THE PRINCIPLES OF BERTRAND RUSSELL’S SCIENTIFIC REALISM CĂTĂLINA-DANIELA RĂDUCU Abstract. This paper is an approach of Russell’s scientific realism, aiming to provide a detailed presentation of certain ideas that he develops during the last period of his philosophic activity. We are going to use the discussion on the topic of his scientific realism as a pretext for creating a coherent outlook that includes his opinions on human knowledge, on the degree of certainty that the latter may achieve, and, indirectly, on the limits of his empiricism within the context of an image of the world that we are provided with by his common sense, and which is refined by science. In an attempt to define scientific realism, we may say that it consists of a general outlook according to which the goal of science is the knowledge of the observable and non-observable aspects related to an objective reality, which does not depend on the human mind. As we mentioned in the previous chapter, such a vision is generated by the opposition to the anthropocentric outlook regarding our place and the part that we play in the universe, and it is based on the knowledge that our common sense provides us with. If the fundament is offered by common sense, the subsequent evolution of our knowledge will be supported by the scientific achievements, most of which, as we will see, are in accordance with this common sense, while our knowledge and our more or less vicinity to the truth will be facilitated by the methods of science. The world, as it is presented to us by common sense, is made of material objects of various dimensions and shapes, of which we have more or less adequate knowledge, achieved only by means of our senses. It is a concrete world, made of objects that do not depend on our mind, with which we interact, a world where misleading perceptions and illusions have their place and part, but also a world where the robust sense of reality, that Russell was speaking about, encourages us to have the practical certainty regarding the fact that things, in general, are what they seem to be. Broadly, common sense and scientific realism co-exist quite well. However, as we have already seen, there are certain tensions between them; because common sense may lead us into misleading opinions on the outside world. For instance, it leaves the impression that the Earth is flat, while science proves to us that it is round. If Russell himself discredits such opinions on common sense, he does not do it in order to completely discredit common sense, but to show how useful a scientific approach may be, in order to amend the opinions of common sense when it leads to mistaken perceptions. But, if we admit the fact that common sense may sometimes 52 Noesis 2 be misleading, this must not encourage us to abandon it because, if we do abandon this starting point in knowledge, we remain suspended in an extreme skepticism. Nor should we infer, based on such examples, a complete incompatibility between common sense and science. And the arguments that science generally provides do not aim to eliminate the opinions of common sense, as a whole, but to correct them. What science actually does is to offer a better explanation, applying their own methods, for things as they seem to be for common sense. The Earth seems to be flat and the Sun seems to move in the sky. The role of science is to place these appearances within the context of a theoretic system that corrects the opinion of common sense, explaining how the rotation of a spherical Earth results in the apparent transition of the Sun in the sky. Thus one gives up the opinion of common sense in favour of a better theory, which keeps, but, at the same time, explains the appearance within the observation of common sense. Such observations entitle us to say that, broadly, and at first glance, common sense opinions are plausible. We may also accept, again broadly, that they are justified. The idea is not to prove that our common opinions are beyond doubt, but that they have an epistemic priority. Simply by being based on these ideas, scientific realism manages to announce the existence of an external world made of material objects, with which we daily interact, and to which we have epistemic access by means of our senses. The basic assumption of scientific realism is that scientific theories, which are realistically built, are the best explanation for the phenomena noticed at the level of common sense. Here is a good example for this idea: we know that, at the level of common sense, material objects are not indestructible, but that they are made of smaller parts and that, theoretically, they may be divided into component elements, which we cannot see with naked eyes. Science says that the matter is made of fundamental particles, atoms and molecules, which are observable at a microscopic level. What is this if not a more sophisticated and more refined explanation of the above-mentioned common sense opinion? If we must make use of the Kuhnian outlook on science1, we may say that all that the various theories elaborated in various paradigms can do is to offer different (better or worse) scientific explanations for certain common elements: our opinions on the external common world. Scientific realism has six fundamental principles2, all of them being fully included in the theory of knowledge elaborated by Bertrand Russell: 1 See Thomas Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Scientific and Encyclopedic Publishing House, Bucharest, 1976 2 In his paper Scientific Realism: An Elaboration and a Defense, Howard Sankey offers a detailed presentation of these principles. We will use the six principles as a framework in order to particularize and argument the general aspects of Russell’s scientific realism. At the same time, we will not use the hierarchy provided by the Australian professor, but we will present these principles in 3 Philosophie des sciences 53 1. The principle that postulates the existence of an external world that may be known; 2. The principle according to which the purpose of science is to discover an image of the world that is as accurate as possible, while the scientific progress consists in going forward in the direction of truth; 3. The correspondence theory of truth; 4. The thesis on the objective nature of truth; 5. The principle according to which the theoretic speech of science must be literally interpreted as focusing on real entities, and, finally, 6. The principle according to which the scientific search of truth eventually provides us with authentic knowledge regarding the outside world. Perhaps the most important principle of scientific realism is the one that postulates the existence of an external world that may be known. The world that science investigates has an objective reality, which does not depend on human thought, and whose existence is limited neither to the way we think of it, nor to how we perceive it, that is exclusively to experience. All Russell’s efforts of fighting against idealism, and against the solipsism associated with it, prove that this principle is included in his philosophy. This world that exists independently from us includes us too, but it is not created by us, and its existence does not depend on us by any means whatsoever. We may have some knowledge related to this world, a partial, corrigible knowledge, which is far from being certain. This actually gives us the formulation of another principle related to scientific realism, according to which the purpose of science is to discover an image of the world that is as accurate as possible, and the scientific progress consists in going forward in the direction of truth. We hereby face an optimistic attitude regarding human knowledge, doubled by the (realistic) acceptance of the fact that this progress in the direction of truth is far from being achieved. Therefore, scientific realism does not sustain the idea that the current results of science offers us the absolute truth, but rather the idea that, being focused on this goal, there is a more rapid progress, and we thus manage to get closer to truth, while scientific achievements are nothing but increasingly correct approximations of this truth. Thus, in the last pages of Human Knowledge, Russell clearly says that the term “knowledge” is “incapable of precision”3, since our entire knowledge is more or less susceptible of being put to doubt, which means that “the presumably a different order, depending on what we believe to be important in the theory of knowledge elaborated by Russell. See: Howard Sankey, Scientific Realism: An Elaboration and a Defense, available at: philsci- archive.pitt.edu/archive 3 Bertrand Russell, Human Knowledge. Its Scope and Limits, London, George Allen & Unwin, 1956, p. 516 54 Noesis 4 absolute concept of «knowledge» should be replaced by the concept of «knowledge having a certitude degree p», where p is measured by mathematical probability.”4 In My Mental Development, he says that, where absolute knowledge may not be achieved, “it is possible, at least, to formulate a variety of exact hypotheses, all of them being compatible with the existing evidence”5, and, in Logical Atomism, he manifests his trust in science: “I believe that science is generally more susceptible to get closer to truth than any previously advanced philosophy (...). Therefore, even if any statement of science may be false, and even if it is practically certain that some of them may be false, it is wise, nevertheless, to build our philosophy starting from science, because the risk of error is definitely diminished in science.”6 As we return to the principle regarding the existence of the external world, we focus again on the issue of skepticism to see how, during the last period of his creation, he fights against its assumptions from the privileged position that this time science provides it with.