Realism and the purpose of science


Whether or not we can directly comprehend reality is irrelevant. What is relevant how well we are able to predict the future. That is the purpose of science, and the only important factor to strive for, as that is what will give us increased control over our own fate. (Of course, this assumes that our purpose is to increase control over our own fate – some would object to that, mostly leftists and other types of collectivists.)

For example, whether or not something called “electron” actually exists is not important. What is important is that our model can use the construct it calls “electron” to predict future observations.

Our model consists of two major things:

  1. Constructs that model reality (for example the construct of “electron”)
  2. A way to translate observable reality into the language of our model

Using these two main components, our model can increase our ability to understand (and thus control) the future in the following way:

  1. We start by making an observation of the current reality, translating that into our model
  2. We then introduce an cause in our model, and verify through observation (may be done indirectly) that the same cause happens in reality
  3. We make a prediction in our model of what a future observation will look like, then we verify by making an observation and see if it is what we predicted

Whether or not the constructs used in our model do or do not actually exist in reality (i.e. Realism) is thus irrelevant. What is relevant is our connection to reality, and our connection to reality is the observations we can make. Thus, it is not important to predict actual reality, but to predict what we will observe using our model’s constructs.

Here’s a picture describing how this looks:

predicting future observations
Whether or not our model exists in reality is not important – what is important is our ability to predict future observations

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