James Ladyman (2026), In T. Millhouse, S. Petersen & D. Ross (eds.), Dennett’s Real Patterns in Science and Nature, MIT Press (2026), pp. 59–76 — DOI-10.7551/mitpress/15550.003.0006
Key takeaways
- Ladyman restates the Ladyman–Ross metaphysics as fifteen theses drawn from scientific practice. The existence criterion is “to be is to be a real pattern”, a pattern that “indispensibly figures in projectible generalisations” (p. 2). Realism is realism about natural modal structure, which is “absolute” in formal mode but “domain and scale-dependent” in material mode (thesis 4). There is no single hierarchy of levels and no assumed fundamental level (theses 10–11, fn. 9). Ontology is effective and scale-relative (thesis 12). Scientific real patterns are lossy compressions, unlike the Game of Life’s; the ideal gas laws use 3 degrees of freedom for ~10²³ (thesis 14). He quotes ETMG’s Principle of Naturalistic Closure verbatim and calls it “problematic” because it refers to fundamental physics (p. 8).
Standing in the record
Filed at the owner’s request on 2026-09-26, to put Ladyman and Ross’s ontic structural realism and rainforest realism on the record. Their book Every Thing Must Go (OUP 2007) could not be obtained from a legitimate source, nor could the two founding papers (Ladyman 1998, Ross 2000); this work is one of four freely available statements from which the views are pieced together. It was filed Deferred, unread. NOTE-191 is the close reading of 2026-09-26, and it placed the work: Active — Worth reading as the most recent and most compact statement of rainforest realism by one of its two authors, and the one that explicitly revises Every Thing Must Go. It weakens the PNC, denies that “relational structure is fundamental” was meant as fundamentalism, and recasts real patterns modally and statistically as well as information-theoretically. Its fifteen theses are asserted and illustrated, not argued. It presupposes the book’s definitions, which it does not restate.