Weaving Value Judgment into the Tapestry of Science

Abstract

I critically analyze Kevin Elliott’s A Tapestry of Values in order to tease out his views on the nature and status of values or value judgments in the text. I show there is a tension in Elliott’s view that is closely connected to a major lacuna in the philosophical literature on values in science: the need for a better theory of values. Part of an author-meets-critics book symposium on A Tapestry of Values: An Introduction to Values in Science by Kevin C. Elliott (Oxford University Press, 2017), with Elliott 2018a and 2018b, Douglas 2018, and Kourany 2018