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HandWiki. Structuralism (Philosophy of Science). Encyclopedia. Available online: https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/36075 (accessed on 22 September 2026).
HandWiki. Structuralism (Philosophy of Science). Encyclopedia. Available at: https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/36075. Accessed September 22, 2026.
HandWiki. "Structuralism (Philosophy of Science)" Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/36075 (accessed September 22, 2026).
HandWiki. (2022, November 23). Structuralism (Philosophy of Science). In Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/36075
HandWiki. "Structuralism (Philosophy of Science)." Encyclopedia. Web. 23 November, 2022.
Structuralism (Philosophy of Science)
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Structuralism[α] (also known as scientific structuralism or as the structuralistic theory-concept) asserts that all aspects of reality are best understood in terms of empirical scientific constructs of entities and their relations, rather than in terms of concrete entities in themselves. Structuralism is an active research program in the philosophy of science, which was first developed in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s by several analytic philosophers.

structuralism philosophy reality

References

  1. Kuhlmann, Meinard (August 2013). "What is Real?". Scientific American: 45. 
  2. Alisa Bokulich, Peter Bokulich (eds.), Scientific Structuralism, Springer, p. 140 n. 52.
  3. James Ladyman. "Structural Realism". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/structural-realism/. 
  4. Maxwell, G. (1968), "Scientific Methodology and the Causal Theory of Perception", in: Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (eds.), Problems in the Philosophy of Science, Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company.
  5. Ladyman, J., 1998. "What is structural realism?" Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 29: 409–424.
  6. Henri Poincaré, Science and Hypothesis. New York: Dover, 1952 [1902].
  7. Poincaré's structuralism was combined with neo-Kantian views about the nature of arithmetic.
  8. Bertrand Russell (1927). The Analysis of Matter, London: George Allen & Unwin.
  9. Rudolf Carnap (1928). The Logical Structure of the World, Berkeley: University of California Press.
  10. J. Worrall (1989). "Structural realism: The best of both worlds?" Dialectica, 43: p. 119; available online. http://www.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/fileadmin/Redaktion/Institute/Philosophie/Theoretische_Philosophie/Fahrbach/Wissenschaftlicher_Realismus/Worrall%201989%20Structural%20Realism%20.pdf
  11. The term is due to Hilary Putnam (see Putnam, H., 1975. Mathematics, Matter and Method, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 73).
  12. M. H. A. Newman, 1928. "Mr. Russell's causal theory of perception," Mind, 37: 137–148.
  13. Stathis Psillos. "Realism and Theory Change in Science". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/realism-theory-change/. 
  14. Roman Frigg and Ioannis Votsis (2011), "Everything you always wanted to know about structural realism but were afraid to ask," European Journal for Philosophy of Science 1(2):227–276, esp. p. 250.
  15. Worrall, J. (2000), "Miracles and Models: Saving Structural Realism?", paper given to the Annual Meeting of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science, Sheffield, 2000.
  16. Worrall, J. and Zahar, E. (2001), "Ramseyfication and Structural Realism", Appendix IV in E. Zahar, Poincare's Philosophy: From Conventionalism to Phenomenology, Chicago and La Salle (IL): Open Court.
  17. Votsis, I. (2004), The Epistemological Status of Scientific Theories: An Investigation of the Structural Realist Account, University of London, London School of Economics, PhD Thesis, p. 122. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/46518493.pdf
  18. Votsis, I. (2004), The Epistemological Status of Scientific Theories: An Investigation of the Structural Realist Account, University of London, London School of Economics, PhD Thesis, pp. 43 and 122.
  19. Votsis, I. (2004), The Epistemological Status of Scientific Theories: An Investigation of the Structural Realist Account, University of London, London School of Economics, PhD Thesis, p. 129.
  20. Stathis Psillos, Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth, Routledge, 1999, p. 142.
  21. Votsis, I. (2004), The Epistemological Status of Scientific Theories: An Investigation of the Structural Realist Account, University of London, London School of Economics, PhD Thesis, pp. 68–9.
  22. Stathis Psillos, Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth, Routledge, 1999, p. 141.
  23. Stathis Psillos, Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth, Routledge, 1999, p. 148.
  24. Votsis, I. (2004), The Epistemological Status of Scientific Theories: An Investigation of the Structural Realist Account, University of London, London School of Economics, PhD Thesis, pp. 73–4.
  25. Votsis, I. (2004), The Epistemological Status of Scientific Theories: An Investigation of the Structural Realist Account, University of London, London School of Economics, PhD Thesis, p. 104.
  26. Stathis Psillos, Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth, Routledge, 1999, p. 279.
  27. Stathis Psillos, Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth, Routledge, 1999, p. 271.
  28. Votsis, I. (2004), The Epistemological Status of Scientific Theories: An Investigation of the Structural Realist Account, University of London, London School of Economics, PhD Thesis, p. 148.
  29. Votsis, I. (2004), The Epistemological Status of Scientific Theories: An Investigation of the Structural Realist Account, University of London, London School of Economics, PhD Thesis, p. 219.
  30. Ioannis Votsis, "A Structuralist Theory of Reference", Invited talk presented at the Reference and Scientific Realism Symposium, Wuhan University, August 17, 2012. http://www.votsis.org/PDF/Votsis_Abstract_Structuralist_Theory_of_Reference.pdf
  31. Hermann Weyl, 1950 [1931]. The Theory of Groups and Quantum Mechanics (translated by H. P. Robertson). New York: Dover.
  32. Ernst Cassirer, 1956 [1936]. Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern Physics, New Haven: Yale University Press.
  33. Arthur Eddington (1939), The Philosophy of Physical Science, Cambridge University Press.
  34. Kuhlmann, Meinard, "Quantum Field Theory", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2015/entries/quantum-field-theory/
  35. Tegmark, Max (2014). "10: Physical Reality and Mathematical Reality". Our mathematical universe : my quest for the ultimate nature of reality (First ed.). ISBN 9780307744258. https://archive.org/details/ourmathematicalu0000tegm. 
  36. Berthold, Oswald. "Computational universes." Berlin: Humboldt Universitat zu Berlin, Institut fur Informatik (2009).
  37. Esfeld, Michael. "Ontic structural realism and the interpretation of quantum mechanics." European Journal for Philosophy of Science 3.1 (2013): 19–32.
  38. Ainsworth, Peter Mark (January 2010). "What is ontic structural realism?". Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 41 (1): 50–57. doi:10.1016/j.shpsb.2009.11.001.  https://dx.doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.shpsb.2009.11.001
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