Monday, June 11, 2018

Scientific Revolutions #6

Regardless of how one evaluates Thomas Kuhn's ideas about scientific revolutions, his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was a huge impetus in discussions of their nature. Commentary on the nature of science and scientific entities and methods preceded Kuhn's book, but the book spurred revisiting said nature, entities, methods, and scientific instruments.

Broadly speaking, scientific realism is the view that science is about reality. But there are significant nuances pertaining to truthfulness, aims versus achievements, mind-independence, what is or isn't knowledge, and more, including claims about unobservables (atoms, radio waves, etc.). This article Scientific Realism sketches the major nuances.

Antirealism is the term used for various arguments against, or foils for, scientific realism. One of these is instrumentalism, which holds that claims about unobservable things have no literal meaning. While the linked article doesn't mention Galileo and his religious detractors, it reminded me of them. Said detractors didn't object to some of Galileo's claims when viewed as instrumental, as mathematically useful. However, they did object to saying said claims were true when they conflicted with Biblical text.

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