John Polkinghorne asserts that the realism---as opposed to positivism---of science must be true because many talented researchers presumably must believe in it, or else they would not be motivated to do science. But the theories' realism, an ontological notion, must be unaffected by the researchers' beliefs. Besides, the largely universal demise of the derogatory view of positivism---the view that much pre-dated positivism---is responsible for providing many with the living conditions above the subsistence level. Technological and social progress must surely suffice to motivate researchers to perfect their ability to predict correlation.
Correlation is reality. To predict is to understand. Ontological questions not only do not merit answers---they do not exist.
Why must there be greater pleasure in discovering what "is" (suppose "is" were meaningful) than in discovering correlations? When one wins a lottery, one delights in having correlated his prediction with the lottery's realization. One's delight would not be amplified if one understood the mechanism of this correlation (here, a mere chance). One's enjoyment of music is unaffected by the knowledge of the physics of sound. (The knowledge of physics, however, can be a separate source of enjoyment, perhaps, because one has an intrinsic taste for predicting the future and deducing the past.)
The stories behind equations are mnemonics, not reality. The stories are elected pagan gods, employed by scientists to animate measurements and to amuse.
At any rate, the reality imputed to quantum physics is not of the most attractive kind. "An electron does not all the time possess a definite position or a definite momentum, but rather possesses the potentiality for exhibiting one or other of these if a measurement turns the potentiality into actuality." This is too of an anthropocentric reality to be appealing. According to another interpretation, "one should acknowledge that everything that can happen does happen." (The emphasis is in the original.) This reality's observer is not self-effacing either; he multiplies with the reality in order to observe the electron in each of its possible states. Richard Feynman's interpretation is least unattractive: "one should picture a quantum particle as moving from A to B along all possible paths, direct or wriggly, fast or slow." (The emphasis is in the original.)
Believing in reality, however, is a harmless habit. If the belief pleases the scientist and makes him work free, then it should be disturbed only with the greatest of respects.
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