You can see Challenges to Metaphysical Realism.

@MauroALLEGRANZA Thanks. I didn't actually make that connection in terms of the bigger debate. I was thinking of the "phenomenon" as something that a realist and non-realist would regard in the same terms. However their explanations would surely diverge greatly?

How do we know it doesn't just tell us something about physicists?

Where you are going with this is called pessimistic meta-induction‌​:"the history of science furnishes vast evidence of empirically successful theories that were later rejected; from subsequent perspectives, their unobservable terms were judged not to refer and thus, they cannot not be regarded as true or even approximately true." This is one of the chief arguments against scientific (or any) realism, and yes, there is vast literature on it.

@user4894 - Because biologists say the same thing.

LOL - "Please don't tell me 'people are getting smarter.'" I'd argue just the opposite. ;)

Until very recently, bacteria didn't exist... true story. They just popped into existance when Leeuwenhoek peered into his microscope. They'll.disappear again I suppose.

Reality is related to truth. Latin realis means actual. Reality means actually existing, or true. So like truth, there is absolute Reality and then the relative reality which is all that we currently know and experience either collectively or individually. There shouldn't be any problem with the concept of reality. Only that every subsequent discovery naturally engenders more and more questions along with the painful awareness of so many things about which we will always remain uncertain.

@Bread "more and more questions" not less and less: it is this trend under question. Eg. what would it mean if we suddenly realize the the questions are now becoming less and less? - Assuming you know about the whole "it from bit" thing, what would the "it" look like if the "bits" encoded an untruth? Also see: philosophy.stackexchange.com/q/59490/33787

A more specific perspective on this are the two competing programs in modern physics, the platonistic "theory of everything" (currently, string theory), that aims at capturing Reality behind the curtain, vs the hierarchy of effective theories, like the Standard Model, with layered ontologies that get dissolved at the next level, do not "converge", and never end. A good discussion is The Conceptual Foundations and the Philosophical Aspects of Renormalization Theory by Cao-Schweber, esp. pp.69-77. But the clash seems to be what they call perennial.

@Conifold But this "phenomenon" holds in both programs? - If there are two, there will be more... Does humanity face a future scourged by warring clans of physicists?

@Richard What is interesting about that view is how well it gels with the Simulation hypothesis. I.e. only what is observed, is rendered...

@christo183 yes. Any tool which examines things beypnd the reach of our senses.

It might tell us something that while the development you mention has been going on in some quarters the perennial view of Reality has not altered by a jot in three millenna, and it never was complicated. I feel the history you refer to tells us a lot about Reality or at least indicates where the truth lies.

@Conifold This "complementary" aspect is a can of worms I'm still struggling to pick through. (in fact many of my questions are skirting the issue) I'll bet Pragmatism is just one of those worms... Tongue in cheek aside, I get the sense you see resources as the only obstacle to a proliferation of scientific paradigms?

There might be other obstacles, but this is a big one. But remember that these paradigms would have to cover the same empirical domain and produce comparable results. It is likely that, together with pragmatic benefits, this selects just one as having an edge, or they give multiple ways of making the same, or very close, predictions, with comparable costs, which can be quite useful rather than a burden, by giving different perspectives. Various interpretations of QM illustrate the idea.

physicsworld.com/a/quantum-physics-says-goodbye-to-reality The title says a great deal