Theory Status, Inductive Realism, and Approximate Truth: No Miracles, No Charades

Abstract

The concept of approximate truth plays a prominent role in most versions of scientific realism. However, adequately conceptualizing ‘approximate truth’ has proved challenging. This article argues that the goal of articulating the concept of approximate truth can be advanced by first investigating the processes by which science accords theories the status of accepted or rejected. Accordingly, this article uses a path diagram model as a visual heuristic for the purpose of showing the processes in science that are involved in determining a theory's status. This ‘inductive realist’ model of theory status then serves as a starting point for explicating an inductive realist view of approximate truth that, it is argued, can explain instances of the success of science, but does not (1) require science's theories to be strictly true in any world or (2) require a metric for measuring how close an approximately true theory is to some strictly true theory. To show the advantages of the inductive realist approach to approximate truth, an example of a major success story of science, the successful eradication of smallpox, is reviewed and then explained.

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Harvey Siegel (University of Miami), Roy D. Howell (Texas Tech University), Theo A. F. Kuipers (University of Groningen), and an anonymous reviewer and the editor of this journal for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Notes

‘Linguistic expressions’ is used here in a broad sense that includes natural languages and formal languages, such as mathematics.

Although the inductive realist model incorporates structures as forms of relationships, it is not restricted to ‘structural realism’, as this term is used by Worrall (1989) and others.

The statistical procedure known as ‘meta-analysis’ is used as part of the weighing process in many disciplines, including medicine, psychology, education, and sociology. For an introduction to this procedure, see Hedges and Olkin (1985).

The history of the disease smallpox in this section draws extensively on Fenner and White (1976) and Hopkins (1983).

The smallpox eradication programme was also an administrative and political success story worthy of explanation. However, my focus here is on the medical science portion of the success story.

Note that, for inductive realism, a smallpox researcher would say, ‘Because of the long-run success of “smallpox theory”, I have reason to believe that something like the entity denoted as “smallpox virus” likely exists, and I shall then explore precisely how large this entity is.’

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shelby D. Hunt

Shelby D. Hunt is at the Department of Marketing, Jerry S. Rawls College of Business Administration, Texas Tech University.