Scientific realism and the inevitability of science

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Abstract

This paper examines the question of whether scientific realism is committed to the inevitability of science or is consistent with claims of the contingency of science. In order to address this question, a general characterization of the position of scientific realism is presented. It is then argued that scientific realism has no evident implications with regard to the inevitability of science. A historical case study is presented in which contingency plays a significant role, and the appropriate realist response to this case study is indicated. Finally, it is argued that, when conjoined with a reliabilist theory of method, realism does have implications for the inevitability of science.

Section snippets

Inevitabilism

In The social construction of what?, Ian Hacking describes a position which he refers to as inevitabilism. According to Hacking, inevitabilists

do not think that the progress of physics was inevitable (we could have stayed with Zen). They do think that if successful physics took place, then it would have inevitably happened in something like our way. (Hacking, 1999, p. 79)

The inevitabilist position is opposed to a position which emphasizes the contingency of science:

there could have been a

Necessity and fallibilism

Talk of contingency and inevitability raises questions about necessity and certainty in science. To clarify what is at issue in relation to the inevitability of science, I will offer some preliminary clarification of these matters before turning to the question of scientific realism and the inevitability of science.

Scientific realism

Before turning to the question of the realist view of the inevitability of science, I will briefly sketch the position of scientific realism. This sketch of scientific realism is based on a characterization of the position that I have formulated elsewhere (Sankey, 2001).

It is characteristic of scientific realism that the aim of science is taken to be truth. This has the consequence that progress in science is understood as progress toward the truth. Hence, the first principle I propose of

Realism and inevitabilism

No explicit statement about the inevitability of science occurs among the principles of scientific realism that have just been presented. So, in a strict sense, scientific realism says nothing about the issue. But the question remains of whether the principles of realism may have implications with respect to the inevitability of science. I will now consider a number of connections which might be drawn between various principles of realism and the issue of the inevitability of science.

To begin

The ocean floor

I will now consider a case study which illustrates the role played by contingency in the formation of the empirical basis of science. I will then suggest the appropriate scientific realist attitude toward such contingency.

While continental drift is now a widely accepted phenomenon, this was not always the case. The idea that the continents move across the surface of the Earth was proposed by Alfred Wegener early in the twentieth century. But, until the 1960s, most earth scientists continued to

Realism, reliabilism and inevitability

So far in this paper, I have sought to show that there is no clear connection between scientific realism and the question of inevitability. In the preceding section, I presented an example in which historical contingency plays a role in determining the empirical basis of science. In this section, I will explore an extension of scientific realism which leads to consequences that are inevitabilist in character. But I must stress that the form of inevitabilism at issue in this section is not the

Conclusion

Before concluding, it is important briefly to mention one final variation on the theme of contingency and inevitability in science. As I understand the claim of the inevitabilist, it is a claim about the inevitability that science will converge on a single true theory of the world that is in large part similar to current science. This, I have said, is a thesis about the nature of our epistemic practices, rather than a thesis about the nature of the world as such. Nor, I should add, is it a

Acknowledgements

Work on this paper was in part undertaken while I was a visitor at the Poincaré Archives, Laboratory of the Philosophy and History of Science, University of Nancy 2 (France), supported by an Arts Faculty Special Studies Program travel grant from the University of Melbourne. Talks based on earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Poincaré Archives, as well as the Steno Institute, University of Aarhus (Denmark), and the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of

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