 It is thus evident that Popper saw his account of basic statements as steering a course between the Scylla of orthodox conventionalism and the Charybdis of positivism/empiricism. However, while it is both coherent and consistent in that regard, there can be little doubt but that it constitutes a form of conventionalism in its own right. And it is not clear that it is compatible with scientific realism, understood as the view that scientific theories give true or approximately true descriptions of elements of a mind-independent world. As Lakatos puts it,