id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentences	flesch	summary	cache	txt
en-wikipedia-org-6587		Scientific realism - Wikipedia			.html	text/html	3067	454	49	Logical positivism was the first philosophy of science in the twentieth century and the forerunner of scientific realism, holding that a sharp distinction can be drawn between theoretical terms and observational terms, the latter capable of semantic analysis in observational and logical terms. Realism became the dominant philosophy of science after positivism.[2]:70 Bas van Fraassen in his book The Scientific Image (1980) developed constructive empiricism as an alternative to realism. Thus, it is argued that the best explanation—the only explanation that renders the success of science to not be what Hilary Putnam calls "a miracle"—is the view that our scientific theories (or at least the best ones) provide true descriptions of the world, or approximately so.[5] Pessimistic induction, one of the main arguments against realism, argues that the history of science contains many theories once regarded as empirically successful but which are now believed to be false. "Theory Status, Inductive Realism, And Approximate Truth: No Miracles, No Charades." International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 25(2), 159–178.	./cache/en-wikipedia-org-6587.html	./txt/en-wikipedia-org-6587.txt