Provides a spirited defence of anti-realism in philosophy of science. Shows the historical evidence and logical challenges facing scientific realism.

Scientific realism is the view that our best scientific theories give approximately true descriptions of both observable and unobservable aspects of a mind-independent world. Debates between realists and their critics are at the very heart of the philosophy of science. Anjan Chakravartty traces the contemporary evolution of realism by examining the most promising strategies adopted by its proponents in response to the forceful challenges of antirealist sceptics, resulting in a positive proposal for scientific realism today. He examines the core principles of the realist position, and sheds light on topics including the varieties of metaphysical commitment required, and the nature of the conflict between realism and its empiricist rivals. By illuminating the connections between realist interpretations of scientific knowledge and the metaphysical foundations supporting them, his book offers a compelling vision of how realism can provide an internally consistent and coherent account of scientific knowledge.

Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors the The Routledge handbook of Scientific Realism covers the following central topics: the historical development of the realist stance; core issues and positions of classic debate; perspectives on contemporary debates and the realism debate in disciplinary context.

Scientific realism is the optimistic view that modern science is on the right track. This book argues that the history of science does not undermine this notion, suggesting it as the best philosophical account of science.

Scientific realism is at the core of the contemporary philosophical debate on science. This book analyzes new versions of scientific realism. It makes explicit the advantages of scientific realism over alternatives and antagonists, contributes to deciding which of the new approaches better meets the descriptive and the prescriptive criteria, and expands the philosophico-methodological field to take in new topics and disciplines.

Roughly, instrumentalism is the view that science is primarily, and should primarily be, an instrument for furthering our practical ends. It has fallen out of favour because historically influential variants of the view, such as logical positivism, suffered from serious defects. In this book, however, Darrell P. Rowbottom develops a new form of instrumentalism, which is more sophisticated and resilient than its predecessors. This position—‘cognitive instrumentalism’—involves three core theses. First, science makes theoretical progress primarily when it furnishes us with more predictive power or understanding concerning observable things. Second, scientific discourse concerning unobservable things should only be taken literally in so far as it involves observable properties or analogies with observable things. Third, scientific claims about unobservable things are probably neither approximately true nor liable to change in such a way as to increase in truthlikeness. There are examples from science throughout the book, and Rowbottom demonstrates at length how cognitive instrumentalism fits with the development of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century chemistry and physics, and especially atomic theory. Drawing upon this history, Rowbottom also argues that there is a kind of understanding, empirical understanding, which we can achieve without having true, or even approximately true, representations of unobservable things. In closing the book, he sets forth his view on how the distinction between the observable and unobservable may be drawn, and compares cognitive instrumentalism with key contemporary alternatives such as structural realism, constructive empiricism, and semirealism. Overall, this book offers a strong defence of instrumentalism that will be of interest to scholars and students working on the debate about realism in philosophy of science.

This book provides philosophers of science with new theoretical resources for making their own contributions to the scientific realism debate. Readers will encounter old and new arguments for and against scientific realism. They will also be given useful tips for how to provide influential formulations of scientific realism and antirealism. Finally, they will see how scientific realism relates to scientific progress, scientific understanding, mathematical realism, and scientific practice.

Particle physics studies highly complex processes which cannot be directly observed. Scientific realism claims that we are nevertheless warranted in believing that these processes really occur and that the objects involved in them really exist. This book defends a version of scientific realism, called causal realism, in the context of particle physics. The first part of the book introduces the central theses and arguments in the recent philosophical debate on scientific realism and discusses entity realism, which is the most important precursor of causal realism. It also argues against the view that the very debate on scientific realism is not worth pursuing at all. In the second part, causal realism is developed and the key distinction between two kinds of warrant for scientific claims is clarified. This distinction proves its usefulness in a case study analyzing the discovery of the neutrino. It is also shown to be effective against an influential kind of pessimism, according to which even our best present theories are likely to be replaced some day by radically distinct alternatives. The final part discusses some specific challenges posed to realism by quantum physics, such as non-locality, delayed choice and the absence of particles in relativistic quantum theories.

Ilkka Niiniluoto comes to the rescue of scientific realism, showing that reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated. Philosophical realism holds that the aim of a particular discourse is to make true statements about its subject-matter. Niiniluoto surveys the different varieties of realism in ontology, semantics, epistemology, theory construction, and methodology. He then sets out his own original version, and defends it against competing theories in the philosophy of science. Niiniluoto's critical scientific realism is founded upon the notion of truth as correspondence between language and reality, and characterizes scientific progress in terms of increasing truthlikeness. This makes it possible not only to take seriously, but also to make precise, the troublesome idea that scientific theories typically are false but nevertheless close to the truth.

The increasingly lively controversy over scientific realism has become one of the principal themes of recent philosophy. 1 In watching this controversy unfold in the rather technical way currently in vogue, it has seemed to me that it would be useful to view these contemporary disputes against the background of such older epistemological issues as fallibilism, scepticism, relativism, and the traditional realism/idealism debate. This, then, is the object of the present book, which will recon sider the newer concerns about scientific realism in the context of these older philosophical themes. Historically, realism concerns itself with the real existence of things that do not "meet the eye" - with suprasensible entities that lie beyond the reach of human perception. In medieval times, discussions about realism focused upon universals. Recognizing that there are physical objects such as cats and triangular objects and red tomatoes, the medievels debated whether such "abstract objects" as cathood and triangularity and redness also exist by way of having a reality indepen dent of the concretely real things that exhibit them. Three fundamen tally different positions were defended: (1) Nominalism. Abstracta have no independent existence as such: they only "exist" in and through the objects that exhibit them. Only particulars (individual substances) exist. Abstract "objects" are existents in name only, mere thought fictions by whose means we address concrete particular things. (2) Realism. Abstracta have an independent existence as such.