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Extragalactic Reality: The Case of Gravitational Lensing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Ian Hacking
Ian Hacking*
Affiliation:
Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto
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Abstract

My Representing and Intervening (1983) concludes with what it calls an experimental argument for scientific realism about entities. The argument is evidently inapplicable to extragalactic astrophysics, but leaves open the possibility that there might be other grounds for scientific realism in that domain. Here I argue for antirealism in astrophysics, although not for any particular kind of antirealism. The argument is conducted by a detailed examination of some current research. It parallels the last chapter of (1983). Both represent the methodological opinion that abstract or semantic realism/antirealism debates are empty, and typically lead to confused or wrong conclusions because they pay so little attention to the details of a science.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 56 , Issue 4 , December 1989 , pp. 555 - 581
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

This research was done at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, where the author was supported by an Isaac Walton Killam Research Fellowship (Canada Council), supplemented by funds from the Henry Luce Foundation (I.A.S.). The paper was presented at the “Newton and Scientific Realism” conference, Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem, April 27–30, 1987.

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