Arguments Concerning Constructive Empiricism

Abstract

Should scientists believe everything they say? Ought they to believe the claims of their mature scientific theories, and in the existence of the various microscopic exotica that are now said to populate the unobservable reaches of reality? Or would a more modest attitude towards scientific inquiry be preferable? On first reflection, there is certainly a strong intuition that our current scientific theories are (at least approximately) true: after all, contemporary scientific practice is enormously successful in terms of both the prediction and the manipulation of empirical phenomena, and — so the thought goes — this fact would simply be miraculous if it was not the case that our current scientific theories provide us with more or less accurate descriptions of the way the world is. Whatever else one may think about it, science works; therefore we should believe that it is true.