what is scientific realism anyway?

Well...

Traditionally, scientific realism states confidently that the world, as described by science, is the real world. It can also be described with the help of two doctrines, the ontological and epistemological. Ontologically, being a branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being, or epistemologically, a theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its scope, methods, and validity. We often think of epistemological situations when investigating what distinguishes justified belief from opinion.

There are several arguments taking charge against scientific realism, of which include underdetermination and pessimistic meta-induction, or inductive reasoning applied to scientific theories. Underdetermination, which is also at times referred to as the indeterminacy of data to theory, occurs when more than one theory is compatible with the evidence, we can then say that the evidence underdetermines the theory. In other words, a theory, with the inclusion of said theory’s evidence, will be underdetermined if and only if there is a contending theory that is at the very least, somewhat uniform with the evidence of the original theory. Since the evidence accompanying the original theory is unable to show that it’s hypothesis is not idiosyncratically true, then there is no reason the believe the theory over one equally as permissible. Quinean underdetermination is slightly different and states that any theory can be reconciled with any recalcitrant evidence by making suitable adjustments in our other assumptions about nature (Curd & Cover, 328). The method employs four different positive relations simultaneously which are arguably unrelated. The theory must be logically compatible with the evidence, logically entail the evidence, explain the evidence, and be empirically supported by the evidence.

There exist four forms of underdetermination, strong, weak, deductive, and inductive. A theory is strongly underdetermined when it is impossible to develop evidence which could lead to an acceptance of both the alpha theory and its competitor. Weak underdetermination occurs when the amount of evidence at one’s immediate disposal fails to prove the theory in question, while evidence discovered sometime into the future has the possibility of doing so. Further differentiation includes deductive and inductive forms of underdetermination. Deductively, two theories will be underdetermined when procurable evidence fails to thoroughly assert the opposite of either theory. Inductively, while the theories in question are compatible with one another, there is no way to discern which of the two is of a more effective quality.

Pessimistic meta-induction, also called the argument from scientific revolutions, is another argument which also pursues to refute avenues of scientific realism in an epistemological fashion. Subversion of a theory is achieved through pointing out key past documented counterexamples in the same way a lawyer would reference a historical verdict in favor of their own client’s ruling. This leads us to believe that all present theories will inevitably conclude to be false, which in turn alludes to thinking that there are no reasons to accept scientific theoretical postulations, nor are current scientific theories true or almost true. Larry Laudan claims that in order to succeed, a scientific realist must accept two theses. One, if a theory, T, is approximately true, it will be empirically successful and two, the empirical success of a theory, T, provides justification for the approximate truth of T. However, he argues that an approximation of the truth is far to vague to determine the theory’s empirical successfulness. Laudan also provides several counterexamples that were once empirically effective but are now considered to be false, among these are optical aether, circular inertia, and of course the once fabled crystal ball. Certain theories are of course refutable, but others like the Standard Model are still perfectly viable and have been proven to be approximately true with astounding increases in accuracy over the past century.

Physicist Lisa Randall views meta-induction as obsolete. When asked if there was a prospect of another Einstein-style moment that upends our entire understanding of the universe she said “Yes, in the sense that we could find some big things that underlie what we currently see. When we upend things in physics these days, it’s not necessarily that the old things were wrong. It’s just that underlying it is a more complete theory. Quantum mechanics tells us that a ball is made up of atoms, but Newton’s laws still work just fine. You can predict that ball’s trajectory without knowing that the ball is made up of atoms.”

“It sounds kind of technical, but problems like why gravity is so weak point to something dramatic. It could be extradimensional space, it could be a change in the nature of what we think are the symmetries of space and time. We clearly are missing something big. That isn’t necessarily something to be proud of, but it tells us that there is something waiting out there” (Revkin, 158).

The common-sensical views portrayed by scientific realism definitely help justify our beliefs that our best scientific theories are true or approximately true. This nature makes maintaining a form of scientific realism reasonable. While the rationalization of science is based on accordance with reason and logic, anti-realist beliefs tend to stray from the obvious for reasons deemed juxtapositional. The best explanation, for example, for the fact that measuring Avogadro's number (a constant specifying the number of molecules in a mole of any given substance) using such diverse phenomena as Brownian motion, alpha decay, x-ray diffraction, electrolysis, and blackbody radiation gives the same result is that matter really is composed of the unobservable entities we call molecules (Zynda, 2). If this were false, it would be surprisingly coincidental to find that these examples all displayed similar behaviors similar to anything else composed of a molecular composure. Yet, when we filter out all distractions and arbitrary information, we see that most, if not all theories comply accordingly with related coincidences and are more likely than not, derived from these coincidences all together.

Sources and further readings,if you are still awake:

Curd, Martin., and J.A. Cover. Philosophy of Science. New York: W.W. Norton and Company Inc., 1998.


Ladyman, James. Understanding Philosophy of Science. New York: Routledge, 2003.



Laudan, Larry "A Confutation of Convergent Realism." Philosophy of Science 48.1 (1981): 19-49.


Revkin, Andrew. "Where We're Going." Rolling Stone 15 Nov. 2007: 158.

Zynda, Lyle. “Scientific Realism vs. Constructive Empiricism.” Princeton University. Princeton, NJ. 5 Apr. 1994.