Scientific Realism Research Paper

In the most general sense, realism is the view that there are entities in this world that exist that are mind-independent. In essence, scientific realism offers a certain portrayal of what a scientific theory is and what constitutes its acceptance based on truth. A scientific realist holds 2 fundamental principles: science aims to give us a literally true account of what the world is like through theories, and that accepting a scientific theory involves the belief that it is true. In stark contrast to this view, constructive empiricism, or rather scientific anti-realism, holds that acceptance of a scientific theory involves only the belief that the theory is empirically adequate, thus differing from the scientific realist view, however it
From a scientific realist’s perspective, the scientific pursuit of truth further gives rise to genuine knowledge of the natural world, thus entailing epistemic realism and accordingly yielding the knowledge of truth about the objective reality investigated by scientists (Sankey, 2008). Epistemic realism characterises scientific realism, insisting that scientific knowledge is not restricted to the observational level, but also unobservable aspects of reality as well. On the contrary, contemporary versions of constructive empiricist deny the possibility of having rationally justified belief or knowledge about unobservable aspects of the world (Sankey,
Suppose an empirically successful accepted theory T, and its rival T’, which is equally empirically successful, but makes claims that are quite different from those of T about the ‘deep structure’ of the universe (Worrall, 2011). As such, the theories make all the same predictions about what’s observable, but differ in regards to what is unobservable. In light of the evidence, the realist must then consider both theories as equally good, and thus by supposition, they are rivals and both cannot be considered to be true. However, in the case of the constructive empiricist, empirical adequacy is the only rational candidate for the belief involved in a theory’s acceptance and as such underdetermination does not effect their position. Consider the two most prominent theories in contemporary physics: the general theory of relativity and the quantum theory. These two theories are considered not absolutely inconsistent yet they are mutually incompatible (Worrall, 2011). The quantum theory states that everything is quantised, while the general theory does not consider space-time to be quantised. The general theory states that all laws are covariant, but the quantum theory is not a covariant theory. So which is seen to be true from the perspective of the scientific realist? This example illustrates the threat that underdetermination