Science

[Justin Schwartz]

As you know, I am a flat-headed scientific realist. I do not think that 
truth is socially constructed. Warrant comes from legitimating beliefs, not 
from the objects investigated. Truth may be a relation of correspondance 
between scientific sentences and the things of which they are true. Warrant 
isn't. It derives from the relations between the warranting beliefs that we 
hops make the truth of the warranted belief more probable.

Actuallly I don't think it's harder or easier to do science whatever your 
metaphysical position. Most experimental physicists I knwo are classical 
logical empiricists. Relativity physicsa re realists as a rule; quantum 
physicists are antirealists. It doesn't seem to matter to scientific 
practice what one things on this matter.

--jks


>
>Peer review is an institutional check. Scientists involved in it
>understand that the warrant of scientific findings comes from the object
>of investigation, not the act of being read.
>
>It's very difficult to do science if you believe that truth is socially
>constructed.
>--
>James Heartfield

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