Historicity and explanation

Some scientific explanations are distinctively historical. The aim of this paper is to say what gives such explanations their historical character. A secondary aim is to describe what makes an explanation a stronger or weaker historical explanation. We begin with a critical discussion of John Beatty's and Eric Desjardins' work on historicity and historical narrative. We then offer an alternative account of historical explanation that draws on the work of earlier philosophers (Gallie, Danto, Mink, and Hull). In that alternative account, we highlight four features of narrative explanation that Beatty and Desjardins underemphasize: central subjects; historical trajectories; the idea that historical narratives are known retrospectively; and criteria for determining what is a stronger or weaker historical narrative.     

Detail and generality in mechanistic explanation

This article is about the role of abstraction in mechanistic explanations. Abstraction is widely recognised as a necessary concession to the practicalities of scientific work, but some mechanist philosophers argue that it is also a positive explanatory feature in its own right. I claim that in as much as these arguments are based on the idea that mechanistic explanation exhibits a trade-off between fine-grained detail and generality, they are unsuccessful. Detail and generality both appear to be important sources of explanatory power, but investigators do not need to make a choice between these desiderata, at least when an explanation incorporates further detail through the decomposition of the mechanism's parts.     

Narrative ordering and explanation

This paper investigates the important role of narrative in social science case-based research. The focus is on the use of narrative in creating a productive ordering of the materials within such cases, and on how such ordering functions in relation to ‘narrative explanation’. It argues that narrative ordering based on juxtaposition - using an analogy to certain genres of visual representation - is associated with creating and resolving puzzles in the research field. Analysis of several examples shows how the use of conceptual or theoretical resources within the narrative ordering of ingredients enables the narrative explanation of the case to be resituated at other sites, demonstrating how such explanations can attain scope without implying full generality.     

BonJour on explanation and skepticism

Laurence BonJour, among others, has argued that inference to the best explanation allows us to reject skeptical hypotheses in favor of our common-sense view of the world. BonJour considers several skeptical hypotheses, specifically: (i) our experiences arise by mere chance, uncaused; (ii) the simple hypothesis which states merely that our experiences are caused unveridically; and (iii) an elaborated hypothesis which explains in detail how our unveridical experiences are brought about. A central issue is whether the coherence of one’s experience makes that experience more likely to be veridical. BonJour’s recent treatment of “analog” and “digital” skeptical hypotheses is also discussed. I argue that, although there are important lessons to be learned from BonJour’s writings, his use of inference to the best explanation against skepticism is unsuccessful.     

Nonseparable processes and causal explanation

If physical reality is nonseparable, as quantum mechanics suggests, then it may contain processes of a quite novel kind. Such nonseparable processes could connect spacelike separated events without violating relativity theory or any defensible locality condition. Appeal to nonseparable processes could ground theoretical explanations of such otherwise puzzling phenomena as the two-slit experiment, and EPR-type correlations. We find such phenomena puzzling because they threaten cherished conceptions of how causes operate to produce their effects. But nonseparable processes offer us an alternative deal of natural order, conformity to which makes such phenomena seem quite normal and not at all unexpected. Attempts to answer the further question, as to whether an appeal to a nonseparable process provides a genuine causal explanation, have something to teach us about our concept of causation, but do not threaten to undermine the value of the explanation itself.     

Collaborative explanation and biological mechanisms

This paper motivates and outlines a new account of scientific explanation, which I term ‘collaborative explanation.’ My approach is pluralist: I do not claim that all scientific explanations are collaborative, but only that some important scientific explanations are—notably those of complex organic processes like development. Collaborative explanation is closely related to what philosophers of biology term ‘mechanistic explanation’ (e.g., Machamer et al., Craver, 2007). I begin with minimal conditions for mechanisms: complexity, causality, and multilevel structure. Different accounts of mechanistic explanation interpret and prioritize these conditions in different ways. This framework reveals two distinct varieties of mechanistic explanation: causal and constitutive. The two have heretofore been conflated, with philosophical discussion focusing on the former. This paper addresses the imbalance, using a case study of modeling practices in Systems Biology to reveals key features of constitutive mechanistic explanation. I then propose an analysis of this variety of mechanistic explanation, in terms of collaborative concepts, and sketch the outlines of a general theory of collaborative explanation. I conclude with some reflections on the connection between this variety of explanation and social aspects of scientific practice.     

