The Unificatory Power of Scientific Realism

Seungbae Park

doi:10.2478/disp-2017-0027

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The Unificatory Power of Scientific Realism

Disputatio

Volume 9 (2017): Issue 44 (May 2017)

By: Seungbae Park

Open Access

|Dec 2018

Abstract

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.

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