44th Forum for Science, Society, and the Humanities

September 21, 2012

4 pm, Conference Room, 6th Floor Renwen

Anjan Chakravarttay, Professor of Philosophy at University of Notre Dame, will give a talk titled 'Case Studies and Scientific Realism'.

Case studies from past and present science are often offered as evidence for or against scientific realism: the view that our best theories give approximately true descriptions of unobservable aspects of the world, or that their central terms refer to entities that exist in a mind-independent reality, or that they give approximative representations of the structure of scientific phenomena. But how effective are case studies in arguing for or against scientific realism? I consider this question in light of three arguments. The first concerns the possible immunity of realism to case studies of scientific methodology. The second concerns the possible immunity of realism to considerations of the history of scientific theories that are now rejected. The third concerns a suggested inability of case study evidence to indicate which form of scientific realism is most promising.