 Τώρα, υπάρχει ένα σημαντικό αγγημό, και είναι called the pessimistic induction or the pessimistic meta induction. Τώρα, η πρώτη γη της Σταγμής για την ιστορία της στιγμής της στήματος στην εργάσταση της κοινωνικής στιγμής του κόσμου πήγε στην Ελλάδα, στην τελευταία του 19ο στιγμή, το beginning του 20ο στιγμή. Ένας από τους συμφωνίες, ο πρωταγονός, ήταν ο σημαντικός, φιλοσφερός και φυσικής, Ανρίπο Αγκαρέ, who, in his address to the 1900 International Congress of Physics, put the problem like that. The man of the world is struck to see how ephemeral scientific theories are. After some years of prosperity, he sees them successively abandoned. He sees ruins accumulated on ruins. He predicts that the theories invoked today will in a short time succumb in their 10 and he concludes that they are absolutely in vain. This is what he calls the bankruptcy of science. That's a part of a debate that took place in the late 19th century France, the so-called bankruptcy of science debate. To encourage intervention to this debate was to defend some kind of optimist about science, a qualified sense of optimist about science. He went on to say the skepticism of the man of the world is superficial. He does not understand none of the aim and the role of scientific theories. Without this, he would understand that ruins can still be good for something. The same position was actually developed by Ludwig Boltzmann in 1899. He thought that lots of those who reacted against the atomic theory of matter appealed to what he called the historical principle that frequently opinions which are held in the highest esteem have been supplanted within a short space of time by totally different theories. This kind of pessimism, Boltzmann thought, is a kind of a double edged weapon. So Poincard has thought that the history of science somehow undermines our current epistemic optimism about theories in that it shows that there is a pattern of falsity accumulated in the past of science. This kind of argument became very popular in the late 1970s, early 1980s and it was developed thoroughly by the philosopher Larry Laudan who produced a famous list of successful yet false theories such as the crystalline spheres of ancient and medieval astronomy, the humoral theory of medicine, the catastrophes, the phlogiston theory of chemistry, the caloric theory of heat, the vibratory theory of heat, the theory of circular inertia, the contact action gravitational ether theory, the optical ether and the electromagnetic ether. Based on this list Laudan argued for a certain sort of pessimism about current science and its epistemic credentials. The history of science is full of theories which had been empirically successful for long periods of time and yet were shown to be false about the deep structural claims they made about the world. It is similarly full of theoretical terms featuring unsuccessful theories which do not refer. Therefore the thought is by a simple induction or meta induction on scientific theories our current successful theories are likely to be false or at any rate more likely to be false than true and many or most of the theoretical terms featuring in them will turn out to be referential. So that's a point about how the history of science and the past record of scientific theories bear on our current scientific conception of the world. The target of this argument which has become extremely popular among non-realists as a way to target, to argue against scientific realism is basically the third position of scientific realism, epistemic optimism. As I noted already the epistemic optimistic position says that there is an explanatory connection between truth and empirical success. That somehow the truth of a scientific theory or the approximate truth of a scientific theory explains the empirical success especially the novel predictions made by scientific theories. So the argument of the pessimistic induction proceeds more or less by reductio of these theses. The thesis is the current theories are approximately true of the world but if the current theories are true then the past theories cannot be true simply because they are inconsistent with what current theories say about the world then the historical gambit comes in which says that past theories have typically been false despite the fact that they have been empirically successful. Therefore the realist warrant for the claim that there is explanatory connection between empirical success and truth is removed, is undermined. As Loudoun put it, the pessimistic induction calls into question the realist warrant for assuming that today's theories including even those which have passed an impressive array of tests can thereby warrantedly be taken to be cutting the world at its joints. So how can realists react to this argument? There are various ways to react. One important way has been to challenge the inductive basis of the argument are there are so many serious scientific theories which have been extremely empirically successful in the past nonetheless false. There are various ways to restrict this list. For instance arguing that only theories which yield novel predictions and are explanatorially mature should be included. So one way is to basically show that the inductive basis is not strong enough to warrant the pessimistic conclusion. However whichever way you look at this past history of science there are serious cases of scientific theories like the caloric theory of heat and the optical ether theories which somehow satisfy the realist criterion of success, novel predictions and the like but which turned out to be characteristically false. If we take these theories seriously into account as we should it seems as though the connection between empirical success and truth is still undermined. So in my view the way to react to the argument is to meet the challenge that Loudoun puts forward head on. The crucial premise of the argument is the second premise. I repeat if we hold current theories to be truth like then past theories have to be truth like simply because they are inconsistent with what current theories say about the world. My reaction to that is that if we block this premise that is if we hold that current theories are truth like and past theories are also truth like in some sense then there is no way in which the pessimistic conclusion follows. How can we defeat this premise? How can we show that there is consistency between what current theories say about the world and what past theories said about the world? We need to show, I claim that the success of past theories did not depend on what we now believe to be fundamentally flawed theoretical claims. Put positively we need to show that the theoretical laws and mechanisms which generated the success of past theories have been retained in our current scientific image of the world. If this is shown then there is enough continuity in our evolving and changing scientific image of the world to warrant the realist optimism that it's not unlikely that even current theories despite the fact that might be proved false will have substantial truth content which will carry over to newer domains or subsequent domains of inquiry. So realist grounded epistemic optimism on the fact that newer theories incorporate many theoretical constituents of their superseded predecessors especially those constituents that have led to empirical successes. The substantive continuity in theory change suggests that a rather stable network of theoretical principles and explanatory high hypothesis has emerged which has survived evolutionary changes and has become part and parcel of our evolving scientific image of the world. Guarded realists need not take current science uncritically they need not commit themselves to everything that current science asserts they can have a differentiated attitude towards the theoretical constituents of modern science some of them are better supported than others some may play an indispensable role while others do not some contribute to the successes of theories while others do not.