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A Defense of Scientific Realism


Online event
Thursday, Nov 11, 2021, 7:00 PM

Evandro Agazzi

Professor of Bioethics, Universidad Panamericana, Mexico City

A Defense of Scientific Realism

Chair: Shyam Wuppuluri, Caputh

 
Online via Zoom
Please register here to join the conversation.

 

The conceptual framework of modern science used to consist of what came to be known as classical physics, which was in agreement with common sense and was considered an adequate form of knowledge of the world. Scientific knowledge, therefore, was considered to be true knowledge, and it was never put in doubt that when we know the world, we really know reality. At the end of the 19th century, however, the difficulties that emerged in interpreting data from the study of the microphysical world were interpreted by many as a sign that science had neither the task nor the right to seek out true representations of reality. This resulted in a form of radical empiricism, according to which science has only practical value.
Today, on the other hand, reflecting on the fact that each scientific theory investigates only certain specific aspects of reality and has operational criteria for accessing the referents of its discourse, we can recover the conception of science as an investigation that achieves partial but authentic truths about its objects and is therefore a knowledge of reality. In fact, the possibility of working with a certain (albeit “unobservable”) elementary particle attests to the fact that it is not a pure figment of our imagination, nor even a mere “mental construct.” This is the meaning of a critical recovery of scientific realism.

Evandro Agazzi is currently full professor in the Department of Bioethics of the Panamerican University of Mexico City, and Emeritus Professor of the Universities of Fribourg (Switzerland) and Genoa (Italy). He was president and is now honorary president of the International Academy of Philosophy of Science (Brussels), of the International Federation of the Philosophical Societies, and of the International Institute of Philosophy (Paris). He has received several honorary doctorates from European and American universities. He has published in several languages, as author or editor, more than 80 books, and more than 1,000 papers in books and journals, in the domains of logic, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of physics, general philosophy of science, metaphysics, ethics of science and technology, bioethics, education. He is the editor of the international journals Epistemologia and Bioethics Update.

Shyam Wuppuluri is the current Albert Einstein Fellow in Caputh.

The event will be held in English