Notes on Pragmatism and Scientific Realism

Research (1991) is informative for the overview it provides of scientific realism. At the outset House tells the reader that he will forgo comparisons between scientific realism and interpretivism, pragmatism, and critical theory in order to focus on its scientific realism's introduction and explication (p. 2). At the end he poses the question: How does scientific realism compare with perspectives such as interpretivism, pragmatism, and critical theory? (p. 9). A note of response is not the place to pursue such comparisons in detail, but a few comments, perhaps, may provide the basis for beginning such comparisons, in this case between pragmatism and scientific realism. Pragmatism and scientific realism share a number of assumptions about science, language, and the world. Both are also opposed to positivism/empiricism. Given their areas of agreement as well as some common opponents, it is surprising that these two schools of thought end up so far apart. The following comments profile a few of their affinities as well as a few dramatic differences that divide them.