Realism

About: Realism is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 10799 publications have been published within this topic receiving 175785 citations.

Toward a Campbellian Realist Organization Science

Abstract: Campbell’s search for resolution drove him to become a “critical, hypothetical, corrigible scientific realist” (1988b, p. 444−445). And as he himself admitted many times and as his work suggests so clearly, he also became an avowed evolutionary epistemologist. Scientific realism resolved the first dilemma. Evolutionary epistemology abrogated the third one and Campbell’s later conflation of evolutionary epistemology with hermeneutics nullified the fourth. In all of his writing, however, Campbell seems not have returned to the second one. One purpose of this chapter is to resolve the second dilemma. Assuming Campbell’s dilemmas are resolved and his epistemology at least preliminarily completed—realizing that no epistemology is ever finished—Campbell offers a useful message for organization science. His Campbellian realism provides the foundation for an objective organization science that does not deny the epistemological dynamics uncovered by historical relativists such as Hanson (1958), Kuhn (1962), and Feyerabend (1975) nor the sociology of knowledge developed by interpretists and social constructionists (Bloor 1976, Burrell and Morgan 1979, Brannigan, 1981, Shapin and Schaffer 1985, Latour and Woolgar 1986, Nickles 1989). Campbell’s epistemology and the broader scientific realist and evolutionary epistemologies upon which he draws suggest that the current paradigm war between organizational positivists (Pfeffer 1982, 1993, 1995; Donaldson 1985, 1996, Bacharach 1989), and relativists (Lincoln 1985, Lincoln and Guba 1985, Reed and Hughes 1992, Perrow, 1994, Van Maanen 1995a,b, Alvesson and Deetz 1996, Burrell 1996, Chia 1996) is philosophically uninformed, archaic, and dysfunctional. Does it matter that organization scientists are philosophically archaic? Indeed it does. Pfeffer (1993) presents data showing that multiparadigm disciplines are given low status in the broader scientific community, with a variety of negative consequences. Donaldson (1995) counts fifteen paradigms already and Prahalad and Hamel (1994) call for even more, as do Clegg, Hardy, and Nord (1996). As Campbell (1995) notes, the physical and biological sciences are held in high esteem because they hold to the goal of objectivity in science—the use of an objective external reality serves as the ultimate criterion variable for winnowing out inferior theories and paradigms. Relativist programs, on the other hand, in principle tolerate as many paradigms as there are socially constructed perspectives and interpretations. Hughes (1992, p. 297) says, “The naivety of reasoned certainties and reified objectivity, upon which organization theory built its positivist monuments to modernism, is unceremoniously jettisoned...[and] these articles of faith are unlikely to form the axioms of any rethinking or new theoretical directions....” If he is correct organization science is destined to proliferate even more paradigms and sink to even lower status—surely an unattractive outcome. Campbellian realism provides a way out of this downward spiral. A dynamic objectivist organization science that does not deny a social constructionist sociology of knowledge is possible. Surely this is a message that would delight many organization scientists. Campbell’s intense interest in scientific realism and evolutionary epistemology makes little sense absent a realization that he was well aware that philosophers had abandoned both the Received View and historical relativism by 1970. The epitaph appeared as Suppe’s The Structure of Scientific Theories in 1977. I begin with a painfully brief review of the essential arguments causing the abandoning. Then I turn to a discussion of some aspects of

