Realism Despite Cognitive Antireductionism

Abstract

Building on previous work, I continue the arguments for scientific realism in the presence of a natural level structure of science. That structure results from a cognitive antireductionism that calls for the retention of mature theories even though they have been “superseded”. The level structure is based on “scientific truth” characterized by a theory's validity domain and the confirming empirical data. Reductionism (including fundamentalism) fails cognitively because of qualitative differences in the ontology and semantics of successive theories. This cognitive failure exists in spite of the mathematical success of theory reduction. The claim for scientific realism is strongly based on theory coherence between theories on adjacent levels. Level coherence consists of mathematical relations between levels, as well as of reductive explanations. The latter refers to questions that can be posed (but not answered) on a superseded level, but which can be answered (explained) on the superseding level. In view of the pluralism generated by cognitive antireductionism, theory coherence is claimed to be so compelling that it provides strong epistemic justification for a pluralistic scientific realism.

Notes

Correspondence: Department of Physics, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244‐1130, USA. E‐mail: [email protected]

The effective holism involved here is to be clearly distinguished from “intrinsic holism” as it occurs in quantum physics: the entanglement phenomenon of two different quantum states of a system is an intrinsic phenomenon.

A fine discussion between Weinberg (1987, 1988) and Mayr (1988) can also be consulted.

This view arose partly from considerations of historic examples. The many centuries of failed attempts must be compared to just a few recent centuries (essentially since Newton) of increasingly successful theories that become eventually unique for each level of scientific theory.