SCIENTIFIC REALISM AND ITS RIVALS
Keywords:
Scientific Realism, Anti-realism, Historiographical approach, Social constructivismAbstract
According to scientific realism, natural sciences seek the truth about the physical world, and successful scientific theories depict and account for, approximately at least, the natural reality. On the basis of this general thesis, scientific realists place themselves as opponents of three schools of philosophical thought about science: anti-realism, historiographical approach and social constructivism. This paper puts itself three aims: i) outlining how scientific realism introduces these disputes; ii) defending the thought a that, although the first dispute (with anti-realism) can be understood as a genuine one, the other two (with the historiographical approach and with social constructivism) carry some details that undermine the very notion of dispute as intended by scientific realists; iii) giving an account to what will be argued for at item (ii) and that is the account: for scientific realists there would be no details at all and thus either one supports scientific realism or one refuses scientific realism; in other words: whatever cannot be assimilated by scientific realism would be understood as a kind of an anti-realistic philosophy.
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