3. Fictionalism and Science

It is often assumed without argument that fictionalism in the philosophy of science contradicts scientific realism. This paper is a critical analysis of this assumption. The kind of fictionalism that is at present discussed in philosophy of science is characterised, and distinguished from fictionalism in other areas. A distinction is then drawn between forms of fictional representation, and two competing accounts of fiction in science are discussed. I then outline explicitly what I take to be the argument for the incompatibility of scientific realism with fictionalism. I argue that some of its premises are unwarranted, and are moreover questionable from a fictionalist perspective. The conclusion is that fictionalism is neutral in the realism-antirealism debate, pulling neither in favour nor against scientific realism. 1. Models and fictions in recent philosophy of science There has been an intense interest in fictionalism in recent philosophy of science, as witnessed by a large number of symposia, workshops and conferences organised on the topic. It seems closely linked to the booming interest on the practice of modelling in the last two decades. Among the most relevant collections one finds the volume compiled by Margaret Morrison and Mary Morgan (1999) on the mediating role of models. On this view models turn to be neither true to theory, nor just a faithful repository of data, but are thoroughly infused by idealisation and other features of the imagination more generally. The role of models in guiding reasoning as opposed to merely stating truths about their target systems, is also explored in the series of books edited by Lorenzo Magnani out of the Pavia conferences on model based reasoning in science (e.g. L. Magnani 1999). A more theoretical or philosophical treatment of idealisation in