Selective Realism: Three Strategies and New Challenges
TRES ESTRATEGIAS Y NUEVOS DESAFIOS
Keywords:
Realismo Selectivo. Realismo Estructural. Semirrealismo. Divide et Impera. Localismo. Campo Electromagnético. Fresnel. Maxwell.Abstract
Selective realism delivers several strategies that aim at responding to the standard challenges that scientific realism faces. While answering to the pessimistic meta-induction, selective realism asks us to find selection criteria that enable us to identify those elements of scientific theories which are likely to survive (or which have survived) scenarios of theory change. Structural realism, the divide et impera, and semirealism are among the selective realist strategies. Although they undoubtedly represent a progress in view of standard scientific realism, they face new challenges in view of distinguishing between prospective or retrospective selective realism, the collapse of local selectivism into hyperlocalism, and their suitability to account for current best scientific theories (in our case study, the transition from the Fresnel-Maxwell case to quantum electrodynamical electromagnetic field).
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