Thesis (Ph. D)--Columbia University, 1912. / Vita. Also available in print.

Thesis (M.S.)--Central Connecticut State University, 2001. / Thesis advisor: Paul A. Karpuk. " ... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in International Studies." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 52-53). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2008. / Advisor: Jaegwon Kim. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 206-212).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Title from PDF of title page. Document formatted into pages; contains 84 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

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What stance should we take toward our best scientific theories? Traditionally, there have been two answers: realism and antirealism. Structural realism is an attempt to find middle-ground between these two views. Rather than accept everything our best theories seem to say about the world, the structural realist endorses only what those theories tell us about the structure of the world. I argue that switching the focus to structure allows the realist to better deal with problems of theory-change, and to better make sense of contemporary physics. I go on to offer a specific version of structural realism based on an understanding of structures as networks of relations between objects that are nothing more than places in structures. My view allows that there are objects and relations, but reverses the usual order of dependence: objects depend on relations rather than the other way around.

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This dissertation consists of a defence of scientific realism and a critique of empiricist antirealism. Strict empiricism is discussed in Chapter 1, in which it is argued that this variety of empiricism adequately describes only the initial stages of scientific research. Bas van Frassen's empiricist antirealism is then discussed in Chapter 2. Here, it is argued that this new position, although more sophisticated than earlier forms of empiricist antirealism, fails to constitute a genuinely acceptable alternative to scientific realism. The two main constituents of scientific realism--scientism and critical realism--are then defended in Chapters 3 and 4. Lastly, the superempirical virtues and their role in theory evaluation is discussed in Chapter 5, wherein they are presented as a nonempirical source of quality control on our theorizing.

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