Read the following passage.
The history of science is littered with empirically successful theories that were ultimately discarded. The caloric theory of heat and the phlogiston theory of combustion both yielded highly accurate predictions in their time, yet contemporary science dictates that neither caloric nor phlogiston actually exists. This historical pattern forms the basis of the "pessimistic meta-induction" (PMI). A powerful argument against scientific realism, the PMI posits that because past successful theories were profoundly mistaken about the unobservable entities they postulated, we should logically expect our current best theories to eventually be proven similarly false in their ontological claims.
In an effort to salvage scientific realism from the threat of the PMI, a camp of philosophers known as Epistemic Structural Realists (ESR) has proposed a crucial distinction. Structural realists concede the PMI’s premise that the ontological commitments of past theories—their specific claims about the nature of unobservable entities like phlogiston—were entirely wrong. However, they argue that the mathematical and structural relationships posited by those theories were largely preserved in the theories that superseded them. For instance, while the ethereal wave theory of light incorrectly posited the existence of a physical luminiferous aether, the mathematical wave equations formulated by its proponents were retained and integrated by Maxwell’s subsequent electromagnetic theory.
Thus, structural realists maintain that the empirical success of a scientific theory justifies belief only in its structural content, not in the underlying physical entities it purports to describe. By limiting realist commitments to mathematical structures, ESR attempts to explain the continuous predictive success of science across paradigm shifts without falling prey to the historical graveyard of discarded ontologies.
Based on the passage, Epistemic Structural Realists would be most likely to agree with which one of the following statements regarding the empirical success of a scientific theory?
- A theory's ability to yield accurate predictions justifies confidence in its formal structural relationships, but provides no guarantee regarding the reality of the unobservable phenomena it uses to explain those relationships.Answer
- BBecause the historical pattern shows that scientific theories are routinely discarded, the empirical success of any current theory is ultimately an illusion.
- CThe mathematical equations formulated by a successful scientific theory will remain permanently immune to revision or modification during future paradigm shifts.
- DTo ensure continuous predictive success, practicing scientists should avoid hypothesizing unobservable physical entities and instead focus strictly on developing pure mathematics.
- EThe empirical success of theories such as the ethereal wave theory of light demonstrates that mathematical relationships are fundamentally inseparable from the unobservable entities they describe.