Abstract

This is an admirable book, and is essential reading for all students of scientific realism. It reviews and evaluates nearly all of the important arguments for scientific realism in the literature, and does so fairly, lucidly, and thoroughly. But it has one major defect: one that it shares with most other justifications for scientific realism. It presents the case for realism as a two-stage argument from the empirical success of science, to the truth, or approximate truth, of its dominant theories, to the reality of the things and processes that these theories appear to describe. Formally the argument is sound, given that one has an adequate metaphysical theory of truth to back it up. But no such theory of truth is developed, and one is left in the dark about what ontology is implied by the truth, or approximate truth, of the well-established scientific theories.