Localism vs. Individualism for the Scientific Realism Debate

Non-competitor Conditions in the Scientific Realism Debate

A general insight of 20th-century philosophy of science is that the acceptance of a scientific theory is grounded, not merely on a theory’s relation to data, but on its status as having no, or being superior to its, competitors. I explore the ways in which scientific realists might be thought to utilise this insight, have in fact utilised it, and can legitimately utilise it. In more detail, I p...

" Chemistry beyond the 'positivism Vs Realism' Debate " In

It is often assumed that chemistry was a typical positivistic science as long as chemists used atomic and molecular models as mere fictions and denied any concern with their real existence. Even when they use notions such as molecular orbitals chemists do not reify them and often claim that they are mere models or instrumental artefacts. However a glimpse on the history of chemistry in the long...

Realism for scientific ontologies

Science aims to develop an accurate understanding of reality through a variety of rigorously empirical and formal methods. Ontologies are used to formalize the meaning of terms within a domain of discourse. The Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) is an ontology of particular importance in the biomedical domains, where it provides the top-level for numerous ontologies, including those admitted as part o...

Pyrrhic Victories for Scientific Realism

A Case for Scientific Realism

When Galileo argued that the familiar patterns of light and shade on the face of the full moon cquld best be accounted for by supposing the moon to possess mountains and %as like those of earth, he was employing a joint mode of inference ind explanation that was by no means new to natural science but which since then has come to be recognized as central to scientific explanati&. In a'retroducti...