Defense of a modest scientific realism

Alan Sokal

Jean Bricmont

pp. 17-53

in: Martin Carrier, Johannes Roggenhofer, Günter Küppers, Philippe Blanchard (eds), Knowledge and the world, Berlin, Springer, 2004

Abstract

We examine some basic epistemological problems (notably the underde-termination of theory by evidence) and discuss the difficulties faced by both realism and instrumentalism. We also offer some brief comments on radical relativism and radical redefinitions of truth. We conclude by sketching what seems to us to be a defensible modest realism, and we point out its relation with the picture of the world provided by the renormalization group in physics.