Philosophy Bites by Edmonds David & Warburton Nigel

Author:Edmonds, David & Warburton, Nigel [Edmonds, David]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2010-08-11T16:00:00+00:00

NW: But this isn’t a historical relativism about scientific truth, is it?

DP: No, no, just the opposite. Relativism would be the position you would adopt if you were persuaded by the pessimistic meta-induction: each historical period’s theories were believed by the people of the time, but from a more objective, timeless point of view you could see that all these theories had no real authority, they were all out of tune with what reality was like. So people thought they were right but they weren’t, or aren’t. That is the relativist point of view. The point of view of the realist who resists the pessimistic meta-induction is that all these theories have some good truth in them—not every detail of the theory, but lots of truth—and that builds up, and we should trust what the scientists say to that extent.

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