Tell me how the following is unfair:
“Pragmatism is not incompatible with the realist program: but it is flexible enough to make room for alternative programs. Its central insight is that concepts are intellectual tools for coping with the world, and that we can create concepts and use them in a variety of ways in pursuit of our goals. One way of doing this is to create theories that posit [atoms]: if the theory works, you can hope the [atoms] exist. That, I take it, is the [atomist] program. But the problem with that program is that even if the theory is empirically adequate the existence of the [atoms] remains a hope — it is not supported by the evidence.”
=)
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