The Historical Roots of the Fracture between Subjective and Objective Realism

The article discusses the origin of the split between common sense and the scientific view of the world, which took place at the beginning of the modern age. More specifically, it shows how Galileo was able to address the two main objections against his mathematically-based scientific realism: that mathematics can not be applied to the material world (since it only works for idealized entities) and that physics is only a useful tool for making predictions, but it does not really describe the natural world nor explain it. Galileo was able to counter those objections, but he did not entirely win his other battle, i.e., he did not ultimately prove that the commonsense view of the world, based on the idea of the reliability of perception, is illusory. A battle that has not been won by his contemporary followers (the advocates of scientific naturalism) either.