Scientific Realism, Objectivity, and ‘Technological Realism’

Abstract

The concept of scientific realism involves two different philosophical levels which we specially need to distinguish. On the one hand, the epistemological level, that is to say, the claim that reality can be known by scientific reason with no limit; on the other, the ontological level, according to which the world is independent both from the observer and the knower. However, if we consider the development of science throughout the 20th century, it seems clear that the two former statements do not possess an absolute meaning. Indeed, quantum mechanics has established some limits to scientific knowledge, which are derived from Heisenberg’s indeterminacy relations and complementarity principles. As is well known, experimental testings of Aspect and other scientists seem to definitively confirm these limits in spite of the debate originated from them.1 So, the understanding of the ontological independence of the physical world has become, in a sense, relative to the way of constituting scientific objectivity, that is to say, to the process of elaboration of the scientific object. Hence, scientific knowledge uses, so to speak, some special mediations which transform reality in order to inquire about it from an epistemological view-point. Likewise, it is true that this process has been a natural result due to the permanent growth of scientific knowledge.