2.67 Theories and Realism

Category: Philosophy of Science

Keywords: theories, kuhn, fraassen, observational, theoretical, theory, adequacy, constructive, observable, empirically, van, ramsey, paradigm, successful, simplicity

Number of Articles: 312
Percentage of Total: 1%
Rank: 46th

Weighted Number of Articles: 454.4
Percentage of Total: 1.4%
Rank: 17th

Mean Publication Year: 1987
Weighted Mean Publication Year: 1979.5
Median Publication Year: 1989
Modal Publication Year: 1993

Topic with Most Overlap: Methodology of Science (0.0586)
Topic this Overlaps Most With: Chemistry (0.0376)
Topic with Least Overlap: Crime and Punishment (0.00015)
Topic this Overlaps Least With: Frankfurt Cases (0.00224)

A scatterplot showing which proportion of articles each year are in the theories and realismtopic. The x-axis shows the year, the y-axis measures the proportion of articles each year in this topic. There is one dot per year. The highest value is in 1993 when 2.8% of articles were in this topic. The lowest value is in 1884 when 0.1% of articles were in this topic. The full table that provides the data for this graph is available in Table A.67 in Appendix A.

Figure 2.155: Theories and realism.

A set of twelve scatterplots showing the proportion of articles in each journal in each year that are in the Theories and Realismtopic. There is one scatterplot for each of the twelve journals that are the focus of this book. In each scatterplot, the x-axis is the year, and the y-axis is the proportion of articles in that year in that journal in this topic. Here are the average values for each of the twelve scatterplots - these tell you on average how much of the journal is dedicated to this topic. Mind - 0.7%. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society - 0.7%. Ethics - 0.7%. Philosophical Review - 0.7%. Analysis - 0.8%. Philosophy and Public Affairs - 0.6%. Journal of Philosophy - 1.4%. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research - 0.9%. Philosophy of Science - 3.4%. Noûs - 1.4%. The Philosophical Quarterly - 1.0%. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science - 4.6%. The topic reaches its zenith in year 1978 when it makes up, on average across the journals, 2.8% of the articles. And it hits a minimum in year 1903 when it makes up, on average across the journals, 0.1% of the articles.

Figure 2.156: Theories and realism articles in each journal.

Table 2.187: Characteristic articles of the theories and realism topic.
Table 2.188: Highly cited articles in the theories and realism topic.

Comments

This study matches up with my experiences surpisingly well. When I was a grad student back in the 1990s, I felt that work on scientific realism was all around. This was in part because I was reading a lot of philosophy of economics, but it also felt like part of the background that everyone should know about. Since then it had seemed less and less relevant to what was going on around me. I had always thought this said more about the changes in my environment than in philosophy at large. I assumed, that is, that there were still just as many discussions about scientific realism going on, but changes in my reading habits meant I wasn’t seeing them as much.

Nope! This topic really has fallen away quite a bit from the 1990s. Or, at least, it has really fallen away in these twelve journals. I expect a study that covered a broader range of journals would tell a different story. But scientific realism has become a smaller topic in the twelve journals I’m looking at.

One doesn’t need a fancy model to see this. It can be seen in the raw word counts. This is helpful because it lets us cross test the output of the fancy model. It’s not helpful to look at how often the word realism is used, since this has so many different meanings. But we can look at some of the names most associated with this debate to get a sense of how often the debate was taking place in the pages of these journals.13

A scatterplot showing the frequency of the words laudan, kuhn, boyd, lakatos. The word laudan appears, on average across the years, 16 times per million words, and in the median year, it appears 0 times per million words. Its most frequent occurrence is in 1990 when it appears 188 times per million words, and its least frequent occurrence is in 1876 when it appears 0 times per million words. The word kuhn appears, on average across the years, 31 times per million words, and in the median year, it appears 0 times per million words. Its most frequent occurrence is in 1991 when it appears 205 times per million words, and its least frequent occurrence is in 1876 when it appears 0 times per million words. The word boyd appears, on average across the years, 8 times per million words, and in the median year, it appears 0 times per million words. Its most frequent occurrence is in 2003 when it appears 101 times per million words, and its least frequent occurrence is in 1876 when it appears 0 times per million words. The word lakatos appears, on average across the years, 17 times per million words, and in the median year, it appears 0 times per million words. Its most frequent occurrence is in 1977 when it appears 183 times per million words, and its least frequent occurrence is in 1876 when it appears 0 times per million words.

Figure 2.157: Word frequency for four famous names in philosophy of science.

There is a lot of year-to-year variation there, but the basic pattern that things rise pretty quickly through the 1980s, and then fall away just as quickly after that, seems fairly clear. In the 1990s when I was reading this stuff, it was a debate running out of steam.

As one other aside, I’m surprised that the raw counts for Kuhn and Boyd are so low. For one thing, those names belong to more people than their most famous owners. For another I thought Boyd might have more of a boost from being at Cornell, even in the Philosophical Review. For another, Kuhn is much lower than other similarly famous figures of the third quarter of the twentieth century.

A scatterplot showing the frequency of the words quine, kuhn, rawls, kripke. The word quine appears, on average across the years, 147 times per million words, and in the median year, it appears 28 times per million words. Its most frequent occurrence is in 1975 when it appears 850 times per million words, and its least frequent occurrence is in 1876 when it appears 0 times per million words. The word kuhn appears, on average across the years, 31 times per million words, and in the median year, it appears 0 times per million words. Its most frequent occurrence is in 1991 when it appears 205 times per million words, and its least frequent occurrence is in 1876 when it appears 0 times per million words. The word rawls appears, on average across the years, 103 times per million words, and in the median year, it appears 0 times per million words. Its most frequent occurrence is in 1989 when it appears 910 times per million words, and its least frequent occurrence is in 1876 when it appears 0 times per million words. The word kripke appears, on average across the years, 63 times per million words, and in the median year, it appears 0 times per million words. Its most frequent occurrence is in 1998 when it appears 504 times per million words, and its least frequent occurrence is in 1876 when it appears 0 times per million words.

Figure 2.158: Word frequency for names of four famous philosophers.

There are years when the word Rawls is being used about once every thousand words. Even accounting for the stop words JSTOR excludes, that’s once every two to three pages over all twelve journals! But Kuhn only once gets above once every five thousand words, and then only barely.


  1. Note that the Y-axis measures the frequency of the words across all words in the JSTOR dataset, not just amongst the words that I’m including. So the denominator here includes the stop words, the LaTeX words, the bibliographic words, etc. This will be true whenever I do one of these graphs throughout the book.↩︎