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Thursday, December 17, 2009

"Philosophical Foundations of Physics" by Rudolf Carnap,1966

It is obvious that there is a difference between the meanings of the instrumentalist and the realist ways of speaking. My own view, which I shall not elaborate here, is that the conflict between the two approaches is essentially linguistic. It is a question of which way of speaking is to be preferred under a given set of circumstances. To say that a theory is a reliable instrument-that is, that the predictions of observable events that it yields will be confirmed-is essentially the same as saying that the theory is true and that the theoretical, unobservable entities it speaks about exist. Thus, there is no incompatibility between the thesis of the instrumentalist and that of the realist. At least, there is no incompatibility so long as the former avoids such negative assertions as, ". . . but the theory does not consist of sentences which are either true or false, and the atoms, electrons, and the like do not really exist".

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