This paper outlines a defense of scientific realism against the pessimistic meta-induction which appeals to the phenomenon of the exponential growth of science. Here, scientific realism is defined as the view that our current successful scientific theories are mostly approximately true, and pessimistic meta-induction is the argument that projects the occurrence of past refutations of successful theories to the present concluding that many or most current successful scientific theories are false. The defense starts with the observation that at least 80% of all scientific work ever done has been done since 1950, proceeds with the claim that practically all of our most successful theories were entirely stable during that period of time, and concludes that the projection of refutations of successful theories to the present is unsound. In addition to this defense, the paper offers a framework through which scientific realism can be compared with two types of anti-realism. The framework is also of help to examine the relationships between these three positions and the three main arguments offered respectively in their support (No-miracle argument, pessimistic meta-induction, underdetermination).

Scientific realism, the position that successful theories are likely to be approximately true, is threatened by the pessimistic induction according to which the history of science is full of successful, but false theories. I aim to defend scientific realism against the pessimistic induction. My main thesis is that our current best theories each enjoy a very high degree of predictive success, far higher than was enjoyed by any of the refuted theories. I support this thesis by showing that both the amount, and quality, of scientific evidence has increased enormously in the recent past, resulting in a big boost of success for the best theories.

Scientific realism is the position that success of a scientific theory licenses an inference to its approximate truth. The argument from pessimistic metainduction maintains that this inference is undermined due to the existence of theories from the history of science that were successful but false. I aim to counter pessimistic metainduction and defend scientific realism. To do this, I adopt a notion of success that admits of degrees and show that our current best theories enjoy far higher degrees of success than any of the successful but refuted theories of the past.

Brute facts are facts that have no explanation. If we come to know that a fact is brute, we obviously don't get an explanation of that fact. Nevertheless, we do make some sort of epistemic gain. In this essay, I give an account of that epistemic gain, and suggest that the idea of brute facts allows us to distinguish between the notion of explanation and the notion of understanding.I also discuss Eric Barnes' (1994) attack on Friedman's (1974) version of the unification theory of explanation. The unification theory asserts that scientific understanding results from minimizing the number of brute facts that we have to accept in our view of the world. Barnes claims that the unification theory cannot do justice to the notion of being a brute fact, because it implies that brute facts are gaps in our understanding of the world. I defend Friedman's theory against Barnes' critique. Synthese (2005) 145: 449-466

This paper presents the outlines of a defense of scientific realism against the argument of pessimistic meta-induction (PMI for short). I will understand the position of scientific realism to consist of the claim that our current empirically successful scientific theories are probably approximately true. Examples of such theories are the atomic theory of matter, the theory of evolution or claims about the role of viruses and bacteria in infectious diseases. In what follows, I omit "probably" and "approximately" (as in "probably approximately true") and simply use "true." Furthermore, I use the term "theory" in a rather generous sense, so that it also denotes laws of nature, theoretical statements, sets of theoretical statements, and so on. A theory is defined as being empirically successful at some point in time if there are sufficiently many cases of fit and no serious cases of nonfit between the known observational consequences of the theory and the observations gathered by scientists until that time. In contrast, if a consequence of a theory conflicts with some observations and scientists cannot find any other source of the error, e.g., they cannot blame an auxiliary statement, the theory is refuted and does not count as successful. 1 For discussion and support, I would like to thank audiences in Manchester,