Published Online: Dec 31, 2018
Page range: 59 - 73
Received: Jan 01, 2017
Accepted: May 02, 2017
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/disp-2017-0027
Keywords
© 2017 Seungbae Park, published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.
The no-miracles argument (Putnam 1975) holds that science is successful because successful theories are (approximately) true. Frost-Arnold (2010) objects that this argument is unacceptable because it generates neither new predictions nor unifications. It is similar to the unacceptable explanation that opium puts people to sleep because it has a dormative virtue. I reply that on close examination, realism explains not only why some theories are successful but also why successful theories exist in current science. Therefore, it unifies the disparate phenomena.