PhilArchive
open access
Realism, Instrumentalism, Particularism: A Middle Path Forward in the Scientific Realism Debate
I've previously suggested that the historical evidence used to challenge scientific realism should lead us to embrace what I call Uniformitarianism, but many recently influential forms of scientific realism seem happy to share this commitment. I trace a number of further points of common ground that collectively constitute an appealing Middle Path between classical forms of realism and instrumentalism, and I suggest that many contemporary realists and instrumentalists have already become fellow travelers on this Middle Path without recognizing how far they have thereby diverged from those who share their labels and slogans. I conclude by describing their central remaining disagreement and the sorts of evidence needed to resolve it.
Conceptio Open Archive
Analyze & explore related research in Conceptio
Connect this record directly into your research workflow or AI agent. Explore citations across open repositories, query full text, and export structured proof bundles.
This document is indexed with metadata only: full text is not available in the archive for this record. Open the official source ↗
Related documents
- Deflationism, Naturalism and Particularism on the Scientific Realism Debate#108465
- A Realistic Argument for Scientific Realism: How to be a Realist Without Really Knowing It#743580
- History and the Contemporary Scientific Realism Debate#749915
- Slicing the Scientific Realism/Antirealism Debate too Thin: A Review of Lyons’s Scientific Realism#97544
- Physicists’ views on scientific realism#99173
Record · ID 770316
Retrieved via Conceptio: every document is proof-bundled with source, license, and retrieval metadata.
Retrieved via Conceptio: every document is proof-bundled with source, license, and retrieval metadata.
Bring this data into your agent: Connect via MCP or API · 20 free credits to start · no card required
Read the Docs → · View CLI source on GitHub · Conceptio Open Knowledge Archive
Read the Docs → · View CLI source on GitHub · Conceptio Open Knowledge Archive