Realism and Anti-Realism
Realism (scientific): the view that the “unobservable” theoretical
entities of science (sub-atomic particles, black holes, etc.)
actually exist.
Anti-Realism (scientific): the view that the “unobservable”
theoretical entities of science are “convenient fictions” and
do not actually exist.
- Many anti-realists are instrumentalists, who believe that theories are nothing more than useful devices for correlating and predicting the results of observations and experiments.
Global Anti-Realism: the view that language imposes a particular
conceptual scheme on any description of the world and prevents us from having any direct true access to reality; we are “forever trapped within language.” (p. 227)
Considerations supporting Anti-Realism:
- The history of science is full of theories that are rejected as false and as postulating entities that are no longer believed to exist. (e.g., the phlogiston theory of combustion).
- The importance of scientific theories is that they enable scientists to organize and predict observable phenomena. They may be discarded when they have outlived their usefulness.
- Experimental knowledge can often be “appreciated and manipulated in a way that is independent of theory” and that is retained even when a radical change in theory occurs. (p. 234)
- Historically, scientific theories have been very useful even after they were no longer accepted as true. (e.g., Newtonian physics, Maxwell’s electromagnetics)
- Idealization: Scientific theories typically involve fictitious objects (e.g., frictionless planes, point masses) that are acknowledged not to exist.
Considerations supporting Realism:
- Since there is no such thing as an infallible observation or experimental result, there is no good reason to think that there is a fundamental distinction between observational and theoretical knowledge.
- The most reasonable explanation of the fact that scientific theories are often predictively successful is that some of them are at least approximately true and thus the entities and processes they refer to are real.
- Much scientific work is directed at solving difficult theoretical problems, which often leads to major advances in related areas of science. (e.g., Copernican theory and Galileo’s mechanics—p. 236) Anti-Realism cannot account for this.
Weaker Versions of Realism:
- Conjectural Realism—The aim of science is to arrive at a true description of the world and the principles of its operation. However, it cannot be said of any particular scientific theory that it is true or even approximately true.
- Unrepresentative Realism (Structural Realism)—The aim of science is to accurately describe the “structure of reality” even though the “representations that accompany those structures” (e.g., mechanical ether, light as a wave) are temporary and replaceable. (p. 245)