The Vaccine 'miracle'

Hilary Putnam as follows: “The positive argument for realism is that it is the only philosophy that doesn't make the success of science a miracle” 

The no-miracles argument is elaborated in terms of specific features of scientific methodology and practice. Richard Boyd (1985, for example) argues that in explaining the success of science, we need to explain the overall instrumental success of scientific methods across the history of science. Alan Musgrave (1988) says that the only version of the no-miracles argument that might work is one appealing to the novel predictive success of theories. Some realists, such as Psillos (1999), have gone so far as to argue that only theories which have enjoyed novel predictive success ought to be considered as falling within the scope of arguments for scientific realism.