Abstract
The principle of dialogue or conversation concerning knowledge produced in different epistemological settings differentiates pluralism from relativism. In this conversation, the Third acts as mediator. The author, drawing on his research experience on memory and history of urban societies in Central Africa, underscores the irreducibility of tensions between scholarly knowledge and practical knowledge subjected to the urgency of action. He also draws attention to the tension between the objectivization of research subjects by the social sciences and the respect to which these subjects are entitled. The present is the realm where these occur. Epistemological pluralism proposes to investigate these tensions while respecting the autonomy of different types of knowledge. As with the present, which is a perspective on time, the particular is a perspective on the universal.