ABSTRACT
The surprising thing is that the most successful scientific field of the century is quantum physics, and quantum physics in its most orthodox interpretation is decidedly anti-realist. At least that is what Niels Bohr, the foremost thinker in the field, said explicitly: "an independent reality in the ordinary physical sense can neither be ascribed to the phenomena nor to the agencies of observation." Many philosophers, however, would cringe at the thought that any form of relativism may be considered sensible. Their support for realism stems in part from the belief that the alternative to realism is relativism and that relativism is incoherent. Likewise at the level of science, a view may allow the bat such striking success in dealing with certain difficult questions that the bat adopts it as his means of viewing that entire area of experience.
