Vol. 45 No. Especial (2025): Current Controversies in Metaphysics of Science: Topics, Foundations, and Scope
Articles

“Heuristic Realism” and its Role in the Second Quantum Revolution

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  • Ezequiel Irigoyen,
  • Alejandro Rota
Ezequiel Irigoyen
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Alejandro Rota
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36446/af.e1162

Published 2025-12-30

Keywords

  • Metafísica científica,
  • Mecánica cuántica,
  • No-localidad,
  • Realismo científico,
  • Instrumentalismo
  • Metaphysics of Science,
  • Quantum Mechanics,
  • Non-Locality,
  • Scientific Realism,
  • Instrumentalism
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Throughout history, the objective of factual sciences has been both the control and the understanding of natural phenomena. However, for many years (and to a certain extent still persisting today), this fruitful symbiosis was nullified by an “instrumentalist” position, which considers any attempt to understand observable phenomena by means of an image of the underlying (unobservable) world as a mere metaphysical “tale”. A tale that would be unnecessary — at best — or even harmful to the scientific enterprise. This article aims to demonstrate that, beyond the philosophical commitments one decides to assume — or not — with realism, some episodes in the history of science show that a realistic attitude at the scientific level can be an important part of the factors that drive discoveries. To do so, we will focus on a paradigmatic case of quantum mechanics, the postulation and subsequent acceptance of one of the most revolutionary phenomena of the second half of the last century, “non-local correlations.” We will argue that it was the realistic attitude of scientists such as Einstein, Bohm and Bell — among others — that drove the research that would ultimately lead to this discovery, research that found no motivation from an anti-realist view of science.

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