Nancy Cartwright's Entity Realism: Realism of the Dappled World

Some contemporary scientific realists have admitted that successful scientific theories are often not true, but are, nonetheless, approximately true. This statement did not make realism immune to unrealistic doubt as it is still possible to worry about problems with pessimistic induction. This problem played a major role in shaping the modern face of scientific realism. Selective skeptical realists have examined what was most epistemologically warranted among several claims contained in scientific theories, and they were divided into two specific camps: structural realism and entity realism. The latter is a moderate form of scientific realism, whose supporters believe in the possibility of accepting the existence of some unobservable entities (such as the electron) that are believed to presumably exist by the best scientific theories, while not believing in everything that these theories set out. Defenders of this position say different things, but all point out the importance of the causal connection of the entities involved. In this study, the entity realism of science philosopher Nancy Cartwright will be discussed. She defended the epistemological value of causal connection and stated that if a person accepts a causal explanation for a certain phenomenon; he or she must accept the reality of the entity of this phenomenon and the related cause. Hence, the realism of its being may become a refuge for the realist in the face of the historical discontinuity that exists between scientific theories. However, how does one gain knowledge of the existence of entities apart from theories describing their properties and causal relationships? How can it be claimed that scientists are talking about the same entity, while different generations of them have different conceptions about it? The methodology the researcher uses in this study for answering these previous questions is the analytical-critical method that aims at analyzing the concepts and the problems included in Cartwright's texts to understand them.