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"But, but... how do you keep the crazies out?" The objection keeps coming, from many scientists and others who are concerned about the erosion of scientific authority. They worry that pluralism would result in schools teaching Biblical creationism (or intelligent design) alongside evolution, climate-change skeptics having equal voice with majority scientists in determining environmental policy, alternative medicine gaining a foothold in the medical establishment, and so on. As John Norton once put it to me: it may sound fine to cultivate a hundred flowers, but how do you keep the weeds out? The metaphors keep coming —this, from Sandy Mitchell and Peter Machamer: how do you decide who gets to come to the table?" This is surely an unavoidable question that we must take seriously in any discussion of scientific methodology, and my critics are unhappy because pluralism is not able to answer it. But this unhappiness is based on a category mistake: pluralism is a doctrine about how many places we should have at the table; it cannot be expected to answer a wholly different question, which is about the guest list. And monism doesn't answer the latter question, either! Deciding that there will only be one place at the table does not determine who gets to sit there. "Me, of course", is the unspoken presumption. And how do we keep from ending up with a room full of tables-for-one—sad, and no more productive than having one big table with an uncontrolled guest list? It should be plain that either pluralism or monism. in itself, cannot determine what we actually believe in science, or how we decide what to believe. We do need to have ideas about how we make such choices, and if relativism is a doctrine that says we should make them randomly or not make them at all, then pluralism and monism are equally remote from it.

— Is Water H₂O? Evidence Realism And Pluralism by Hasok Chang (Page 262)

If anything, monists have a heavier burden of choice than ploralists, sinco they can't stop the process until everything except one option is eliminated. You may think that monism does not require any real choice because you can rely on The Scientific Method, which automatically delivers the verdict. Il you have been involved in peer review, either at the giving or the receiving end, you know that scientific choices are not made by algorithm-following automata. And besides, wha chose The Scientific Method, and how? It's choices all the way down, unless you ask God or a dictator to come in and just tell us what to do.

— Is Water H₂O? Evidence Realism And Pluralism by Hasok Chang (Page 261)

The mature pluralist attitude is to engage productively with what one disagrees with, which is very far from the feared caricature of relativism in which one says "Whatever". Curiously, although it may seem that relativism is a stronger and more radical doctrine than pluralism, relativism does not necessarily imply pluralism. If relativism only insists on the equal treatment of any alternatives that do exist, there is no requirement that there should be multiple alteratives. If everyone actually agrees on something and no one seeks any alternatives, relativism has no strong way to oppose that state of affairs. The following may sound like a stupid point, but it needs to be stated clearly: the demand for pluraliry is the most crucial feature of pluralism. Pluralism is about the benefits of actually having multiple systems in co-existence. So, my slogan for pluralism is not "Anything goes", but "Many things go." Pluralism takes a clear stance against absolutism, in a way that relativism actually can't do easily. A system of practice that denies the rights of other systems to exist would have to be banned in a pluralist scientific regime. This is just as a truly free society needs to impose constraints on individuals and groups to restrain them from restricting the freedom of others.

— Is Water H₂O? Evidence Realism And Pluralism by Hasok Chang (Page 261)

So, pluralism about science is a commitment to promote the presence of multiple systems of scientific knowledge. It is not an idle pronounce ment to "let a hundred flowers bloom", but the effort of actively cultivating the other 99 flowers.

— Is Water H₂O? Evidence Realism And Pluralism by Hasok Chang (Page 260)

With these considerations, we come back again to the inevitable political dimension of knowledge, and the ineliminable link between knowledge and politics, between science and policy. And again, scientists and others who extol the virtue of science might take a humble lesson from the messy world of politics, in which people have leamed some valuable lessons over the centuries through the unspeakable suffering of millions caused by failed political systems. Without pretending that the current forms of pluralist liberal democracy are anywhere near perfect, we should also acknowledge that they are protecting us from far worse excesses. There is a simple and crude pluralist lesson: at least have a two-party system, not a one-party system; yes, pluralism is less efficient than totalitarianism in many ways, but we have to remember that efficiency creates a nightmare if it serves a nefarious aim. Science has also learned some basic lessons about its goverance, including the principle of peer review. But science has not yet figured out how to prevent the system of peer review from tuming into oligarchy or mob-rule, except by relying on the good will and the good judgment of the individual scientists who have made it into the establishment. We need pluralist science policies, and I do not pretend to have the answers there. But I think the act of doing the kind of concrete work presented in this book is a valuable preparatory step.

— Is Water H₂O? Evidence Realism And Pluralism by Hasok Chang (Page 264)

But after centuries of success modern science has reached its maturity, and no longer needs the crutches of faith and hubris. We can now afford to be more humble, yet confident that we will be able to continue learning about reality.

Joseph Priestley had a particularly instructive notion of epistemic humility, which was dynamic: "every discovery brings to our view many things of which we had no intimation before". He had a wonderful image for this: "The greater is the circle of light, the greater is the boundary of the darkness by which it is confined." As knowledge grows, so does ignorance or rather, the range of ignorance that we are aware of. "But," Priestley continued, "notwithstanding this, the more light we get, the more thankful we ought to be. For by this means we have the greater range for satisfactory contemplation”.

— Is Water H₂O? Evidence Realism And Pluralism by Hasok Chang (Page 256)

The most fundamental motivation for pluralism is humility: we are limited beings trying to understand and engage with an external reality that seems vastly complex, apparently inexhaustible, and ultimately unpredictable? If we are not likely to find the perfect system of science, it makes sense to foster multiple ones, each of which will have its own unique strengths.

— Is Water H₂O? Evidence Realism And Pluralism by Hasok Chang (Page 256)