Scientific realism, the semantic view and evolutionary biology

Abstract

The semantic view of theories is normally considered to be an account of theories congenial to Scientific Realism. Recently, it has been argued that Ontic Structural Realism could be fruitfully applied, in combination with the semantic view, to some of the philosophical issues peculiarly related to biology. Given the central role that models have in the semantic view, and the relevance that mathematics has in the definition of the concept of model, the focus will be on population genetics, which is one of the most mathematized areas in biology. We will analyse some of the difficulties which arise when trying to use Ontic Structural Realism to account for evolutionary biology.