SCIENTIFIC REALISM AS SPIRITUAL CULTIVATION

The aim of this article is to clarify scientific realism in connection with a few key questions that have recently been brought up by Jaroslav Peregrin. I will try to provide a reaction to Peregrin on a number of issues, in particular, to explain in what sense we can talk about confirming or disconfirming realism. Next, I will focus on whether realism is a good, or indeed the best, explanation of the success of science, and how it fares in comparison with antirealism. To conclude, I will briefly sketch the directions in which contemporary debates have been heading. The unifying aspect of this article is the thesis that the question of scientific realism is a complex one and that it is also a topic which shows that philosophy, at least in some of its domains, has been progressive. Thus, the debate on scientific realism and antirealism is not a torture of the spirit but rather a cultivation of it.