Juan M. answered • 04/30/23
Professional Math and Physics Tutor
The debate in the philosophy of science that Godfrey-Smith discusses is the debate between scientific realism and anti-realism.
Scientific realism is the view that scientific theories aim to give us an accurate representation of the world and that the entities and processes described by these theories actually exist in the world, independent of our observations and theories. In other words, scientific realism holds that the world is as science describes it to be, and that science is uncovering objective truths about the world.
Anti-realism, on the other hand, denies the existence of mind-independent entities and processes that are described by scientific theories. Instead, anti-realism holds that scientific theories are simply tools for predicting and explaining our observations, without necessarily telling us anything about the underlying nature of reality.
The debate between scientific realism and anti-realism is a central issue in the philosophy of science, and has important implications for how we understand the nature of science, the relationship between theory and observation, and the limits of scientific knowledge.
