Critical Realism

Models, metaphors and analogies are used to convey relationships( functions and structures) which are not total fictions but partially correspond to what is. However due to this incompleteness, knowledge is always revisable. Knowledge is expressed using a still developing language and symbolism which is conditioned by the

community's shared understanding and history. The long term workability of a theory can best be explained if the basic entities referred to in the theory correspond to actual entities.

To assert the truth of an understanding is to assert that the relationships which are communicated correspond to actual relationships. This is tested by long-term workability in experiments and applications and by certain epistemic properties such as coherence, consistency, extendibility and comprehensiveness. To say this in another way, the best explanation is accepted as true until a better explanation is available. A better explanation does not overturn previously identified workable relationships which may be clarified or extended by the new understanding.

Critical realism rejects the possibility of knowing things-in-themselves for two reasons: the mode of expression (models, metaphors and analogies) and the substance of expressions (relationships). In pointing to changing language and symbolism, to the nature of the community and to the backward reference

the critical realist's viewpoint acknowledges the role of the paradigm in shaping knowledge.

Some theories work whereas others do not because some refer to actual relationships; some theories are better than others because they more completely meet the test for truth. All theories are under-determined. There is no such thing as an uninterpreted fact. There is always subject-object interaction. Objective knowledge should be universally communicable; subjective knowledge may not be. Scientific statements and scientific rationality takes this form and the human condition demands it. Certainty is a bore anyway!