Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T05:01:35.205Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Against Selective Realism(s)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Dana Tulodziecki
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

It has recently been suggested that realist responses to historical cases featured in pessimistic meta-inductions are not as successful as previously thought. In response, selective realists have updated the basic divide et impera strategy specifically to take such cases into account and to argue that more modern realist accounts are immune to the historical challenge. Using a case study—that of the nineteenth-century zymotic theory of disease—I argue that these updated proposals fail and that even the most sophisticated recent realist accounts remain vulnerable to the challenge from history.

Type
Representation and Realism
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 84 , Issue 5 , December 2017 , pp. 996 - 1007
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

For productive and fun conversations about realism and the zymotic theory I thank Anjan Chakravartty, Hasok Chang, David Harker, Chris Haufe, Tim Lyons, Dean Peters, Juha Saatsi, Jutta Schickore, and Peter Vickers. Many thanks also to the audiences at PSA 2016 and at the History of Science and Contemporary Scientific Realism conference in Indianapolis in February 2016. Special thanks are due to Peter Vickers for his careful and constructive comments on a previous version of this article.

References

Eyler, John M. 1979. Victorian Social Medicine: The Ideas and Methods of William Farr. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Eyler, John M. 1980. “The Conversion of Angus Smith.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 54 (2): 216–34.Google ScholarPubMed
Farr, William. 1842. “Letter.” In 4th Annual Report to the Registrar General, appendix. London: Clowes.Google Scholar
Farr, William 1852. Report on the Mortality of Cholera in England, 1848–49. London: Clowes.Google Scholar
Frost-Arnold, Greg. 2014. “Can the Pessimistic Induction Be Saved from Semantic Anti-realism about Scientific Theory?” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 65 (3): 521–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harker, David. 2013. “How to Split a Theory: Defending Selective Realism and Convergence without Proximity.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 64 (1): 79–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitcher, Philip. 1993. The Advancement of Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Liebig, Justus. 1852. Animal Chemistry; or, Chemistry in Its Applications to Physiology and Pathology. ed. Gregory, William 3rd ed. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Lyons, Timothy D. 2006. “Scientific Realism and the Stratagema de Divide et Impera.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (3): 537–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peters, Dean. 2014. “What Elements of Successful Scientific Theories Are the Correct Targets for ‘Selective’ Scientific Realism?” Philosophy of Science 81 (3): 377–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Psillos, Stathis. 1999. Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Saatsi, Juha. 2005. “Reconsidering the Fresnel-Maxwell Case Study.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 36:509–38.Google Scholar
Smith, Robert A. 1848. “On the Air and Water of Towns.” Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science 18:16–31.Google Scholar
Smith, Robert A. 1859. “On the Air of Towns.” Quarterly Journal of the Chemical Society of London 11:196–235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tulodziecki, Dana. 2016a. “From Zymes to Germs: Discarding the Realist/Anti-realist Framework.” In The Philosophy of Historical Case Studies, ed. Sauer, T. and Scholl, R., 265–84. Boston Studies in Philosophy of Science 319. Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
Scholl, R. 2016b. “Realist Continuity, Approximate Truth, and the Pessimistic Meta-induction.” Unpublished manuscript, Purdue University.Google Scholar
Scholl, R. 2016c. “Structural Realism beyond Physics.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 59:106–14.Google Scholar
Vickers, Peter. 2013. “A Confrontation of Convergent Realism.” Philosophy of Science 80 (2): 189–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Worrall, John. 1989. “Structural Realism: The Best of Both Worlds?” Dialectica 43 (1–2): 99–124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar