La verdad y el éxito de la ciencia: A propósito de un artículo de P. Kyle Stanford

Resumo

P. Kyle Stanford proposes "An Antirealist Explanation of the Success of Science" according to which the success of a wholy false scientific theory (as for example an enhanced version of the Ptolemaic system) can be explained by its "predictive similitude" (= empírica! equivalence) to the true theory in the relevant domain (the Copernical theory), and he holds that this explanation: (a) is antirealist, for it doesn't require that the successful theory be true-not even partially or approximately; (b) it ends the chain of legitimate requests for explanation: there is no general answer to the question how a false theory can generate the same predictions as a true one, which can only be answered by appealing to the specific mechanisms posited by each particular theory; (c) is as good as a realist explanation, even regarding the success of the theories in generating "novel" predictions.

In this work I wish to suggest that: (a) to explain the success of a theory in this way is analogous to explaining the blackness of a swan by saying that it is chromatically similar to a crow; (b) there is a plausible explanation of how a totally false theory can have the mentioned capacity, viz., that it contains ad-hoc hypothesis; and (c) that, thus, a false theory having also the same capacity as a (partially) true one to generate predictions that are "novel" in sorne reasonably strong sense would be a miracle