Instrumentalism
Instrumentalism is a view in philosophy of science that claims scientific theories are merely useful tools for predicting phenomena instead of true or approximately true accounts of the physical world. Instrumentalism as a philosophical view can best be understood as a campaign against scientific realism and its roots date back to the turn of the twentieth century with the work of Ernst Mach [1838-1916] and Pierre Duhem [1861-1916], who were both physicists and philosophers of science who held strong instrumentalist views. A contemporary form of instrumentalism is Bas van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism, which will also be discussed. But first, it will be helpful to introduce scientific realism as a philosophical thesis in order to see what all the fuss is about.
Scientific Realism
Scientific realism is the philosophical view that scientific theories are true or approximately true accounts of the physical world. There are several types of scientific realists, but the most well known ones are realists about scientific laws and entities (Boyd 1983; Psillos 1999), and realists about scientific entities only (Hacking 1983; Cartwright 1983).
For instance, consider the Pauli exclusion principle, named after the Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli [1900-1958], which states that no two electrons in an atom have the same four quantum numbers. Some scientific realists believe that the Pauli exclusion principle is true and so believe in scientific laws and the entities referred to in the laws, in this case, electrons and atoms. However, other scientific realists just believe in the entities referred to in the Pauli exclusion principle because the law is strictly speaking false. At any rate, instrumentalists disagree with both sorts of scientific realists.
Duhem's Instrumentalism
Ernst Mach and Pierre Duhem were the first philosophers of science to develop a sophisticated defense of scientific progress without accepting that scientific theories are true or approximately true descriptions of the physical world.
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