ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the essay “Thomas Kuhn, Rocks and the Laws of Physics” in which Rorty criticizes Steven Weinberg’s claims about scientific realism. Weinberg’s argument depends on an analogy between “the rocks in the field” and “the laws of physics”, an argument whose history goes back to attempts to refute Berkeleian idealism. The paper discusses this history, the different interpretations of that attempted to refutation, and the way that Weinberg tries to use a similar argument strategy to argue against Kuhnian historicism. Weinberg’s argument depends on trading between a sense of “rocks in the field” as theoretical stand-ins for reality and as everyday, untheoretical items of experience.
