Chapter 5 - Realism

Summary

Scientific realism is usually taken as a thesis that science states the truth about the world. In contrast, I conceive realism in and about science as a commitment to maximize our learning about realities. This is an operational and realistic ideal because realities are mind-framed entities, and we can learn empirical truths about them by devising operationally coherent activities involving them. My brand of realism is akin to Putnam’s internal realism, and perspectival realism. The mode of inquiry motivated by realism as I see it is iterative, because inquiry must start from some inherited basis. And it is pluralist in the sense of recommending that inquiry should explore multiple directions with no in-principle restrictions. While my conception of realism is modest in some clear ways, it is also ambitious, in that it follows an imperative of progress: always seek to increase and improve knowledge maximally. For this reason I designate my position as ‘activist realism’.