Communities of Dialogue Russian and Ukrainian Émigrés in Modernist Prague

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Perspectivism versus a completed copernican revolution

Thomas Nickles

pp. 367-382

Abstract

I discuss changes of perspective of four kinds in science and about science. Section 2 defends a perspectival nonrealism—something akin to Giere's perspectival realism but not a realism—against the idea of complete, "Copernican" objectivity. Section 3 contends that there is an inverse relationship between epistemological conservatism and scientific progress. Section 4 casts doubt on strong forms of scientific realism by taking a long-term historical perspective that includes future history. Section 5 defends a partial reversal in the status of so-called context of discovery and context of justification. Section 6 addresses the question of how we can have scientific progress without scientific realism—how progress is possible without the accumulation of representational truth. The overall result (Sect. 7) is a pragmatic instrumentalist perspective on the sciences and how to study them philosophically, one that contains a kernel of realism—instrumental realism.

Publication details

Published in:

Agazzi Evandro, Buzzoni Marco (2016) Epistemologia. Axiomathes 26 (4).

Pages: 367-382

Full citation:

Nickles Thomas (2016) „Perspectivism versus a completed copernican revolution“. Axiomathes 26 (4), 367–382.