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Realism and Instrumentalism in 19th-Century Atomism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Michael R. Gardner
Michael R. Gardner*
Affiliation:
University of South Carolina
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Abstract

And we must at all costs avoid over-simplification, which one might be tempted to call the occupational disease of philosophers if it were not their occupation.

(Austin 1965, p. 38).

Sometimes a theory is interpreted realistically—i.e., as literally true—whereas sometimes a theory is interpreted instrumentalistically—i.e., as merely a convenient device for summarizing, systematizing, deducing, etc., a given body of observable facts. This paper is part of a program aimed at determining the basis on which scientists decide on which of these interpretations to accept a theory. I proceed by examining one case: the nineteenth-century debates about the existence of atoms. I argue that there was a gradual transition from an instrumentalist to a realistic acceptance of the atomic theory, because of gradual increases in its predictive power, the “testedness” of its hypotheses, the “determinateness” of its quantities, and because of resolutions of doubts about the acceptability of its basic explanatory concepts.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , March 1979 , pp. 1 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1979

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Footnotes

†

I wish to thank Stephen Brush, James Celarier, Lindley Darden, Jerrold Levinson, Dudley Shapere, Frederick Suppe; various members of audiences at the Universities of Maryland, Connecticut, and South Carolina; and an anonymous referee for helpful comments on earlier drafts. I am also grateful for financial support from the General Research Board of the University of Maryland. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. SOC-7707691.

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