---
title: "Hilary Putnam"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Hilary Putnam"
aliases: []
first_seen: "2026-11-02T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["convergent epistemological realism","no-miracles argument","Larry Laudan","pessimistic induction"]
seek_code_commit: "d40ee39"
---


American philosopher (Harvard) whose "no miracles" argument — that scientific
realism is "the only philosophy that doesn't make the success of science a
miracle" — became the central positive case for convergent realism in the
late 20th century. Matters to this vault as the figure Larry Laudan's 1981
"A Confutation of Convergent Realism" is written against throughout: nearly
every section of Laudan's paper quotes and rebuts Putnam by name, making
Putnam's own position the structural target of the vault's entire
scientific-realism / denominator-problem cluster even though his own texts
(1975, 1978) have not yet been read directly in this vault.

## References
- [[claim-laudan-1981-list-challenged-as-unrepresentative-since-the-1980s]] —
  the paper built to rebut Putnam's no-miracles argument; Putnam's own texts
  on convergent realism are a further lead, not yet read at primary.