The present state of the scientific realism debate

Abstract

Once upon a time there was a feeling in the philosophy of science community that the scientific realism debate had run out of steam. Arthur Fine went as far as to declare that ‘realism is well and truly dead’ (1986a, 112) and to compose the obituary of the debate, aka the Natural Ontological Attitude. Fortunately, the allegations of premature death failed to persuade many philosophers, for whom the scientific realism debate has had a glorious past and a very promising future. In the last dozen of years only there have been a number of books which cast a fresh eye over the issue of scientific realism, such as those by Suppe (1989), Putnam (1990), Almeder (1992), Wright (1992), Kitcher (1993a), Aronson, Harre & Way (1994), Brown (1994), Laudan (1996), Leplin (1997), Kukla (1998), Trout (1998), Cartwright (1999), Giere (1999), Niiniluoto (1999) and Psillos (1999). Although these books differ vastly in their approaches and in their substantive theses, they can all be seen as participating in a common project: to characterise carefully the main features of the realism debate and to offer new ways of either exploring old arguments or thinking in novel terms about the debate itself.