ABSTRACT
Realism debates in philosophy, like debates between political views, are an essential fibre in humanity’s reflective fabric. The debate about scientific realism, more specifically, is an essential part of our reflection and critical appreciation of scientific knowledge, its nature, and its reach. Outside the realism debate many naturally adopt an uncritical stance according to which science unquestionably provides us knowledge of quarks, electrons, DNA, black holes, quantum entanglement, and other mind-independent, unobservable features of reality that centrally feature in our best science. This arguably naïve stance is widely shared and unsurprising given the astonishing predictive and instrumental successes of science, but it is attacked from all sides in the realism debate. Although science commands authority as a source of empirical knowledge, there are serious philosophical challenges to any unsophisticated realist position. Defending anything like the uncritical stance quickly turns out to be hard work!
