The epistemic conception of scientific progress equates progress with accumulation of scientific knowledge. I argue that the epistemic conception fails to fully capture scientific progress: theoretical progress, in particular, can transcend scientific knowledge in important ways. Sometimes theoretical progress can be a ma er of new theories ‘latching be er onto unobservable reality’ in a way th...

Scientific realism is dead, or so many philosophers believe. Its death was announced when philosophers became convinced that one can accept all scientific results without committing oneself to metaphysical existence claims about theoretical entities (Fine 1986, 112). In addition, the inability of self–proclaimed scientific realists, despite recurrent demands, to distinguish themselves from thei...

Realism Philosophic realism in general is defined by Phillips (1987, p. 205) as " the view that entities exist independently of being perceived, or independently of our theories about them. " Schwandt adds that " scientific realism is the view that theories refer to real features of the world. 'Reality' here refers to whatever it is in the universe (i.e., forces, structures, and so on) that cau...

Contemporary pragmatists, especially those who follow Richard Rorty’s lead, have contested the philosophical paradigm they have referred to as ‘representationalism’: the idea that our claims or beliefs describe or are ‘about’ the world. These ‘new pragmatists’ have often been seen to be in an antagonistic relationship with their antecedents, the pragmatists of the turn of the 20th century: thes...