Abstract
Unrestricted or global scientific realism is the view that we should take seriously the whole content of empirically successful scientific theories. This attitude requires us to believe that the theoretical claims of the theory are true, or approximately true, and that scientific progress consists in increasing the scope and accuracy of these theories. A series of devastating objections to this position has been developed based on an examination of both the history and practice of science. On the history side, it is arguable that a majority of empirically successful scientific theories are not anywhere near approximately true as we now have evidence that the entities they posited do not exist. The practice of contemporary science raises different and more subtle concerns. Here we find scientists engaging in a wide array of seemingly ad hoc techniques of idealization and approximation. This suggests that we cannot explain the success of our theories by appeal to their truth as the assumptions deployed in the application of these theories have little bearing on the truth of the theoretical claims made by the theory.
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Notes
- 1.
This is sometimes taken to be a claim about what it is in principle possible for us to know. I will not include this stronger position in my definition of structural realism. Also, I will not discuss here the view known as ontic structural realism, which maintains that the physical world is itself purely structural.
- 2.
This theory also has continuous models, but I will not pursue the complications that arise from theories with models whose structures diverge to such a degree.
- 3.
A different version of structural realism tries to overcome these difficulties by appealing to Ramsey sentences. See Cei and French (2006) and Melia and Saatsi (2006) for some recent discussion and references. I cannot pursue the relationship between mathematical structural realism and Ramsey-sentence realism here. However, I will say that I do not think Ramsey-sentence realism can overcome the problems I raise for mathematical structural realism.
- 4.
I do not intend to draw the difference between the macroscale and microscale at the level of what is observable. Also, it is worth noting that the same point could be made about the relationship between the medium scale description of the theory and the larger scale features of the physical system.
- 5.
Techniques for this sort of scaling and their interpretative significance have been discussed extensively by Batterman. See, for example, Batterman (2002).
- 6.
Cf. Worrall and Zahar (2001), 250.
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Pincock, C. (2010). Mathematical Structural Realism. 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_4
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