Juha Saatsi

The epistemic conception of scientific progress equates progress with accumulation of scientific knowledge. I argue that the epistemic conception fails to fully capture scientific progress: theoretical progress, in particular, can transcend scientific knowledge in important ways. Sometimes theoretical progress can be a matter of new theories ‘latching better onto unobservable reality’ in a way that need not be a matter of new knowledge. Recognising this further dimension of theoretical progress is particularly significant for understanding scientific realism, since realism is naturally construed as the claim that science makes theoretical progress. Some prominent realist positions are best understood in terms of commitment to theoretical progress that cannot be equated with accumulation of scientific knowledge

This is a revised edition of Hans Radder’s Habermas-inspired study of scientific experimentation and realism. The previous English edition (1988) has been out of print since 2004 (The book first appeared in Dutch in 1984). The author (together with the editors of the Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science) has deemed it worthy of resuscitation. Perhaps it is. There are certainly a number of lasting elements of continuing interest, some of which indeed strike to the heart of the contemporary debate on scientific realism. But even with the support of some revisions and a new thirty-page postscript, for a mainstream philosopher of science, the book falls short of seriously advancing the current debates, feeling quite dated overall and lacking purposeful engagement with the past 25 years of research.There is more novelty on offer for those looking for an alternative, “continental” fix on the philosophy of science. An original element of Radder’s study is its appropriation of some of J ..