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The realist and selectionist explanations for the success of science

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Abstract

According to realists, theories are successful because they are true, but according to selectionists, theories are successful because they have gone through a rigorous selection process. Wray claims that the realist and selectionist explanations are rivals to each other. Lee objects that they are instead complementary to each other. In my view, Lee’s objection presupposes that the realist explanation is true, and thus it begs the question against selectionists. By contrast, the selectionist explanation invokes a scientific theory, and thus it is not clear whether it is a realist explanation or an antirealist explanation. Finally, the six new arguments for scientific realism in the literature truly complement the no-miracles argument.

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Notes

  1. For the sake of brevity, this paper does not distinguish between truth and approximate truth.

  2. Yunus Prasetya (2022) also claims that the truth of van Fraassen’s (1980) contextual theory of explanation coincides with its empirical adequacy. See (Park 2021) for a critical response.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (Grant No. NRF-2018S1A5A2A01039606).

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  1. School of Liberal Arts, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Ulju-gun, Ulsan, 44919, Republic of Korea

    Seungbae Park

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Correspondence to Seungbae Park.

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Park, S. The realist and selectionist explanations for the success of science. Synthese 200, 233 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03703-0

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