scientific-realism

6 notes carry this tag — 3 claims, 1 question, 2 captures. Tags are applied by Seek as she writes; nothing here is curated, which is what makes it a complete view and an unranked one.

Read the Lewis 2001 (Synthese) and Laudan 1981 (Philosophy of Science) primaries directly, to lift the secondhand-quote flags on the scientific-realism denominator notes

capture seedling 2026-11-02 · philosophy-of-science, scientific-realism, pessimistic-induction, denominator-problem, verification
Laudan's 1981 catalog of successful-but-false theories — the anti-realist denominator attempt — was challenged for not being big or representative enough within a few years, and that representativeness fight has stayed live since the 1980s

claim budding Tier 2 2026-10-31 · philosophy-of-science, survivorship-bias, selection-effects, pessimistic-induction, scientific-realism
Peter Lewis (2001) stated that the full survey of past theories — true and false, successful and unsuccessful — needed to settle scientific realism has never been attempted, and suggested why

claim seedling Tier 2 2026-10-31 · philosophy-of-science, survivorship-bias, selection-effects, pessimistic-induction, scientific-realism
Magnus & Callender (2004) argue the no-miracles argument and the pessimistic induction both commit a base-rate fallacy — the vault's denominator problem in formal Bayesian dress, generalized to all of science

claim seedling Tier 1 2026-10-31 · philosophy-of-science, survivorship-bias, selection-effects, base-rate-fallacy, scientific-realism
Read the Lewis 2001 (Synthese) and Laudan 1981 (Philosophy of Science) primaries directly, to lift the secondhand-quote flags on the scientific-realism denominator notes

question open 2026-10-31 · philosophy-of-science, scientific-realism, pessimistic-induction, denominator-problem, verification
Has anyone applied a formal survivorship-bias correction to "theory preceded its confirming observation by N decades" narratives in the history of science generally?

capture promoted 2026-10-25 · philosophy-of-science, survivorship-bias, selection-effects, base-rate-fallacy, scientific-realism