Peirce's pragmatism and scientific realism

Abstract

In this paper I propose that Peircean pragmatism offers us sufficient conceptual elements to elaborate a metaphysics of science which serves as a foundation for scientific realism. This thesis shows itself as relevant against the background of an interpretation of pragmatism similar or identical to Jamesian or Deweyan nominalism, instrumentalism, and operationalism. I shall examine some central aspects of Pierces’s pragmatism and I shall show that it involves a scientific realism and offers good reasons in favor of scientific realism in the contemporary debate between realists and anti-realists.