Scientific anti-realism

Anti-realists argue that the empirical success of our best scientific theories does not warrant belief in the approximate truth (or the existence of the theoretical posits) of our best scientific theories because the history of science is a graveyard of theories that were once successful but were later discarded. The first argument is commonly known as the “miracle argument” or the “no miracles argument” for scientific realism, whereas the second argument is commonly known as the “pessimistic induction” or the “pessimistic meta-induction.” These two arguments have largely dominated the scientific realism/antirealism debate in philosophy of science. However, both realists and antirealists have other arguments in their arsenal. Many of those arguments appeal to the dismal historical record of science.