ABSTRACT
This chapter will review Bhaskar's early works on philosophy of science in which he established his own realistic view in natural and social science. His books A Realist Theory of Science, The Possibility of Naturalism, Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation, Reclaiming Reality, and Philosophy and the Idea of Freedom are covered here. The aim of philosophy in this period is to investigate an adequate account of science. Influenced by Lockean philosophical motives, he claims that the essential part of philosophy should be about “underlabouring” science. 1 This underlaboring job should explain why and how science is possible. To him, philosophy is vindicated as providing a set of conditionally necessary truths about our ordinary world as investigated by science. Thus Bhaskar sees that philosophers should say that some real things and generative mechanisms must exist according to their underlaboring work. However, the philosophical underlaboring does not show which thing or mechanism actually operates in the specific circumstances. That is the business with which science, not philosophy, is involved. Bhaskar says:
Ontology has been vindicated not as providing a set of necessary truths about a mysterious underlying physical realm, but as providing a set of conditionally necessary truths about our ordinary world as investigated by science … Thus as a piece of philosophy we can say (given that science occurs) that some real things and generative mechanisms must exist (and act). But philosophical argument cannot establish which ones actually do; or to put it the other way round, what the real mechanisms are. 2
