Abstract

This essay focuses on the question of the existence of science's unobservables. Our discussion will be framed around the contemporary debate between Bas van Fraassen's constructive empiricism and Ian Hacking's experimental realism. We will defend scientific realism but we are not going to follow Hacking. With Hacking, we are going to tackle the problem of science's unobservables from the experimental side of science. But unlike Hacking, we are going to argue that the strength of the argument for experimental realism does not lie in the use of unobservables in the exploration of new phenomena. By focusing on experimental evolutionary biology--instead of the traditional focus of philosophical attention: sub-atomic physics--we will argue that the strength of experimentation lies on the interaction with unobservables that experimentation yields. Thus, we will understand experiments as tools that allow experimenters to explore the infinitely large field of possible causal combinations that should result from the interaction between given causal elements in the experimental setting and the unobservable in question. And we will argue that the performance of the putative unobservable during such causal combinatorial explosion is what amounts to a strong philosophical argument for the existence of such unobservable. We will show that this concentration on combinatorial interaction will allow us to tackle van Fraassen's position more effectively. More precisely, we will be able to tackle the heart of van Fraassen's skepticism: the problem of empirical equivalence. Additionally, our experimental realism will be able to accommodate other forms of experimental science besides sub-atomic particle physics. ;Unlike most philosophy of science, this essay will concentrate on evolutionary biology. More precisely, we will concentrate on the realist role that two famous pieces of experimental evolutionary biology were supposed to play. First, we will analyze Darwin's use of domestic breeding as an experiment in the uncovering of the nature of heritable variation. Second, we will concentrate on M. Wade's experiments on group selection and the role they were supposed to play in the controversy over group selection as a evolutionary force