Scientific realism is the philosophical position that ´the picture which science gives us of the world is a true one, faithful in its details, and the entities postulated in science really exist: the advance of science are discoveries, not inventions´.276 Science at the very least gives us knowledge about the true structures of the world. Science is more than a tool to ¨save the phenomena¨, and grants real insight into the truth of the universe. Scientific realism asserts that the objects of scientific knowledge exist independently of the minds or acts of scientists and scientific theories are true of the objective (mind-independent) world. The reference to knowledge points to the dual character of scientific realism. On the one hand it is a metaphysical (specifically, an ontological) doctrine, claiming the independent existence of certain entities. On the other hand it is an epistemological doctrine asserting that we can know what individuals
275Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution, pp. 94-95
276Bas. C. van Fraassen, ¨Arguments Concerning Scientific Realism,¨ p. 1065
exist and that we can find out the truth of the theories or laws that govern them. As a philosophical position, it is often framed as an answer to the question ¨how is the success of science to be explained¨? The argument mainly use to answer such question is popularly known as the ´miracle argument´.277
3.5.1 THE MIRACLE ARGUMENT
The miracle Argument has its origin from Putnam´s claim in Mathematics, Matter and Method (1975) that realism ´is the only philosophy that does not make the success of science a miracle´.278 Hence the argument for realism is usually referred to as the
´miracle argument´ or ´no-miracles argument´. This argument often starts with the widely accepted premise that the best theories in science are extraordinarily successful:
they facilitate empirical predictions, retrodictions, and explanations of the subject matters of scientific investigation, often marked by amazing accuracy and intricate causal manipulations of the relevant phenomena. How can one explain this success of the scientific theories? The main explanation that the realists give is that our best theories are true of a mind-independent world of entities, properties, law and structures.
It, therefore, means that if these theories are not actually true the fact that they are so successful would be, indeed, miraculous. Consequently, given the choice between a straightforward explanation of success and a miraculous explanation, any reasonable mind would prefer the non-miraculous explanation going by the fact that our best theories are approximately true. Invariably, this account of scientific success claims definitive status for the unobservable entities apparently talked about by scientific theories.
277 For detailed studies on the miracle argument see Brown, J. R., ´The Miracle of Science´, Philosophical Quarterly, 1982, 32: 232-244; Boyd, R. N., ´What Realism Implies and What it Does Not´, Dialectica, 1989, 43: 5-29; Lipton, P., ´Truth, Existence, and the Best Explanation´, in The Scientific Realism of Rom Harré, ed. A. A. Derksen (Tilburg: Tilburg University Press, 1994); Psillos, S., Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth (London: Routledge, 1999) ch. 4; Barnes, E. C., ´The Miraculous Choice Argument for Realism´, Philosophical Studies, 2002, 111: 97-120; Lyons, T. D, ´Explaining the Success of a Scientific Theory´, Philosophy of Science, 2003, 70: 891-901; Busch, J., ´No New Miracles, Same Old Tricks´, Theoria, 2008, 74, 102-114; and Frost-Arnold, G., ´The No-Miracles Argument for Realism: Inference to an Unacceptable Explanation´, Philosophy of Science, 2010, 77: 35-58
278Putnam, H. Mathematics, Matter and Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975) p. 73
Scientific realism grants the ontological status of unobservables. Even though we cannot see electrons with our naked eyes (we only observe what electrons do and identify them with by such characteristics) the fact that scientific theory affirms its existence means that it really exist, since the ´acceptance of such scientific theory involves the belief that it is true´. This implies then that the theoretical statements of science are, or purported to be, true generalized descriptions of reality.279 Scientific realism strongly affirms the ontological status of the unobservable facts. Van Fraassen (1998) summaries scientific realism thus,
Science aims to give us, in its theories, a literally true story of what the world is like; and acceptance of a scientific theory involves the belief that it is true.280
The term ´literally´ that Fraassen uses in this definition should be understood as means of distinguishing the position of the logical positivist, conventionalist and instrumentalist from that of the scientific realist since the former groups have the view that science is true if ´properly understood´.281 They believe that science only offer useful tools to help understand the phenomena we observe but does not give literal true story about the things in the world.
The general approach that the scientific realists adopt to explain how science works is causal oriented. This casual approach argue that the goal of science is to penetrate the causal structure of reality and discover the laws of nature not just to invent it as the non-revisionary scientific anti-realism might claim. Therefore, the knowledge of the world that science gives us is objectively and scientifically true since science not only gives us the true picture of reality but also the causal explications of how reality is composed.
279Brian Ellis, Rational Belief Systems (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979) p. 28
280 Bas C. Van Fraassen. ¨Arguments Concerning Scientific Realism¨, p. 1066; see also Bas. C. van Fraassen, The Scientific Image. p. 8
281Bas C. Van Fraassen. ¨Arguments Concerning Scientific Realism¨, p. 1067
3.5.2 CUMULATIVITY OF SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS
Since scientific theories capture the nature of the objects in the world as they are in themselves, such realists as Richard Boyd and Hilary Putnam argue that for any science to be regarded as mature and well-developed its later theories should entail at least approximations to their predecessors.282 For the realist, science all through history moves closer and closer to a correct characterization of the natural world. The only sorts of changes this position regard as really progress in the history of science are those that have advanced in a cumulative manner. They are the changes that have really contributed to the growth of knowledge. In fact, from the origins of modern science in the works of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, till the logical empiricists of the twentieth century; scientific progress has been viewed as an evolutionary process of uncovering truth in the physical world.
