Entity Realism Beyond Manipulation
Call for Papers
Deadline: January 31, 2026
Notification: February 2026
Workshop June 16 – 17, 2026, University of Bern, Switzerland
Organized by Matthias Egg, Mahdi Khalili, and Frederick Britt
Confirmed speakers are Nora M. Boyd (online) and Mauricio Suárez.
Entity realism (also known as ‘experimental realism’) traditionally ties belief in scientific entities to experimental manipulation. Yet many sciences involve a commitment to entities that we cannot manipulate, such as black holes in cosmology, mantle convection in geophysics, or common ancestors in evolutionary biology. So what—if anything—warrants belief in these entities?
Recent work in the philosophy of science, especially in the epistemology and methodology of observational, computational, and historical sciences, has extended our understanding of experimental practice beyond manipulation—to include, for example, detection, measurement, robustness reasoning, modeling, simulation, analogue experiments, and natural experiments. While these developments have been addressed in the more recent literature on entity realism, we are yet to see a systematic debate exploring the full extent of their implications.
This workshop aims to bring together philosophers working on these issues to explore how entity realism could be extended beyond experimental manipulation. We invite contributions that:
- develop, refine, or critically assess (anti-)realist accounts of experimental practice beyond direct manipulation;
- assess whether or to what extent insights from entity realism apply to non-experimental sciences;
- provide pertinent case studies from observational, computational, or historical sciences (e.g., astronomy and cosmology, planetary science, geophysics, climate science, paleobiology, and archeology).
We invite submissions for talks (encouraging especially early career researchers and members of underrepresented groups) that align with the theme of the workshop. Submissions should include an abstract of 500 to 800 words and should be submitted via email to mahdi.khalili@unibe.ch by January 31, 2026.
We plan to offer travel grants for selected applications by researchers who cannot obtain funding from their home institution. Details on how to apply for travel grants will be provided once papers have been accepted.
This workshop is part of the project Extending the Scope of Causal Realism, supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation:
https://www.philosophie.unibe.ch/research/projects/extending_the_scope_of_causal_realism/index_eng.html
Suggested readings:
Boyd, Nora M., 2018. “Evidence Enriched”, in: Philosophy of Science 85/3, 403-421.
Boyd, Nora M. & Mathiessen, Dana, 2024. “Observations, Experiments, and Arguments for Epistemic Superiority in Scientific Methodology”, in: Philosophy of Science 91/1, 111-131.
Egg, Matthias, 2018. “Entity realism”, in: Juha Saatsi (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Scientific Realism, Abingdon: Routledge. 120-132.
Eronen, Markus I., 2019. “Robust realism for the life sciences”, in: Synthese 196/6, 2341-2354.
Khalili, Mahdi, 2023. “A Dialogue among Recent Views of Entity Realism”, in: Philosophy of Science 90/4, 901-921.
Leconte-Chevillard, Gauvain, 2021. “Experimentation in the cosmic laboratory”, in: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 90, 265-274.
Suárez, Mauricio, 2023. “Stellar Structure Models Revisited: Evidence and Data in Asteroseismology”, in: Nora M. Boyd, Siska De Baerdemaeker, Kevin Heng & Vera Matarese (ed.), Philosophy of Astrophysics: Stars, Simulations, and the Struggle to Determine What is Out There, Cham: Springer Verlag, 111-130.
2024. Inference and Representation. A Study in Modeling Science (Chapter 9), Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
