Yet the full working out of this principle implies a radical account of the nature of causal laws, viz. And it implies that a constant conjunction of events is no more a necessary than a sufficient condition for a causal law. One commits an epistemic fallacy when one supposes that the structures of the world rest upon the prospect of human observation. No, says critical realism. The solution is two-dimensional, literally.
Empirical realism is a popular school.
Bhaskar calls these the intransitive and transitive dimensions. Critical realism attempts to avoid conflating the two. Science can make use of obvious facts, intuition, and analogies. While this would be disaster if our goal were prediction, it is absolutely necessary if we wish to break free of the constraints of the predictive mode. In this way, critical realism sets the philosophical foundation for a useful, new science.