Scientific Realism : A Critical Reappraisal

Abstract: One / Problems of Scientific Realism.- 1. Scientific Realism.- 2. The Problematic Character of Scientific Realism: Current Science Does Not Do the Job.- 3. Future Science Does Not Do the Job.- Two / Scientific Progress as Nonconvergent.- 1. The Exploration Model and Its Implications.- 2. Theorizing as Inductive Projection.- 3. Scientific Revolutions as Potentially Unending.- 4. Is Later Lesser?.- Three / Ideal-Science Realism.- 1. Reality is Adequately Described Only by Ideal Science, Which is Something We Do Not Have.- 2. Scientific Truth as an Idealization.- 3. Ideal-State Realism as the Only Viable Option.- Four / Against Instrumentalism: Realism and the Task of Science.- 1. Against Instrumentalism: The Descriptive Purport of Science.- 2. Realism and the Aim of Science.- 3. The Pursuit of Truth.- 4. Anti-realism and "Rigorous Empiricism".- 5. The Price of Abandoning Realism.- Five / Schoolbook Science as a Basis for Realism.- 1. The Security/Definiteness Trade-off and the Contrast between Science and Common Sense.- 2. Schoolbook Science and "Soft" Knowledge.- 3. Schoolbook Science as a Basis for Realism.- Six / Disconnecting their Applicative Success from the Truth of Scientific Theories.- 1. Is Successful Applicability an Index of Truth?.- 2. Truth is NOT the Best Explanation of Success in Prediction and Explanation.- 3. Pragmatic Ambiguity.- 4. The Lesson.- Seven / The Anthropomorphic Character of Human Science.- 1. Scientific Relativism.- 2. The Problem of Extraterrestrial Science.- 3. The Potential Diversity of "Science".- 4. The One-World, One-Science Argument.- 5. The Anthropomorphic Character of Human Science.- 6. Relativistic Intimations.- Eight / Evolution's Role in the Success of Science.- 1. The Problem of Mind/Reality Coordination.- 2. The Cognitive Accessibility of Nature.- 3. A Closer Look at the Problem.- 4. "Our" Side.- 5. Nature's Side.- 6. Synthesis.- 7. Implications.- Nine / The Roots of Objectivity.- 1. The Cognitive Inexhaustibility of Things.- 2. The Cognitive Opacity of Real Things.- 3. The Corrigibility of Conceptions.- 4. Perspectives on Realism.- Ten / Metaphysical Realism and the Pragmatic Basis of Objectivity.- 1. The Existential Component of Realism.- 2. Realism in its Regulative/Pragmatic Aspect.- 3. Objectivity as a Requisite of Communication and Inquiry.- 4. The Utilitarian Imperative.- 5. Retrojustification: The Wisdom of Hindsight.- Eleven / Intimations of Idealism.- 1. The Idealistic Aspect of Metaphysical Realism.- 2. The Idealistic Aspect of Epistemological Realism.- 3. Conceptual Idealism.- 4. Is Man the Measure?.- 5. Conclusion.- Notes.- Index of Names.- Index of Subjects.

Knowing the Structure of Nature: Essays on Realism and Explanation

Abstract: Preface Introduction PART I: SCIENTIFIC REALISM The Present State of the Scientific Realism Debate Scientific Realism and Metaphysics Thinking About the Ultimate Argument for Realism Against Neo-Instrumentalism Tracking the Real: Through Thick and Thin Cartwright's Realist Toil: From Entities to Capacities PART II: STRUCTURAL REALISM Is Structural Realism Possible? The Structure, the Whole Structure and Nothing but the Structure? Ramsey's Ramsey-sentences PART III: INFERENCE TO THE BEST EXPLANATION Simply the Best: A Case for Abduction Inference to the Best Explanation and Bayesianism Notes References Index

The Participant Irrealist At Large in the Laboratory

Abstract: Soon it will be time to write 'Ten Years after Laboratory Life'. The notable book of that title, by Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, was published in 1979 and the research for the book was completed exactly a decade ago. The print run was exhausted. The book has just been reissued by another publisher, always a good sign of abiding interest. And interesting it is: even its old subtitle was a manifesto in its own right: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts. Social constructionalist attitudes to the natural sciences have been thriving for several years, especially thanks to the energetic and iconoclastic inquiries of the 'Edinburgh School' with its self-styled 'strong programme' for the sociology of knowledge. But Latour and Woolgar stand out for two interconnected reasons. First, their version of constructionalism is firmly rooted in laboratory science. Secondly, it is adamantly anti-realist, in precisely the domain, experimental science, where temptations towards scientific realism seem to me very strong. Philosophers of science have much debated realism/anti-realism in the past decade. Hardly any of us mention this book, although it is, in my opinion, perhaps the most powerful anti-realist tract. No philosopher better exemplifies the vice of silence about this book than myself. In 1983 my Representing and Intervening argued that nothing to do with theories (representing) helps settle the endless debates about scientific realism/anti-realism. But it urged that experimental science (intervening) strongly leads one to realism about the entities postulated by theories. My 'experimental argument for scientific realism about entities' at the end of the book relies on the way in which we use