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Jack comments on Were atoms real? - Less Wrong
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The usual "great unsolved question of philosophy' is "Are atoms real?". I'm not trying to ask that question. I'm instead asking what disguised empirical inquiry scientists were engaged in, when, in the course of ordinary scientific research (and not metaphysical debates) they tried to figure out whether atoms were real.
Contemporary philosophers call this conceptual analysis and it's exactly how they talk about scientific realism and anti-realism. Your answer to the question, that X is real if it can be included as part of a coherent whole with the rest of science is vaguely Quinean.
I agree with the resemblance to Quine; it could also be thought of as Philip Kitcher's "unification" model of explanation.
And also the coherence theory of truth (replace "X is real" with " 'X exists' is true").