Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-8zxtt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-13T15:56:53.277Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Scientific Realism in Real Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Roger Jones
Roger Jones*
Affiliation:
University of Tennessee
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Scientific realism is a doctrine about the relationship of our ideas on the nature of things to the nature of things itself. Part of the doctrine is that there is a nature of things itself. With regard to the rest, Jarrett Leplin has said, “Like the Equal Rights Movement, scientific realism is a majority position whose advocates are so divided as to appear a minority” (Leplin 1984, p. 1). Still, it can be said that what realists would like is that the account of the nature of things provided by science be true and that those things really exist.

Characterized in this way, realism would seem to be a majority position indeed. As Ernst Mach has said of the doctrine,

It has arisen in the process of immeasurable time without the intentional assistance of man. It is a product of nature, and is preserved by nature. Everything that philosophy has accomplished…is, as compared with it, but an insignificant and ephemeral product of art. The fact is, every thinker, every philosopher, the moment he is forced to abandon his one-sided intellectual occupation…, immediately returns [to realism]. (Mach 1959, p. 37, quoted in Fine 1986, p. 134)

Type
Part VI. Realism
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1988 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1988 , 1988 , pp. 167 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

The research on which this paper is based was partially supported by National Science Foundation Grant SES-86-18758. I would like to thank Paul Teller, Arthur Fine, and Ernan McMullin for comments on an earlier version.

References

Cartwright, N. (1983), How the Laws of Physics Lie. New York: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeWitt, B. and Graham, N. (eds.) (1973), The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Earman, J. (1970), “Space-Time, or How to Solve Philosophical Problems and Dissolve Philosophical Muddles without Really Trying,” Journal of Philosophy 67: 259–277.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ehlers, J. (ed.) (1979), Isolated Gravitating Systems in General Relativity (Proceedings of the International School of Physics “Enrico Fermi,” Course 67). Amsterdam: North Holland.Google Scholar
Ehlers, J. (1980), “Isolated Systems in General Relativity,” in Ninth Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics, Ehlers, J., Perry, J. and Walker, M. (eds.). New York: New York Academy of Sciences.Google Scholar
Feynman, R. P. (1965), The Character of Physical Law. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Fine, A. (1986), The Shaky Game. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Flaherty, F. J. (ed.) (1984), Asymptotic Behavior of Mass and Spacetime Geometry. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, M. (1983), Foundations of Space-Time Theories. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Galison, P. (1987), How Experiments End. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Geroch, R. (1977), “Asymptotic Structure of Space-Time,” in Asymptotic Structure of Space-Time, Esposito, F. R. and Witten, L. (eds.). New York: Plenum Press, pp. 1–105.Google Scholar
Glymour, C. (1980), Theory and Evidence. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hacking, I. (1983), Representing and Intervening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jammer, M. (1974), The Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Laymon, R. (1984), “The Path from Data to Theory,” in Leplin (1984), pp. 108-23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leplin, J. (ed.) (1984), Scientific Realism. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mach, E. (1959), The Analysis of Sensations. New York: Dover.Google Scholar
McMullin, E. (1978), Newton on Matter and Activity. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Misner, C, Thorne, K., and Wheeler, J. (1973), Gravitation. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.Google Scholar
Nersessian, N. J. (1984), Faraday to Einstein: Constructing Meaning in Scientific Theories. Dordrecht: M. Nijhoff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pagels, H. (1982), The Cosmic Code. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Penrose, R. (1984), “Mass and Angular Momentum at the Quasi-Local Level in GR,” in Flaherty (1984), pp. 23-30.Google Scholar
Shapiro, I. (1980), “Experimental Challenges Posed by the General Theory of Relativity,” in Some Strangeness in the Proportion: A Centennial Symposium to Celebrate the Achievements of Albert Einstein, Woolf, H. (ed.). Reading: Addison Wesley, pp. 115–136.Google Scholar
Symon, K. R. (1960), Mechanics. Reading: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Wald, R. (1984), General Relativity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yourgrau, W. and Mandelstam, S. (1968), Variational Principles in Dynamics and Quantum Theory. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders.Google Scholar