Concept
Scientific realism
Overview
scientific term
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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But there can be no doubt that an analogous fact is true of the West, and that the two attitudes involved are inconsistent. A scientific realism, based on mechanism, is conjoined with an unwavering belief in the world of men and of the higher animals as being composed of self-determining organisms. This radical inconsistency at the basis of modern thought accounts for much that is half-hearted and wavering in our…
Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the modern world
Names Scientific realism.
If we translate these expressions into the ideas of to-day, we see that they are equivalent to the view of the world which is given us by scientific categories when these categories are regarded not merely as scientific, but also as philosophic; that is, capable of interpreting and expressing the ultimate nature of experience. This modern view uses the words "things-in-themselves" (or absolute realities) and…
John Dewey, Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding
States what Scientific realism is.
Nevertheless the same general method recurs within it, and the resulting objects--the terms and propositions--are for all, except those who produce them, instruments, not terminal objects. The objection to analytic realism as a metaphysics of existence is not so much an undue formalism as its affront to the commonsense-world of action, appreciation, and affection. The affront, due to hypostatizing terms into…
John Dewey, Essays in Experimental Logic
Close in meaning to Scientific realism; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed Scientific realism
- Norwood Russell Hanson
- Mario Bunge
- David Malet Armstrong
- Wilfrid Sellars
- Richard Boyd
- Paul Feyerabend
- Hilary Putnam
- Daniel Dennett
- Alan Musgrave
- Ernan McMullin
- Michael Devitt
- Nicholas Maxwell
- Stathis Psillos
Related ideas
- Fossil
- Philosophical realism
- Carl Gustav Hempel
- Bas van Fraassen
- Norwood Russell Hanson
- Classical physics
- William Gilbert (physicist)
- Underdetermination
- Logical positivism
- Metaphysics
- Mechanics
- Scientific theory
- Atomic nucleus
- Ontology
- Oxford
- Observation
- University of California Press
- Quantum mechanics
- Thomas Kuhn
- Science
- Special relativity
- Instrumentalism
- Scientific Revolution
- Verificationism
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Outline of philosophy.
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