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Does the world really exist, independent of us? As Andrew Collier points
out, on the first page of his book Critical Realism, it seems perverse to
argue that the world is not real, but it is no less strange to argue that
the world is real. The oddity is to debate the matter at all. Philosophers,
however, continue to do so.

The issue of ‘realism’, or the theory that the extemal world is real,
is a central one in several recent introductory books in the philosophy
of science. James Brown provides one reason for this in Smoke and Mirrors.
Realism, he suggests, underwrites science; without an independent world
out there, one theory would be as good as another. Realism, he says, ‘is
a wonderfully rich and enlightening story – a true story I think – which
makes our thought and our experience intelligible. Antirealism says our
theories are ‘tales . . . full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’.’
Brown’s version of realism is deliberately paradoxical – science is ‘merely’
a story, but it is a true story.

Brown’s book is a counterblast to anti-realists and above all to relativists,
those who believe that science is just one meaningful story among others
– or, as Brown would represent them, those who believe that science is just
one meaningless story among others. For Brown, in other words, there is
only one true science.

This may seem like common sense, but Brown’s targets include representatives
of some important currents in late 20th-century thought. He is beset, on
one hand, by postmodernism with its suspicion of science as one more ‘grand
narrative’. On the other hand, he fights off the various ripples which continue
to grow from Thomas Kuhn’s story that scientific revolutions involve a paradigm
shift.

Collier’s book is an introductory account of the realist philosophy
of Roy Bhaskar. Collier and Bhaskar share many of Brown’s targets, including
postmodernism and the sociology of knowledge. In addition, however, they
also reject the hankering after a single ‘truth’ which keeps surfacing in
Brown’s version of realism. They believe (roughly speaking) that what scientists
can ‘know’ is determined by the representations available in their theories
(epistemological relativism), but there is an ‘external’ world, independent
of our knowledge of it (ontological realism). Bhaskar’s philosophy is both
original and difficult, owing much to Hegel and Marx. Collier’s book provides
a useful introduction to Bhaskar, and is worth reading especially for his
discussion of what a scientific experiment is. Experiments, for Bhaskar,
provide a way of describing what science is, in contrast to older philosophical
stories about laws and regularity.

Science students (even social science students) may find both these
books difficult, but not because of the style in which they are written.
Brown, in particular, goes out of his way to jolly the reader along with
jokes and acerbic asides. One difficulty is to do with the difference between
a philosophical and a practical discussion. Why should science students
bother with philosophy? Å®ÉúСÊÓƵs, after all, are not waiting on philosophers
to settle the matter of whether the world exists, or how science should
properly be accounted for, nor are the politicians who fund science.

One reply to this is that without some knowledge of the philosophical
tradition, scientists are doomed, not to avoid philosophy, but to do bad
philosophy. As an abstract argument, this may not have much weight, but
for a sense of some of the prac-tical issues involved it is worth looking
at Mary Midgley’s book, Science as Salvation.

One difference between Midgley’s book and the sort of book that philosophers
of science usually write is that its main target is scientists, rather than
other philosophers, literary theorists or sociologists. She is not looking
directly at the question of whether science is or can be ‘well founded’,
although she does address this and many other philosophical issues along
the way. Her interest is the changing conceptual framework within which
scientists have thought about their work, and she places science firmly
back within the bloodstream of myths, desires and values.

In the 17th century, (male) scientists were positively obsessed with
a particular, highly gendered image of the activity of science. Modern scientists,
Midgley argues, are trying to construct a brave new world view in which
Man the scientist subdues the universe. Her exploration of the unconscious
metaphysics embodied in these myths is enlightening. One of Midgley’s achievements,
I think, is to show that it matters that modern scientists are philosophically
illiterate, at least in discussions that go beyond their narrow specialities.

Steve Fuller, in Philosophy, Rhetoric and Ihe End of Knowledge, has
a slightly different sort of interest in promoting dialogue between different
groups. In fact, this book may seem a bit daunting, because it addresses
so many audiences at once, including philosophers, social scientists, politicos
and policy makers. Unlike both Brown and Collier, Fuller is less interested
in defeating postmodernists and sociologists than in coopting them into
a perspective he has christened ‘social epistemology’. This is not altogether
an introductory book, but it is worth tackling for its panoramic view of
late 20th-century theory and politics.

Finally, this is not strictly philosophy of science, but for those who
want an introduction to postmodernism, nothing could be better than the
recently published second edition of Madan Sarap’s book, Poststructuralism
and Postmodernism.

Janet Vaux is a writer and a research student at CRICT (the Centre for
Research in lnnovation, Culture and Technology), Brunel University.

* * *

Smoke and Mirrors: How Science Reflects Reality by J. R. Brown, Routledge,
pp 224, £35/ $59.95 hbk, £11.99/ $17.15 pbk

Critical Realism by Andrew Collier, Verso, pp 288, £39.95 hbk,
£13.95 pbk

Philosophy, Rhetoric and the End of Knowledge by Steve Fuller, Wisconsin
University Press, pp 456, £48.50/ $54 hbk, £19.95/ $22.50
pbk

Science as Salvation by Mary Midgley, Routledge, pp 239, £35
hbk, £8.99 pbk

An Introductory Guide to Poststructuralism and Postmodernism (second
edition) by Madan Sarup, Harvester Wheatsheaf, pp 256, £11.95 pbk