Abstract

Scientific pluralism is the view according to which there is a plurality of scientific domains and of scientific theories, and these theories are empirically adequate relative to their own respective domains. Scientific monism is the view according to which there is a single domain to which all scientific theories apply. How are these views impacted by the presence of inconsistent scientific theories? There are consistency-preservation strategies and inconsistency-toleration strategies. Among the former, two prominent strategies can be articulated: Compartmentalization and Information restriction. Among the inconsistency-toleration strategies, we have: Paraconsistent compartmentalization and Dialetheism. In this paper, I critically assess the adequacy of each of these four views.