Home – Home – Jornals – Philosophy of Sciences 2020 number 1

We interpret Kit Fine's fragmentalism in terms of contextual realism, according to which ontology is contextual. Real objects (facts) are identified with the help of contextual norms (rules, concepts) implanted in reality, which are used to «measure» it. The fragmented reality is a set of contexts. We illustrate fragmentalism understood as a contextual realism on the example of special relativity. One can understand relativistic time dilation and length contraction either as real or as conventional depending on the point of view. One can also give meaning to Newtonian absolute time and absolute space. We also insist that Lorentz's dynamic (constructive) relativity theory, Poincare's conventional relativity theory and Einstein's special relativity (a theory-principle) are complementary aspects of one and the same theory. We pay special attention to Poincare's philosophical and scientific views, which we believe to be ahead of their time and can be interpreted in terms of Wittgenstein's later philosophy. We mean that Poincare's conventionalism is a precursor of Wittgenstein's grammatical method with regard to the language of science.