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part vii
PHILOSOPHY OFTHE SCIENCES
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SCIENTIFIC REALISM
.
Introduction
What is scientific realism? The literature provides a bewildering variety ofanswers.I shall start by addressing this question (Section
).I shall go on to discuss the mostinfluential arguments for and against scientific realism.The arguments for are the‘success argument’and related explanationist arguments (Section
).The argu-ments against are the ‘underdetermination argument’,which starts from the claimthat theories always have empirically equivalent rivals;and the ‘pessimistic meta-induction’,which starts from a bleak view ofthe accuracy ofpast scientific theories(Section
).My approach is naturalistic.
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What Is Scientific Realism?
Science appears to be committed to the existence ofa variety ofunobservableentities—to atoms,viruses,photons,and the like—and to these entities havingcertain properties.The central idea ofscientific realism is that science really is com-mitted and is,for the most part,right in its commitments.As Hilary Putnam onceput it,realism takes science at ‘face value’(
:
).So,for the most part,thosescientific entities exist and have those properties.We might call this the ‘existence
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