Abstract
Abstract According to John Dupre, the metaphysics underpinning modern science posits a deterministic, fully law‐governed and potentially fully intelligible structure that pervades the entire universe. To reject such a metaphysical framework for science is to subscribe to “the disorder of things”, and the latter, according to Dupre, entails the impossibility of a unified science. Dupre's argument rests crucially upon purported disunities evident in the explanatory practices of science. I critically examine the implied project of drawing metaphysical conclusions from epistemological premisses concerning the nature of our explanatory practices. I then argue that Dupre fails to answer a particular argument for the ontological unity of science that rests upon assumptions about the causal structure of the world. This “causal” argument for the unity of science might be countered by a more radical metaphysical revisionism. The latter, however, seems unable to account for features of our explanatory practices that...
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