Abstract
The term explanation, as commonly used, designates a variety of procedures whose goal is to bridge the gaps in our knowledge, both in matters of everyday life and when scientific issues are at stake. We ask for an explanation when we do not know how to do something, or why a certain event has occurred, or why there is a certain regularity in phenomena, or the meaning of something we treat as a sign. We explain to a child how to multiply fractions or how to play chess. We explain human actions by appealing to their physical causes and/or psychological motivations. We explain why there are eclipses of the sun, why a war has been declared, or why bodies fall at a constant rate of acceleration. We explain the meaning of a novel, or a custom, or a dream.
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Chapter II. Ideals of Science and Rules of Explanation
Karl Popper. Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 191.
In addition to the other works of Hempel and Popper mentioned in the Bibliography, see also C.G. Hempel and P. Oppenheim, “Studies in the Logic of Explanation,” Philosophy of Science, 15 (1948); R. Braithwaite, Scientific Explanation (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 1955); E. Nagel, The Structure of Science (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1961).
Stefan Amsterdamski, “Ripetizione” in Enciclopedia Einaudi, vol. 12 (Turin: 1981), 76–86.
Michael Scriven, “Explanations, Predictions and Laws,” in H. Feigl and G. Maxwell (eds.), Scientific Explanation, Space and Time, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 3 (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1962), 196.
Ibid., 192-193.
Ibid., 175-76.
Ibid., 205.
Ibid., 172.
Ibid., 192-93.
Ibid., 198-199.
E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Social Anthropology (London: Cohen & West, 1951), 57.
Alan Donagan, “The Popper-Hempel Theory Reconsidered” in W.H. Dray, ed., Philosophical Analysis and History (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1966), 146.
Stefan Amsterdamski, “Lege,” Enciciopedia Einaudi, vol. 8 (Torino: Einaudi, 1979), 83–129.
Herbert Butterfield, History and Human Relations (London: Collins, 1951), 146.
Carl Hempel, “Explanation in Science and History,” in R.G. Colodny, (ed.), Frontiers of Science and Philosophy (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1962); Ernest Nagel, The Structure of Science (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1961); Karl R. Popper, Objective Knowledge.
Edgar Zilsel, “Physics and the Problem of Historico-sociological Laws,” Philosophy of Science 8 (1941), 577.
Paul Ricoeur, in Claude Lévi-Strauss, “Réponses à quelques questions,” Esprit 31 (11 Nov. 1963), 640.
Lévi-Strauss, Ibid.
Edmund Mokrzycki analyzes the consequences of the acceptance of methodological models developed by philosophers of science for the natural sciences as valid also for the social sciences. Many of his critiques appear to me to be correct and convincing. However, he does not notice—or at least does not point out explicitly —that the debate in which he is engaged is methodologically unresolvable, and that his own position is conditioned by an ideal of science (sociology) different from that held by his opponents. See his Philosophy of Science and Sociology (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983).
Paul Feyerabend, “Explanation, Reduction, and Empiricism,” in H. Feigl and G. Maxwell (eds.), Scientific Explanation, Space and Time, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 3 (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1962), 28–97.
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Amsterdamski, S. (1992). Ideals of Science and Rules of Explanation. In: Between History and Method. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 145. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2706-6_3
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