Entity realism and discontinuity of Science
a response to Elsamahi
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51359/2357-9986.2024.258597Keywords:
Ian Hacking, Elsamahi, pessimistic meta-induction, entity realismAbstract
Elsahami, in his Could Theoretical Entities Save Realism? (1994), offers a set of problems that should be a threat to the alleged improvements of entity realism over explanationist realism (or theory realism, in entity realism's vocabulary). Those criticisms were driven particularly to Hacking's entity realism (1983). In this present article, I will briefly appreciate Elsamahi's argumentation recognizing some of its merits and some of its problems. My efforts will be especially concentrated on the assumption that entity realism's criterion might be revised in that cases of theoretical changes in which the replaced theoretical entities turned to be considered fictional ones; this is a similar strategy than to answering to some versions of pessimistic meta-induction. I will argue that, far from Elsamahi's thought, entity realism is compatible to those theoretical changes that discarded the ether, the caloric, and the flogisto, three entities that usually cause trouble to explanationist realism.
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