What is Ontological Synthesis? – A Reply to Simon Saunders

Abstract

Simon Saunders's lengthy criticism of my book has a philosophically in teresting point: while structural continuity in scientific developments, or some version of structural realism, is more or less acceptable, he claims, the idea of ontological synthesis, as a response to Kuhn's antirealist view of science and its development, "misses the point entirely". Of the reasons why he makes such a claim, which will be examined below, one has its roots in his suspicion about the importance, or even the relevance, of the idea of ontology in scientific endeavor and in the philosophical understand ing of science. But then, ironically, Saunders also criticizes me of having ignored "altogether the problem of measurement" in quantum mechanics in my discussion of realism, without noticing that in order to appreciate the bearings of the problem of measurement on the realism-antirealism debate, one has to take ontology very seriously, much more seriously than he would take it, even more seriously than I did in my book. However, I will not address this relatively minor point beyond a brief remark in section III, and focus my discussion instead on the notion of ontological synthesis. Let me start with the notion of ontology.