The logical empiricists of the twentieth century represent the final school of thought that supported scientific realism and the evolutionary development of science. As the name,
"logical empiricist" implies, this movement combined induction, based on empiricism, and deduction in the form of logic. Carl Hempel, one of the later advocates of logical empiricism, in Philosophy of Natural Science (1966) argued against those who "deny the existence of 'theoretical entities' or regard theoretical assumptions about them as ingeniously contrived fictions."283 Although Hempel recognized that many theoretical entities and processes cannot be directly observed (e. g. gravity cannot be observed; we only observe the effects of gravity), as a scientific realist he believed that a theory well-confirmed by experiment translated to a high probability that the entities and processes of the theory really did exist.
Because of his belief in scientific realism, Hempel was also convinced that science evolved in a continuous manner. New theory did not contradict past theory: "theory does not simply refute the earlier empirical generalizations in its field; rather, it shows that within a certain limited range defined by qualifying conditions, the generalizations
282 See Boyd, Richard, ¨On the Current Status of Scientific Realism¨, in The Philosophy of Science, Richard Boyd, Philip Gasper & J.D. Trout eds., Massachusetts: Mass. Institute of Technology Press, 1991 pp.915-222. See also Boyd, Richard (1973). ¨Reason, Underdetermination and a casual theory of evidence.¨ Nous, 7:1-12 and Putnam, Hilary (1978). Meaning and the moral sciences. London: Routledge.
283Carl G. Hempel, Philosophy of Natural Science, p. 79
hold true in fairly close approximation."284 ¨New theory is more comprehensive; the old theory can be derived from the newer one and is one special manifestation"285 of the more comprehensive new theory. Nevertheless, the difference between the continuity thesis of scientific advancement argued by the logical empiricists and that of historicists like Duhem and Shapin, is the affirmation of the historical determinacy of scientific rationality by the latter.
The logical empiricists would agree, for instance, that Newtonian physics is a special case of, and can be derived from, Einsteinian physics. The logical empiricist's conception of scientific progress was thus a continuous one; more comprehensive theory replaced compatible, older theory. Each successive theory's explanation was closer to the truth than the theory before. It was the truth, and the prediction and control that came with it, that was the goal of logical-empirical science.
The notion of scientific realism held by Newton led to the evolutionary view of the progress of science. The entities and processes of theory were believed to exist in nature, and science should discover those entities and processes. The course of nineteenth- and twentieth-century science eventually threatened the idea of scientific realism. Particularly disturbing discoveries were made in the area of atomic physics. For instance, Heisenberg's indeterminacy286 principle, according to historian of science Cecil Schneer, yielded the conclusion that "the world of nature is indeterminate. The behavior of the particle is uncertain and therefore the behavior of the atom is an uncertainty."287 Thus at the atomic level, "even the fundamental principle of causality fail[ed]."288
Despite these problems, it was not until the second half of the twentieth century that the preservers of the evolutionary idea of scientific progress, the logical empiricists, were seriously challenged. Although Thomas Kuhn was not the first critic of traditional views of science (as one could see from the perspective of the historiographical revolution
284 Ibid., 76
285 Ibid.
286 According to Stephen Toulmin, the "foundations of the classical picture suddenly disintegrated"
between 1890 and 1910 when "all the axioms of nineteenth-century physics and chemistry [then] revealed themselves as no more than working assumptions, which were sound only if not pressed too hard."" See Stephen Toulmin and June Goodfield, The Architecture of Matter (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), p. 270
287Cecil J. Schneer, The Evolution of Physical Science, p. 364.
288 Ibid., pp. 358-9
treated in chapter two), his work held the most important implications about the rationality of science.289
Kuhn resorted to the history of science to show that it was ¨implausible¨ to say that theory is approaching truth. There is no linear advancement of theory toward truth. He states thus,
Newton´s mechanics improves on Aristotle´s and …Einstein´s improves on Newton´s as instruments for puzzle-solving. But I can see in their succession no coherent direction of ontological development. On the contrary, in some important respects, though by no means in all, Einstein´s general theory of relativity is closer to Aristotle´s than… to Newton´s.290
Kuhn´s statement indicates that Einstein´s theory is not merely a more complex version of Newton´s. Einsteinian theory heads in its own direction; there is ¨no coherent direction of ontological development¨. This statement encompasses Kuhn´s conviction that there is ´Revolution´ in science. In order to find a replacement of the idea of progress toward the truth in science, he advocated on the need for a goal to guide science which will avert the traditional tendency of speaking about single hypotheses or theories being ¨well tested¨ or ¨confirmed¨ or even ¨corrigibly falsified.¨291 Such tendency inform the underlying motive of justifying the progress of science toward the truth.