Commentary: Plurality and Pluralisms for the Social Sciences

Heintz, Charbonneau, and Fogelman present plurality as a hallmark of the social sciences. Taking investigations on crowd formation and dissipation as relevant case studies, they argue for methodological pluralism, claiming that an integrative stance encompassing a range of different approaches is the best strategy to address the multiplicity of causes and varied aspects of social phenomena. Pluralistic views have met with growing consent in recent philosophy of science, largely concomitant with an increasing interest in the special sciences, their specific methodologies and conceptual tools, and in scientific practice. By highlighting a few differences in possible ways of being pluralists, this contribution aims to provide some epistemological tools to further detail the authors’ discourse on pluralism, and to question if it can qualify as a permanent stance for the social sciences.