Transcendental realism
Transcendental realism is a philosophy of science developed by Roy Bhaskar in 1975. It argues against the idea that scientific knowledge is just a mirror of reality (positivism) or only a product of interpretation (hermeneutics). Instead, it says science is possible because reality has features that our knowledge must connect with.
A core idea is the split between two kinds of knowledge: the transitive domain and the intransitive domain. The transitive domain is our knowledge itself—it's fallible and can change as theories improve. The intransitive domain is the real world, which exists independently of what we think or know. The mistake of privileging knowledge over reality is called the epistemic fallacy.
Bhaskar also divides reality into three levels: real, actual, and empirical. The real includes objects, their structures, and their causal powers. These powers may exist even if they never produce events. The actual includes the events that do occur, whether or not anyone is aware of them. The empirical is what we have actually experienced or observed.
Reality is stratified, meaning that combining objects and their powers can create new structures with new powers. For example, water can extinguish a fire, even though it’s made of hydrogen and oxygen, which have different powers. This idea of layers applies across all sciences—from physics and chemistry to biology and sociology. Social things like labor markets or capitalism are just as real as physical things, but they work in their own distinct ways.
Transcendental realism rejects the view that causation is simply about noticing regular patterns of events (the Humean idea). Instead, it argues that causation comes from internal mechanisms inside objects—processes that can be dormant or active and may counteract one another.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 16:32 (CET).