The Underdetermination of Theories and Scientific Realism

the role of semantic and communicative translation on reading comprehension of scientific texts

the following null hypothesis was proposed: h : there is no significant difference between the use of semantically or communicatively translates scientific texts. to test the null hypothesis, a number of procedures were taken first, two passages were selected form soyrcebooks of food and nutrition industry and gardening deciplines. each, in turn, was following by a number of comprehension quest...

Scientific and Theological Realism

In this paper I shall explore the parallels and contrasts between scientific and theological realism. I shall start by providing an outline of the various aspects of scientific realism before looking at these in more detail and in comparison to theological realism. I hope that by this comparison with the well-developed debates between various species of scientific antirealists and realists, tha...

Inconsistency and scientific realism

I erect a framework within the semantic view of theories for explaining the empirical success of internally inconsistent models and theories, with scientific realism in mind. The framework is an instance of the ‘content-driven’ approach to inconsistency, advocated by both Norton (Philos Sci 54:327–350, 1987) and Smith (Stud Hist Philos Sci 19:429–445, 1988a, In: Fine A, Leplin J (eds) PSA1988, ...

Incommensurability and Scientific Realism

Scientific realism and ontology

Economists customarily talk about the ‘realism’ of economic models and of their assumptions and make descriptive and prescriptive judgements about them: this model has more realism in it than that, the realism of assumptions does not matter, and so on. This is not the way philosophers mostly use the term ‘realism’ thus there is a major terminological discontinuity between the two disciplines. T...