Structuralist approaches to physics

objects, models and modality

Katherine Brading

pp. 43-65

in: Alisa Bokulich, Peter Bokulich (eds), Scientific structuralism, Berlin, Springer, 2011

Abstract

My goal is to develop a structuralist approach to the objects of physics that is ­realist – but there are obstacles in the way. This paper is about three of them. The first is familiar, having received a great deal of attention in the recent literature, and ­concerns the suggestion by structural realists French and Ladyman that we should give up talk of objects. This leaves me in the uncomfortable position of being ­pro-structuralist and pro-realist, but siding with some opponents of structural realism (at least in its ontic form, about which more below) when it comes to objects, so I had better have something to say. In fact I do (see Section 3.4), and I think this obstacle can be moved out of the way. The other two obstacles I have yet to overcome, and the purpose of this paper is to explain what they are, how they arise, and why they are a problem for the structural realist specifically. The resources open to the scientific realist in facing these obstacles are not available to the structural realist, and the reason is the same in both cases.