Scientific revolutions and the explosion of scientific evidence

Abstract

Scientific realism, the position that successful theories are likely to be approximately true, is threatened by the pessimistic induction according to which the history of science is full of successful, but false theories. I aim to defend scientific realism against the pessimistic induction. My main thesis is that our current best theories each enjoy a very high degree of predictive success, far higher than was enjoyed by any of the refuted theories. I support this thesis by showing that both the amount, and quality, of scientific evidence has increased enormously in the recent past, resulting in a big boost of success for the best theories.

Scientific conclusions need not be accurate, justified, or believed by their authors

“…Frequent false public avowals are a necessary part of scientific progress, especially in areas of active inquiry. While scientific realists have argued that the history of science is also full of epistemic successes (for example, see Fahrbach, 2011Fahrbach, , 2017, it is nevertheless the case that individual contributions to science in areas of active inquiry are prone to error and are continuously replaced by new errors.…”

The History of Science as a Graveyard of Theories: A Philosophers’ Myth?

“…Fahrbach's (2011, 149) bibliometric data show that Laudan's list is not a representative sample of scientific theories, given that "all entries on that list are theories that were abandoned more than 100 years ago [which is] during the time of the first 5 % of all scientific work ever done by scientists" (cf. Wray 2013; see also Fahrbach 2016). In my own work, I have used random sampling to collect representative samples of scientific theories and scientific laws.…”

What’s Voluntary in Stance Voluntarism?

“…On the other side, many anti-realists appeal to historical inductions from the failures of past science in order to defend skepticism about current scientific theories (Laudan 1981;Stanford 2006), but realists complain that it is not reasonable to assess conjointly the reliability of current and past science (e.g. Devitt 2011;Fahrbach 2017). Although there are other influential arguments for scientific antirealism, they have been targets of similar criticisms (see Chakravartty 2017b).…”

“…So, the point of voluntarism is a pledge for tolerance indeed. But, along with van Fraassen (2004b;2004a;, many replied that voluntarism does not imply an "anything goes" relativism, since we can still criticize absurd views by relying on our accepted epistemic stances and background knowledge, and the fact that our assessment is internal to our epistemic stances does not undermine its normativity for us (see Teller 2011;Schoenfield 2014;Chakravartty 2015;2017;Boucher 2018;Elder 2019). Debating with others, then, becomes a matter of dialectically finding a common ground to argue from, and indeed there is no guarantee that there will always be sufficient common ground to develop a persuading argument.…”