‘Realism in the arts and in the sciences’ (original) (raw)

Abstract

The terms ‘realistic’ and ‘fictional’ are both used of scientific models, the first to describe something which modelling aims at, the second to try to get to grips with what is conceived as their rather problematic relation to truth and belief. Questions about realism have come under scrutiny in numerous philosophical and sociological studies of modelling, whereas trying to work out the way in which models are fictions has been carried out mostly in philosophy of science. Sociological studies of realism (sometimes conflated with representationalism) in science tend to show the social constructedness of realism, and accounts of models as fictions in philosophy of science tend to find the term useful because of what models and fictions purportedly have in common, a kind of deficit of truth or belief. There is a much richer repertoire of analyses and reflections on fiction in literary and critical theory which could instead bring different perspectives onto models in science. In this paper, I describe the aims and self-reflections of 19th century realism and the analysis and critique to which these have been subjected in literary and critical theory, and bring these into dialogue with STS constructivism on one hand, and philosophical fictionalism about models on the other. Finally, I outline a different account of fictional realism, which takes the formative capacity of fictions seriously, and gets us out of the confines of a narrow realism/anti-realism distinction.

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