van Fraassen, B. C. (1980). The Scientific Image. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0198244274.001.0001.
Not read: no lawful full text was reached on 2026-10-27 (see the status note). The summary is drawn from what the work is standardly cited for and from the exchange’s description of it. A reading should check it first.
Why this is here
A3 named it as the first challenge to the owner’s U2 argument: “Why infer ontological structure from empirical success?” It is the empiricist answer to the inference A2 called the philosophical leap, from “we can know only relations” to “only relations exist”, and so the rival every claim filed from the exchange that goes beyond the record’s guard (CLAIM-150) has to beat.