Narrative possibility and narrative explanation

Narratives are about not only what actually happened, but also what might have. And narrative explanations make productive use of these unrealized possibilities. I discuss narrative explanation as a form of counterfactual, difference-making explanation, with a demanding qualification: the counterfactual conditions are historically or narratively (not merely logically or physically) possible. I consider these issues in connection with literary, historical and scientific narratives.     

Realizability and the varieties of explanation

What realization is has been convincingly presented in relation to the way we determine what counts as the realizers of realized properties. The way we explain a fact of realization includes a reference to what realization should be; therefore it informs in turn our understanding of the nature of realization. Conceptions of explanation are thereby included in the views of realization as a metaphysical property.Recently, several major views of realization such as Polger and Shapiro's or Gillett and Aizawa's, however competing, have relied on the neo-mechanicist theory of explanations (e.g,. Darden and Caver 2013), currently popular among philosophers of science. However, it has also been increasingly argued that some explanations are not mechanistic (e.g., Batterman 2009).Using an account given in Huneman (2017), I argue that within those explanations the fact that some mathematical properties are instantiated is explanatory, and that this defines a specific explanatory type called “structural explanation”, whose subtypes could be: optimality explanations (usually found in economics), topological explanations, etc. This paper thereby argues that all subtypes of structural explanation define several kinds of realizability, which are not equivalent to the usual notion of realization tied to mechanistic explanations, onto which many of the philosophical investigations are focused. Then it draws some consequences concerning the notion of multiple realizability.     

Understanding,explanation, and unification

In this article I argue that there are two different types of understanding: the understanding we get from explanations, and the understanding we get from unification. This claim is defended by first showing that explanation and unification are not as closely related as has sometimes been thought. A critical appraisal of recent proposals for understanding without explanation leads us to discuss the example of a purely classificatory biology: it turns out that such a science can give us understanding of the world through unification of the phenomena, even though it does not give us any explanations. The two types of understanding identified in this paper, while strictly separate, do have in common that both consist in seeing how the individual phenomena of the universe hang together. Explanations give us connections between the phenomena through the asymmetric, ‘vertical’ relation of determination; unifications give us connections through the symmetric, ‘horizontal’ relation of kinship. We then arrive at a general definition of understanding as knowledge of connections between the phenomena, and indicate that there might be more than two types of understanding.     

Circularity,indispensability, and mathematical explanation in science

In this paper I consider the objection that the Enhanced Indispensability Argument (EIA) is circular and hence fails to support mathematical platonism. The objection is that the explanandum in any mathematical explanation of a physical phenomenon is itself identified using mathematical concepts. Hence the explanandum is only genuine if the truth of some mathematical theory is already presupposed. I argue that this objection deserves to be taken seriously, that it does sometimes undermine support for EIA, but that there is no reason to think that circularity is an unavoidable feature of mathematical explanation in science.     

Prediction and explanation of chemical mutation sites

Résumé En ce qui concerne I'ARN du VMT, les codons voisins y présentent des arrangements analogues. Il s'agit seulement des codons qui subissent une mutation sous l'action de l'acide nitreux, mutation qui conduit à une modification de la protéine de l'enveloppe. Cette observation suggère, que l'examen minutieux de la séquence d'un acide nucléique pourrait permettre de prédire les sites probables où aura lieu la mutation chimique et que les «hot spots» pour une mutation spontanée pourraient aussi avoir des codons voisins caractéristiques.     

