Scientific Realism

Scientific Realism edited by Jarrett Leplin assembles a landmark debate over whether—and how—science tells us what the world is really like. Opening with Hilary Putnam’s “no-miracles” provocation, Leplin frames ten characteristic realist theses (about approximate truth, reference, success, progress, and literal construal) and then immediately problematizes consensus: realists disagree on which theses they can jointly endorse. The introduction spotlights two pressure points. First, the historical challenge: theory change in mature sciences looks discontinuous, threatening referential stability and suggesting that empirical success underdetermines belief about unobservables. Second, the explanatory challenge: even true (or “approximately true”) theories might fail empirically for auxiliary-assumption reasons, while false ones might succeed by luck or fit; thus abductive “inference to the best explanation” either begs the question for realism or renders realism explanatorily superfluous. Leplin sketches realist replies—causal theories of reference, nuanced accounts of approximation, and cumulativist readings of history—and also urges a methodological defense: certain scientific practices are unintelligible absent realist commitments.

Across the volume, contributors develop these lines with distinctive emphases. Putnam defends realism via method’s success and reference-preserving continuity; McMullin proposes progress through fertile metaphors that survive conceptual turnover; Leplin advances explanationist realism anchored in independent markers of progress. Method-first strategies include Levin (against instrumentalism’s content thinness), Glymour (comparative explanation and reference), Laymon (idealization and confirmation), Boyd (mature methodology’s reliability implying realism), and Hacking (experimentation’s autonomy underwriting entity realism). Powerful antirealist countermoves come from Laudan (historical rebuttal to theses on truth, reference, and success), van Fraassen (empirical adequacy over truth; underdetermination), and Fine, whose “natural ontological attitude” rejects metaphysical add-ons while preserving scientific inference. The result is a meticulous cartography of positions and problems, showing that realism’s fate hinges as much on philosophy of reference and confirmation as on sober readings of science’s past and present.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1984.

Contributor: Jarrett Leplin Enter the Author Bio(s) here.