ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the notion of 'practice relativism' as a distinct and analyzable form of relativism. The concept of practices is itself, in part at least, a kind of naturalistic or 'sociological' notion. There is no conflict in 'rationality' between pre- and post-microscope biology: With the tool in hand, one would think the old biologists would have come around to the viewpoint of the microscope-possessing biologists. In collective model the problem of ontological individualism is avoided by a device similar to one found in the collective intentionality literature, of treating the scientific community not as a mystical supraindividual entity. The Grundnorm is a theoretical object. Its existence which more naturalistic legal theory denied was claimed to result from a necessity which naturalistic theories either failed to respond to or rejected to explain the binding character of the law. Conant argued, consistent with this version of the theory-empirical continuum there was considerable continuity in instrumentation and observations.
