"A scientific explanation is a statement of what is there in reality"
Sure, you can say stuff about "what is there in reality", but I don't see any way one can verify such statements.
Everything humans have access to is mediated through their perceptions. Everything that we sense "outside" of us is to us a perception.
This includes the results of all the experiments ever done, all our interaction with tools and scientific instruments, and all our observations. They're all perceptions.
Our thoughts and feelings are also perceptions. The results of our deductions and inductions are perceptions.
Humans seem to be hermetically sealed from the "outside world" (if there is one) by our perceptions, and I don't see any way out of that... not through science, not through philosophy, not through religion, not through anything.
In short, late in the 19th century and early 20th century, the physics philosophy of Ernst Mach held great sway. Mach's viewpoint was the very viewpoint that you describe: the only things we know about are our own perceptions and proper formulations of physical theories consists at the fundamental level of descriptions of these things.
Mach had a significant impact on many physicists' understanding of what they were doing and also had an impact on the development of logical positivism in the field of philosophy.
Einstein accepted Mach's philosophy initially. But gradually he came to see it as untenable given his own work in physics. The article linked to above describes how and why his viewpoint changed over time.
Thank you for a very enjoyable paper. It was interesting, as you said.
However, if I gave you the impression that I was a Machian, this is a mistake.
According to this paper, Mach equated reality with sensory experience (ie. the experiences afforded us through the five senses: seeing, hearing, touch, smell, and taste.. and perhaps some others like proprioception), and that speculation about a world "outside" and independent of such sensations was unwarranted.
This is not my position, as I include in "perception", the perception of thoughts, theories, conclusions, intuitions, feeling and everything else considered to be "internal" -- which includes everything Einstein or any other physicist could ever base their own theories on.
Also, I don't object to speculation as to an "external", "objective" world, as Mach does. Science can come up with all sorts of interesting and possibly useful things through such speculation. I'm happy to read of such conjectures, and if some people want to engage in it more power to them.
However, do I not see any way we could ever verify whether such speculation right or wrong (or, to put it another way, whether such speculation corresponded to the way the world really was), because neither mathematical simplicity or the elegant fitting in to other, larger theories (as Einstein seems to have favored) means that the speculation has anything to do with the "external" world as it is (or even that there is an external world).
Since we seem to be limited to our own experience, the belief that an "external" world exists and that we have any (direct or indirect) way to access it seems to be nothing but faith.
Sure, you can say stuff about "what is there in reality", but I don't see any way one can verify such statements.
Everything humans have access to is mediated through their perceptions. Everything that we sense "outside" of us is to us a perception.
This includes the results of all the experiments ever done, all our interaction with tools and scientific instruments, and all our observations. They're all perceptions.
Our thoughts and feelings are also perceptions. The results of our deductions and inductions are perceptions.
Humans seem to be hermetically sealed from the "outside world" (if there is one) by our perceptions, and I don't see any way out of that... not through science, not through philosophy, not through religion, not through anything.