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Catastrophism, Uniformitarianism, and a Scientific Realism Debate That Makes a Difference

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

P. Kyle Stanford
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Abstract

Some scientific realists suggest that scientific communities have improved in their ability to discover alternative theoretical possibilities and that the problem of unconceived alternatives therefore poses a less significant threat to contemporary scientific communities than it did to their historical predecessors. I first argue that the most profound and fundamental historical transformations of the scientific enterprise have actually increased rather than decreased our vulnerability to the problem. I then argue that whether we are troubled by even the prospect of increasing theoretical conservatism in science should depend on the position we occupy in the ongoing debate concerning scientific realism itself.

Type
Realism
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 82 , Issue 5 , December 2015 , pp. 867 - 878
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I would like to acknowledge useful discussions concerning the material in this paper with Kevin Zollman, Penelope Maddy, Jeff Barrett, Pat Forber, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Steve Shapin, Fred Kronz, John Norton, Michael Weisberg, Jane Maienschein, Julia Bursten, Carole Lee, and Arash Pessian, as well as audiences at the Durham University Conference on Unconceived Alternatives and Scientific Realism, the University of Vienna’s (Un)Conceived Alternatives Symposium, the University of Pittsburgh’s Conference on Choosing the Future of Science, Lingnan University’s “Science: The Real Thing?” Conference, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Cambridge University, the University of Vienna, the University of Pennsylvania, UC San Diego, the University of Washington, the University of Western Ontario, the Pittsburgh Center for the Philosophy of Science, Washington University in St. Louis, Bloomsburg University, Indiana University, the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico City, and the Australian National University. Parts of this paper were written while I was the Senior Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for the Philosophy of Science and while I was a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University, and I gratefully acknowledge the support of both institutions.

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