I really like your presentation of both sides before settling on the perspective you choose. I lean in the other direction towards anti-realism, even though I hold strongly onto a “wish” and hope that what the sciences are leaning towards is an accurate rendition of reality.
Look at chemistry. Chemistry is probably one of the most pragmatic fields whose functionality is as engineering-reliable as it comes. Now let’s look at the standard order we tend to place the sciences in America:
We tend to go in this order:
“Formal sciences”: mathematics, logic
physics
chemistry
earth sciences
biology
psychology
social sciences.
Theoretical physics is a huge field but how big of a field is theoretical chemistry? Well, being pragmatic, it explores the barriers that exist between physics and chemistry on one hand (which includes statistics) and biochemistry on the other.
Given that the functions of chemistry can be described in an entirely different fashion in physics, even neighboring fields like quantum chemistry (chemistry side) and theoretical condensed matter physics (physics side) despite using the SAME theory (Density Functional Theory), chemistry is looking at a single molecule but condensed matter physics is looking at emergent behavior of crystals which requires millions of statistically identical molecules.
How do you get from an individual to collective behaviors?
They use a magic word: emergence. Somehow you are supposed to be able to get from the behaviors of a single element to an entirely different set of behaviors when there is a whole collection of them.
Now, I am a believer in emergence. I’m fascinated by it. I want it to be true, just as I want scientific realism to be true. I’ll write about it and talk about it as if it’s real. But is it? Or is it a convenient explanation tool?
How much of what we work with in sciences are convenient explanation tools that function only in certain ways for certain purposes?
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