Among epistemologists, it is common to assume that insofar as coherence bears on the justification of belief, the only relevant coherence relations are those within an individual subject’s web of beliefs. After clarifying this view and exploring some plausible motivations for it, we argue that this individualistic account of the epistemic relevance of coherence fails to account for central facets of scientific practice. In its place we propose a social account of coherence. According to the view we propose, a scientist S’s belief that p is prima facie unjustified if this belief negatively coheres with justified scientific claims in her scientific community. This account of coherence yields an epistemology for scientific belief which, we argue, has all of the benefits and none of the liabilities of its more individualistic predecessor.

在认识论者中，通常假设连贯性与信念的正当性有关，唯一相关的连贯性关系是个体主体的信念网络中的那些。在澄清了这一观点并探索了一些可能的动机之后，我们认为这种对连贯性认知相关性的个人主义解释未能解释科学实践的核心方面。取而代之的是，我们提出了一种连贯性的社会解释。根据我们提出的观点，科学家S认为p是初步的如果这种信念与她的科学界合理的科学主张负相关，则不合理。这种对连贯性的解释产生了一种科学信念的认识论，我们认为，它具有其更加个人主义的前身的所有好处，而没有任何缺点。