Abstract
Does the realism debate matter for scientific practice? Shaw attempts to justify a positive answer to this question by providing a scientific episode in which scientists run meta-inductions and historical inductions. I point out that the meta-inductions and historical inductions are different from the pessimistic induction (PI) and the selective induction (SI), the two prominent meta-inductions and historical inductions in the realism debate. I argue that there is no evidence that the PI and the SI make any difference to scientific practice, that they should not make any difference to scientific practice, but that they have intrinsic value. I also argue that realism would promote and antirealism would forestall scientific progress if scientists adopted them as their philosophical frameworks.
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Park, S. (2022). Scientific Realism and Scientific Practice. In: Embracing Scientific Realism. Synthese Library, vol 445. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87813-9_10
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