{"id":1927,"date":"2022-03-21T12:30:14","date_gmt":"2022-03-21T12:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gzanotti.com\/?p=1927"},"modified":"2026-01-22T17:25:28","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T15:25:28","slug":"realism-and-conventionalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gzanotti.com\/en\/realism-and-conventionalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Realism and conventionalism"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wpb-content-wrapper\"><p>[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=&#8221;&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cMathematical entities have no stable essence in the nature of things and they depend on the nature of the definient; so the same thing can be explained in different ways.\u201d This passage from the philosopher George Berkeley poses a crucial question for the foundations of the experimental sciences: the entities of physics, for example force, energy, gravity, are real entities or just concepts that are convenient for describing the laws of nature?<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Writing this sentence, the philosopher was probably thinking about Newton that despite having declared that mathematical entities are used to solve problems, in fact he seems to attribute a real existence to the concepts used in his physics. Berkeley, despite being classified among Empiricists, in this passage appears almost a conventionalist. This is because in the end there are only two possible philosophical positions towards science: or scientific theories are believed to really describe the real world (realism), or that scientific theories are just conventional models used to describe physical phenomena (conventionalism). Remember, however, that both of these positions are philosophical, not scientific. Neither is scientifically demonstrable and in any case neither of the two invalidates the validity of the experimental sciences. We could say that conventionalism is placed at a lower level with respect to realism: in the first case, science limits itself to describing in a formal, mathematical way, he phenomena of the physical world; in the second, it is also a correct representation of these (Figure).<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Note, however, that these two positions have no influence on those who work in the scientific field: the interpretation of the same experimental data will be the same for a \u201crealist\u201d or a \u201cconventionalist\u201d scientist. This is because although the two have different philosophical positions, the method used by them will be the same, that is methodological instrumentalism. The latter can be considered the substrate common to all those working in the field of experimental sciences.<\/p>\n<p>[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=&#8221;1930&#8243; img_size=&#8221;full&#8221; css=&#8221;&#8221;][vc_column_text css=&#8221;&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Diagram of the relationship between model (scientific theory) and reality. The conventionalist approach assumes that the scientific theory limits itself to describing the phenomena, while in the realist vision it describes objective reality. However, the conventionalist does not deny that theory cannot describe reality, if the phenomenon (i.e., what we observe experimentally) corresponds to the latter.<\/p>\n<p>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cMathematical entities have no stable essence in the nature of things and they depend on the nature of the definient; &#8230; <a class=\"cz_readmore\" href=\"https:\/\/gzanotti.com\/en\/realism-and-conventionalism\/\"><i class=\"fa czico-125-add-song\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><\/i><span>Leggi di pi\u00f9<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[115],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-epistemologia"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Realism and conventionalism - Giuseppe Zanotti<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Realism and conventionalism - Giuseppe Zanotti\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cMathematical entities have no stable essence in the nature of things and they depend on the nature of the definient; ... 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