On The Constructive Thought Of Van Fraassen's Constructive Empiricism

In 1980s, Scientific realists and anti- realists were in the heated controversy on the scientific theory of ontological commitment and the issue of truth. B.C.van Fraassen, a well-known anti-realist,sets forth an idea of constructive empiricism which gave us a refreshing thought in this dispute. And the dialectical thought of construction is the soul of his constructive empiricism. In his thought of construction, van Fraassen argues against the traditional scientific theory of correspondence, and has endowed the science with the new image from the angle of construction .Van Fraassen has summarized the theory of scientific realists as : the prospect of the world the science gives us is real, and its details are reliable, the entity supposed in the science is the real existence; And it is not the invention but the discovery that makes the science get ahead. Van Fraassen has carried on the rebuttal to scientific realism on this viewpoint, he believe that the scientific activity is not a process of discovery, but a process of construction; The scientific activity is not to discover the truth of objects which we cannot observe, but to construct the model which suits the phenomenon.The core of his thought of construction is the conversion of the scientific theory of truth .He deems that the purpose of science is not to pursue the truth. There is also no need to explore whether scientific theory is the truth, but only to construct the model of scientific theory which is empirically adequate. Although in van Fraassen's constructive thought, truth cannot be used to measure a scientific theory , but either empiricism adequacy or being accepted can do. And to this point, scientific theory has the extremely vital significance similarly.Van Fraassen's constructive thought bears dialectics. It is a construction which bases on experience and objectivity, and which is also bases on a semantic and pragmatic method. His constructive thought integrates subjectivity and objectivity organically, and it is an appropriate generalization to the relations between scientific theory and the world, and the relations between scientific theory and user.Van Fraassen's constructive thought has avoided the standard of truth of scientific theory, but instead of the empirically adequate standards of model construction. Thus he not only reduces the risk of commitment, but also ensures scientific theory to be evaluated in a broader field. And it shows its estimable practical value and open minds. Therefore, although there are some insufficiencies in his constructive thought, it still gives a great deal of enlightenment to the research of philosophy of science.