STRUKTURALNI REALIZAM ANRIJA POENKAREA
POINCARÉ’S STRUCTURAL REALISM

Summary/Abstract: In his famous article on epistemic structural realism from 1989, John Worrall ascribed this position to Hanri Poicaré, which opened a new way of looking at Poincaré’s philosophy of science and provoked new debates concerning the interpretation of his stance. It is well known that Poincaré argued for conventional status of axioms of geometry and basic laws of mechanics and consequently, he was mostly interpreted as instrumentalist and anti-realist. In this paper I want to clarify structural elements in Poincaré’s approach to mathematics and physics. I will claim that Poincaré indeed assumed certain version of structural realism and that his position is consistent if his conventionalism is properly understood.

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