Notes
According to van Fraassen (2006), it is embarrassing to assert that what is preserved through theory changes is the structure attributed to nature, identifying at the same time structure by noticing what has been preserved. This challenge to both epistemic and ontic forms of structural realism continues to bring into play new responses.
Strangely enough, however, the names of Sneed and Stegmüller do not come to the fore in the volume under review. This omission is surprising, since the authors of the “non-received view” developed versions of structural realism many years before the appearance of John Worrall’s paper. In addition, the members of Munich’s school have developed pro-realist arguments that might be still effective in the contemporary realism-empiricism controversy.
For many years, van Fraassen has been arguing for the compatibility of the semantic view of scientific theories with the denouncement of belief in anything that goes beyond the observable. Following van Fraassen’s thread, the structural empiricist rejects the existence of unobservable mathematical structures as well.
References
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Chakravartty, A. (2007). A metaphysics for scientific realism: Knowing the unobservable. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
French, S, & Ladyman, J. (2003). Remodelling structural realism: Quantum physics and the metaphysics of structure. Synthese, 136, 31–56.
Thomson-Jones, M. (2006). Models and the semantic view. Philosophy of Science, 73, 524–535.
van Fraassen, B. (2006). Structure: Its shadow and substance. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 57, 275–307.
Worrall, J. (1989). Structural realism: The best of both worlds? Dialectica, 43, 99–124.
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Ginev, D. Alisa Bokulich and Peter Bokulich (eds): Scientific Structuralism (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Volume 281). Erkenn 80, 681–687 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-014-9671-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-014-9671-4