarship and is illustrated through an extensive case study.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-1742-2_6

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