Abstract
IN THIS ESSAY I SHALL BE LOOKING AT SOME RECENT (post-1970) developments in philosophy of science that offer a hopeful way forward from the various well-known problems (of meaning-variance, paradigmchange, ontological relativity and the like) bequeathed by logical empiricism. Most promising among them-in my view-is the theory of critical realism that draws inspiration from the work of Rom Harr6 and whose chief exponent during the past two decades has been Roy Bhaskar.1 In North America the emphasis has fallen rather differently, with no such overt or programmatic link between the two major arguments that find expression in the title of Bhaskar's best-known book, Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation. Nevertheless there is a clearly-marked ethical and sociopolitical dimension to the current widespread renewal of interest in causal realism among US philosophers of science. This aspect is important, I shall argue, partly on account of the challenge it offers to the kinds of Kuhnian-relativist thinking that have attained near-orthodox status elsewhere in the social and human sciences.
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