Abstract
Structural realism was born in the attempt to reach a compromise between a realist argument and an antirealist one, namely the ‘no miracle’ argument and the ‘pessimistic meta-induction’, respectively. According to the ‘no miracle’ argument, scientific realism is the only philosophy that does not make the success of science a miracle. The only way of explaining why science is so successful in making predictions that most of the time turn out to be verified, is to believe that theoretical terms refer, that theories in mature science are true or at least approximately true, and that the same term refers to the same thing even if it occurs in different theories. It is the referential nature of scientific theories that explains the success of science.
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- 1.
See Laudan (1981).
- 2.
Ladyman (1998), p. 412.
- 3.
French and Ladyman (2003a), p. 37.
- 4.
- 5.
See “The Physics of the Principles” in Poincaré (1905), Engl. transl. (1982), pp. 299–301.
- 6.
Poincaré (1902), Engl. transl. (1982), pp. 140-1. Emphasis added.
- 7.
Poincaré (1902), Engl. transl. (1982), p. 142.
- 8.
For a detailed discussion of this point see Ch. XII in Poincaré (1902), Engl. transl. (1982), pp.174-83.
- 9.
For instance, both Fresnel’s wave theory of light and Laplace’s corpuscular theory of light were founded on the very same principle of least action. Because of the interconvertibility of the principle of least action with the principle of least time (when we replace velocity of light with its inverse), this very same basic principle grounded both Laplacian corpuscular optics (least action) and Huygens/Fresnel wave optics (least time).
- 10.
Cassirer (1910), Eng. trans. (1953).
- 11.
- 12.
Cassirer (1936), Engl. trans. (1956), p. 36.
- 13.
Ibid., p. 52.
- 14.
Russell (1927).
- 15.
- 16.
- 17.
Newman (1928).
- 18.
Demopoulos and Friedman (1985), p. 633.
- 19.
Putnam (1981), p. 49. Emphasis in the original.
- 20.
For the relationship between Putnam’s view and Michael Dummett’s similar view about truth as justification, see Putnam (1983), xvi–xviii.
- 21.
“What then is a true judgement? Kant does believe that we have objective knowledge: we know laws of mathematics, laws of geometry, laws of physics (…). The use of the term “knowledge” and the use of the term “objective” amount to the assertion that there is still a notion of truth. But what is truth if it is not correspondence to the way things are in themselves? (…) The only answer one can extract from Kant’s writing is this: a piece of knowledge (i.e. a “true statement”) is a statement that a rational being would accept on sufficient experience of the kind that it is actually possible for beings with our nature to have.” Putnam (1981), p. 64.
- 22.
As Putnam later clarified, ‘ideal’ epistemic conditions should not be confused with Peirce’s view of truth as intersubjective agreement of a community at the ideal limit of inquiry: “I do not by any means ever mean to use the notion of an ‘ideal epistemic situation’ in this fantastic (or utopian) Peircean sense. By an ideal epistemic situation I mean something like this: If I say ‘There is a chair in my study’, an ideal epistemic situation would be to be in my study with the lights on or with daylight streaming through the window, with nothing wrong with my eyesight, with an unconfused mind, (…). Or, to drop the notion of ‘ideal’ altogether, since that is only a metaphor, I think there are better and worse epistemic situations with respect to particular statements” Putnam (1990), viii.
- 23.
Putnam (1990), p. 42.
- 24.
Massimi (2005).
- 25.
Einstein et al. (1935), p. 777.
- 26.
Bohr (1935).
- 27.
For details of this story, see Buchwald (1981), on which I draw here.
- 28.
When a beam of linearly polarised light passes through a crystal of quartz in a certain direction it splits into two beams, one left circularly polarised, and the other right circularly polarised. A single resultant beam emerges, and it is again linearly polarised, but its plane of polarisation has been rotated.
- 29.
In 1861 Maxwell wrote On physical lines of force, where the magnetic field was represented as a fluid filled with rotating vortex tubes, whose geometrical arrangement corresponded to the lines of force, and the angular velocities of the vortices corresponded to the intensity of the field. At the time it was common to assume the existence of an electromagnetic ether, as a medium responsible for electric and magnetic phenomena and distinct from the luminiferous ether allegedly responsible for optical phenomena.
- 30.
In 1862 Foucault established an estimate of the speed of light of 298,000 km/s which was 4% below the value 310,000 km/s. Maxwell himself tried to improve this estimate, and in 1868 he found a value of 288,000 km/s.
- 31.
I owe this metaphor to Kuhn (1991), who in his later years repeatedly used it to describe the role of a scientific lexicon to shape our scientific categories. Although I do not agree with Kuhn on scientific lexicons and incommensurability (see Massimi 2005, Chapter 3), I want to use this metaphor to describe a quite different relationship, namely that between our scientific theories and scientific entities.
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Massimi, M. (2010). Structural Realism: A Neo-Kantian Perspective. In: Bokulich, A., Bokulich, P. (eds) Scientific Structuralism. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 281. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9597-8_1
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