Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The World of Perception - Timothy R. Quigley

When Merleau-Ponty says that science offers us only‘approximate expressions’ of physical events, it is not clearwhether he would reject scientific realism thus understood.For the scientific realist will of course allow that the accountsof structure provided by a science typically involve manyapproximations and simplifications, especially since the detailsneeded vary from context to context (e.g. sometimes it isimportant to distinguish between the different isotopes of amolecule, sometimes not). The general implication ofMerleau-Ponty’s discussion, however, is undoubtedly hostile toscientific realism since, in effect, he seeks to reverse the applicationof the appearance/reality distinction to the relationshipbetween the perceived world and the world of science. UnlikeDescartes he holds that the perceived world is the ‘real’ world,as compared with which the world of science is just an approximation,i.e. an appearance. It seems to me, however, that thesealternatives are not exhaustive. One does better to combine scientificrealism with an acknowledgement that natural science isfar from complete, and thus that there are important aspects ofreality which escape science, including those which are manifestwithin the perceived world. These latter aspects are likelyto be of fundamental importance for our primary understandingof things, just as those which are characteristic of theworld of science are of fundamental importance when weintroduction