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The Big Idea

21 November 2012

What truly exists? Structure as a route to the real

Some say we should accept that entities such as atomic particles really do exist. Others bitterly disagree. There is a way out

The Midas touch: relativity theory has been used to explain gold's unique yellow colour

ARE you ever tempted to ask whether entities such as electrons, black holes or the Higgs particle really exist? As a chemist, I worry about what is real and dependable in my field. Is it the “entities” or the “theories” of chemistry and quantum mechanics that largely explain the periodic table? I also care because all of this goes to the heart of an old, important – and unresolved – debate about how to regard scientific discoveries.

There are two main camps in this debate: scientific realism and anti-realism. Scientific realism holds that if science has made great progress by invoking entities such as electrons, then we should take the next step of accepting that they really do exist, that the world described by science is the “real” world. Our present theories are too successful to have happened by chance: somehow we have latched onto the blueprint of the universe.

This is not to everybody’s taste. Anti-realists accept the progress made by science but stop short of taking the additional leap of faith of believing in the materiality of things they cannot actually see. The anti-realist typically presents a counter-argument along these lines: so many past theories and theorised entities have come and gone (remember ether or phlogiston?), why should we ever regard any of them as “real”? It is difficult to say how many scientists belong to each camp – moreover, you may be a realist about some theories but an anti-realist about more abstract theories such as quantum mechanics.

Anti-realists also argue that their approach places them in a better position to adapt to change when a particular entity or theory

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