Realism

This book provides philosophers of science with new theoretical resources for making their own contributions to the scientific realism debate. Readers will encounter old and new arguments for and against scientific realism. They will also be given useful tips for how to provide influential formulations of scientific realism and antirealism. Finally, they will see how scientific realism relates to scientific progress, scientific understanding, mathematical realism, and scientific practice.

This monograph develops a new way of justifying the claims made by science about phenomenon not directly observable by humans, such as atoms and black holes. It details a way of making inferences to the existence and properties of unobservable entities and states of affairs that can be given a probabilistic justification. The inferences used to establish realist claims are not a form of, and neither do they rely on, inference to the best explanation.

This book is about becoming touched and moved by Karen Barad’s agential realism. Karen Barad as Educator is not biographical. It is not about Barad. There is much to be learned about teaching and education research through the human and other-than-human narrative characters in Barad’s writings and way of life.

The book proposes a new Cultural Realism and Virtualism design model for cultural and creative products based on Laozi’s philosophy and analysis of symbolism, metaphysics, three-layered culture, reverse-triangular cultural space and Zen aesthetics.