Abstract
This chapter discusses three shortcomings of the current state of the debate regarding historical evidence against scientific realism. Attending to these issues will direct the debate away from over-generalising wholesale arguments.
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These are intuitively speaking the simplest assumptions that can be made in the theoretical context in question.
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Some successful predictions in old quantum theory may furnish other useful examples of this ilk.
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For example, the fact that Fresnel construed light as wave motion of the ether turns out to be somewhat immaterial for understanding how Fresnel managed to derive his equations. (Saatsi 2005)
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This tension between the explanationist defence of realism, on the one hand, and the selective realist response to the history of science, on the other, has been noted by Doppelt (2005). His recent novel twist on the explanationist defence of realism is premised on the assumption that part of the explanandum of the no-miracles argument is the explanatory success of science. (Doppelt 2007) From my perspective past explanations in terms of the ether or the caloric, for example, were not successful, since they were false. More would have to be said on this, of course, to fully respond to Doppelt’s subtle argument.
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Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Steven French and Angelo Cei for helpful correspondence.
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Saatsi, J. (2012). Scientific Realism and Historical Evidence: Shortcomings of the Current State of Debate. In: de Regt, H., Hartmann, S., Okasha, S. (eds) EPSA Philosophy of Science: Amsterdam 2009. The European Philosophy of Science Association Proceedings, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2404-4_28
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