Premium
SCIENTIFIC REALISM AND THE EMPIRICIST CHALLENGE: AN INTRODUCTION TO ERNAN MCMULLIN'S AQUINAS LECTURE
Author(s) -
van Fraassen Bas C.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
zygon®
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.222
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1467-9744
pISSN - 0591-2385
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2012.01322.x
Subject(s) - empiricism , inference , epistemology , scientific realism , philosophy , realism , abductive reasoning , philosophy of science , empirical evidence
In The Inference That Makes Science , Ernan McMullin recounts the clear historical progress he saw toward a vision of the sciences as conclusions reached rationally on the basis of empirical evidence. Distinctive of this vision was his view of science as driven by a specific form of inference, retroduction. To understand this properly, we need to disentangle the description of retroductive inference from the claims made on its behalf. To end I will suggest that the real rival to McMullin's vision of science is not the methodologies he criticizes so successfully but a more radical empiricist alternative in epistemology.