Do physicists believe that general relativity is true, and that electrons and phonons exist, and if so, in what sense? To what extent does the spectrum of positions among physicists correspond to philosophical positions like scientific realism, instrumentalism, or perspectivism? Does agreement with these positions correlate with demographic factors, and are realist physicists more likely to support research projects purely aimed at increasing knowledge? We conducted a questionnaire study to scrutinize the philosophical stances of physicists. We received responses from 384 physicists and 151 philosophers. Our main findings are (1) On average, physicists tend toward scientific realism, and slightly more so than philosophers of science. (2) Physicists can be clustered into five groups. Three show variants of scientific realism, one is instrumentalist, and one seems undecided or incoherent. (3) Agreement with realism weakly correlates with approval of building a bigger particle collider. (4) Agreement with realism weakly correlates with the seniority of physicists. (5) We did not find correlations with other factors, such as whether physicists focus on theoretical or experimental research and whether they engage with applied or basic research.

物理学家是否相信广义相对论是正确的，并且电子和声子存在？如果是，那么在什么意义上？物理学家的立场范围在多大程度上与科学实在论、工具主义或透视主义等哲学立场相对应？对这些立场的认同是否与人口因素相关，现实主义物理学家是否更有可能支持纯粹旨在增加知识的研究项目？我们进行了一项问卷研究来审视物理学家的哲学立场。我们收到了 384 名物理学家和 151 名哲学家的回复。我们的主要发现是（1）平均而言，物理学家倾向于科学实在论，并且比科学哲学家略多一些。 (2) 物理学家可以分为五类。其中三种表现了科学现实主义的变体，一种是工具主义的，一种似乎犹豫不决或语无伦次。 (3) 与现实的一致与批准建造更大的粒子对撞机的相关性较弱。 (4) 对现实主义的认同与物理学家的资历弱相关。 （5）我们没有发现与其他因素的相关性，例如物理学家是否专注于理论研究或实验研究以及他们是否从事应用研究或基础研究。