The insularity of scientific reasoning

Abstract

Scientific research is by definition anchored towards the discovery of truth and by extension the improvement of our knowledge about the natural world. Even though interdisciplinarity is generally considered to be beneficial in this re- spect, it is often resisted on the grounds that it can be disruptive to progress within a field. This effectively renders scientific theorising insular, depriving small scientific communities of the chance to move beyond their methodological boundaries. In this paper, I attempt to provide a naturalistic explanation of why researchers are prone to find unfamiliar territory hostile, using arguments from relevance theory and the argumentative theory of reasoning.