Scientific Progress and Scientific Realism

Roughly speaking, scientific realists suppose that our best scientific theories are approximately true, at least in certain respects. Recent debates surrounding scientific realism have tended to marginalise questions about scientific progress. Certainly, most scientific realists likely suppose that our scientific theories are not only approximately true but are also becoming more truthlike (or accumulating more knowledge). Recent work, however, has focused on the possibility of acquiring knowledge of unobservables, rather than evidence or arguments for a converging realist thesis. In this chapter I argue that conceiving of scientific success in terms of scientific progress provides a distinct and useful perspective, for purposes of defending a modest form of scientific realism. Scientific realists should be attending to patterns in the history of science for evidence that, over time, science doesn’t just achieve more empirically adequate theories, but that it corrects the errors contained within previous scientific work, and thereby achieves greater truthlikeness. To identify such patterns it is important that scientific realists pay more attention both to the varieties of progress and the means by which these are achieved.