Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T12:17:35.405Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Are Realism and Instrumentalism Methodologically Indifferent?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Robin Findlay Hendry
Robin Findlay Hendry*
Affiliation:
University of Durham
*
†Send requests for reprints to the author, Department of Philosophy, University of Durham, Durham, United Kingdom, DH1 3HN; email: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Arthur Fine and André Kukla have argued that realism and instrumentalism are indifferent with respect to scientific practice. I argue that this claim is ambiguous. One interpretation is that for any practice, the fact that that practice yields predictively successful theories is evidentially indifferent between scientific realism and instrumentalism. On the second construal, the claim is that for any practice, adoption of that practice by a scientist is indifferent between their being a realist or instrumentalist. I argue that there are no good arguments for the indifference claim under the second interpretation, and good reasons to think that it is false.

Type
Metaphysics and Methodology of Science
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 68 , Issue S3: No. 3 Supplement: Proceedings of the 2000 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part I: Contributed Papers Sep., 2001 , 2001 , pp. S25 - S37
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

‡

I would like to thank Arthur Fine for comments on an earlier version of this paper, and the University of Durham Special Staff Travel Fund for financial support towards my attending the PSA Meeting.

References

Aronson, Jerrold, Harré, Rom, and Eileen, Way (1995), Realism Rescued: How Scientific Progress is Possible. Chicago: Open Court.Google Scholar
Brodie, Sir Benjamin (1867), “On the Mode of Representation Afforded by the Chemical Calculus, as Contrasted with the Atomic Theory”, Chemical News 15:295–305. Reprinted in David Knight (ed.). Classical Scientific Papers—Chemistry (London: Mills and Boon, 1968), 243–253.Google Scholar
Boyd, Richard (1981), “Scientific Realism and Naturalistic Epistemology”, in Asquith, Peter and Giere, Ronald (eds.), PSA 1980, Vol. 2. East Lansing, MI: Philosophy of Science Association, 613–662.Google Scholar
Boyd, Richard (1984), “The Current Status of Scientific Realism” in Leplin 1984, 41–82.Google Scholar
Cartwright, Nancy (1999), The Dappled World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fine, Arthur (1984), “The Natural Ontological Attitude” in Leplin 1984, 83–107. Reprinted in Fine 1986a, 112–135.Google Scholar
Fine, Arthur (1986a), The Shaky Game: Einstein, Realism, and The Quantum Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Fine, Arthur (1986b), “Unnatural Attitudes: Realist and Instrumentalist Attachments to Science”, Mind 96:149–179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hendry, John (1984), The Creation of Quantum Mechanics and the Bohr-Pauli Dialogue. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hendry, Robin (1995), “Realism and Progress: Why Scientists Should be Realists”, in Fellows, Roger (ed.), Philosophy and Technology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 53–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas (1957), The Copernican Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Kukla, André (1998), Studies in Scientific Realism. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Laudan, Larry (1984), Science and Values. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Leplin, Jarrett (ed.) (1984), Scientific Realism. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leplin, Jarrett (ed.) (1986), “Methodological Realism and Scientific Rationality”, Philosophy of Science 53:31–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morrison, Margaret (1990), “Unification, Realism and Inference”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 41:305–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morrison, Margaret (2000), Unifying Scientific Theories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nye, Mary Jo (1989), “Explanation and Convention in Nineteenth-Century Chemistry”, in Visser, R. et al. (eds.). New Trends in the History of Science. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 171–186.Google Scholar
Psillos, Stathis (1999), Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Putnam, Hilary (1975), “Explanation and Reference”, reprinted in Mind, Language and Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 196–214. Originally published in G.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearce, and Maynard, P. (eds.), Conceptual Change (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1973), 199–221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Fraassen, Bas (1980), The Scientific Image. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar