Putnam, van Fraassen, and the Scientific Realism Debate

The decline of logical positivism led to a lively discussion about whether scientific theories represent a reality that's separate from our minds or if they just organize what we can observe. Hilary Putnam was a strong advocate for realism, claiming that it's the only viewpoint that explains the success of science without it seeming miraculous (Putnam, 1975: 73). He believed that accepted theories are generally accurate and that science is on a path toward discovering the truth. For instance, he pointed out that even before we understood water as H2O, it still referred to the same substance. On the other hand, Bas van Fraassen suggested constructive empiricism, which accepts theories at face value but stays neutral on things we can't observe, insisting that a theory just needs to be empirically adequate. Their main disagreement is whether truth is something we can know.