The Variety of Historiographical Medical Relativism

This paper offers an analysis of three types of relativism in the historiography of medicine. Three authors—Andrew Cunningham, Nicholas Jewson, and Annemarie Mol—are presented as paradigmatic instances of these three versions. I first present thumbnail sketches of some of the mentioned authors’ best-known work. Subsequently, I situate them both relative to familiar relativistic positions in the philosophy and sociology of the (natural) sciences, and relative to a ‘spectrum of relativistic positions’ that I outline. The main upshot of the paper is do identify the main differences and commonalities of the three varieties of ‘historiographical medical relativism’. I defend the authors only insofar as I show that they are not per se committed to “equal-validity relativism”.