Perspectivism, inconsistent models, and contrastive explanation

It is widely recognized that scientific theories are often associated with strictly inconsistent models, but there is little agreement concerning the epistemic consequences. Some argue that model inconsistency supports a strong perspectivism, according to which claims serving as interpretations of models are inevitably and irreducibly perspectival. Others argue that in at least some cases, inconsistent models can be unified as approximations to a theory with which they are associated, thus undermining this kind of perspectivism. I examine the arguments for perspectivism, and contend that its strong form is defeasible in principle, not merely in special cases. The argument rests on the plausibility of scientific knowledge concerning non-perspectival, dispositional facts about modelled systems. This forms the basis of a novel suggestion regarding how to understand the knowledge these models afford, in terms of a contrastive theory of what-questions.     

Collaborative explanation,explanatory roles,and scientific explaining in practice

Scientific explanation is a perennial topic in philosophy of science, but the literature has fragmented into specialized discussions in different scientific disciplines. An increasing attention to scientific practice by philosophers is (in part) responsible for this fragmentation and has put pressure on criteria of adequacy for philosophical accounts of explanation, usually demanding some form of pluralism. This commentary examines the arguments offered by Fagan and Woody with respect to explanation and understanding in scientific practice. I begin by scrutinizing Fagan's concept of collaborative explanation, highlighting its distinctive advantages and expressing concern about several of its assumptions. Then I analyze Woody's attempt to reorient discussions of scientific explanation around functional considerations, elaborating on the wider implications of this methodological recommendation. I conclude with reflections on synergies and tensions that emerge when the two papers are juxtaposed and how these draw attention to critical issues that confront ongoing philosophical analyses of scientific explanation.     

Unification, explanation, and the composition of causes in Newtonian mechanics

William Whewell's philosophy of scientific discovery is applied to the problem of understanding the nature of unification and explanation by the composition of causes in Newtonian mechanics. The essay attempts to demonstrate: (1) the sense in which ‘approximate’ laws (e.g. Kepler's laws of planetary motion) successfully refer to real physical systems rather than to (fictitious) idealizations of them; (2) why good theoretical constructs are not badly underdetermined by observation; and why, in particular, Newtonian forces are not conventional and (3) how empiricist arguments against the existence of component causes, and against the veracity of the fundamental laws, are flawed.     

Anachronism and retrospective explanation: in defence of a present-centred history of science

This paper defends the right of historians to make use of their knowledge of the remote consequences of past actions. In particular, it is argued that the disciplinary cohesion of the history of science relies crucially upon our ability to target, for further investigation, those past activities ancestral to modern science. The history of science is not limited to the study of those activities but it is structured around them. In this sense, the discipline is inherently ‘present-centred’: its boundaries are determined, in part, by judgements inaccessible to the historical actors. Present-centredness of this sort, it is urged, should not be regarded as a problem; its methodological consequences are minimal.     

Inference to the best explanation and Norton's material theory of induction

I argue that we should consider Norton's material theory of induction as consisting of two largely independent claims. First, there is the claim that material facts license inductions - a claim which I interpret as a type of contextualism about induction. Second, there is the claim that there are no universal rules of induction. While a good case can be made for the first claim, I believe that Norton's arguments for the second claim are lacking. In particular, I spell out Norton's argument against the claim that all induction may be reduced to inference to the best explanation, and argue that it is not persuasive. Rejecting this part of Norton's theory does not however require us to abandon the first claim that material facts license inductions. In this way, I distinguish the parts of the material theory of induction we should happily accept from the parts about which we should be more skeptical.     

Secondary metabolism: an explanation in terms of induced enzyme mechanisms

Zusammenfassung Ist das Wachstum vonPenicillium urticae und anderer Pilze im Gleichgewicht gestört, so kommt es zu plötzlicher Akkumulierung wichtiger metabolischer Zwischenprodukte. Diese induzieren die Bildung neuer sekundärer Metabolite synthetisierender Enzyme, was Anlass zu weiterer Enzymentstehung ist und die Diversität der Stoffwechselendprodukte bestimmt.