Sie befinden Sich nicht im Netzwerk der Universität Paderborn. Der Zugriff auf elektronische Ressourcen ist gegebenenfalls nur via VPN oder Shibboleth (DFN-AAI) möglich. mehr Informationen...
Scientific Realism from a Polysystemic View of Physical Theories and their Functioning
Ist Teil von
Global Philosophy, 2023-12, Vol.33 (6), Article 53
Ort / Verlag
Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands
Erscheinungsjahr
2023
Link zum Volltext
Quelle
Alma/SFX Local Collection
Beschreibungen/Notizen
One of the vividly discussed topics in the contemporary philosophy of science (especially physics) is the opposition between Realism and Anti-Realism. The supporters of the first way of thinking trust in the objective existence of realities studied by science. They consider theories as approximate descriptions of these realities (Psillos
1999
, xvii), whereas their opponents do not. However, both sides base their argumentation on simplified notions of scientific theories. In this paper, we present a more general approach, which can be coined as “Theoretical Physics Realism” (TPR). It is based on the detailed reconstruction of the polysystemic nature of physical theories. The consequences of this reconstruction for understanding the genuine relationship between theories and experiments in studying the realities are indicated. The paper distinguishes between abstract (general) and domain-dependent theories and appeals to specific physical theories together with their application domains rather than to general speculations.