Science, realization and reality: The fundamental issues

Abstract

1. Change and Work Is TRUE scientific knowledge ‘about’ an independent reality? Someone who is inclined to answer this question in the affirmative will have to face two different (though not unrelated) basic sources of difficulties concerning this answer. The first is ‘change’, the second ‘work’. Let me explain. If true knowledge means knowledge about a reality that is independent of the existence of human beings or of the process in which it has been produced, true knowledge is invariant knowledge. But, when we look at the historical development of actual knowledge claims endorsed by scientists or scientific communities, we often see radical changes rather than invariance. The representations of reality turn out to be variable both temporally and spatially. This fact entails a severe challenge to realist interpretations, if one rightfully wants to avoid one’s interpretation being completely disconnected from scientific practice. This ‘Kuhnian challenge’ to scientific realism has been much debated in the history, philosophy and sociology of science of the last decades. ‘Conceptual discontinuity’, ‘incommensurability’ and ‘interpretative flexibility’ constitute the key notions of these debates.’ The second source of problems facing a realist interpretation of science is the work that is needed to produce scientific knowledge. Today virtually no one adheres any more to the view that knowledge is somehow imprinted by reality on passive knowers. Nearly all modern philosophers insist that acquiring scientific knowledge demands an active contribution from human beings. Because of this, anti-realists may and do argue that the nature of the knowledge product is not at all defined by an independent reality but rather by the specific characteristics of this production process. The work done to