Philosophy of Science - Scientific Explanation

Scientific Explanation

In addition to providing predictions about future events, we often take scientific theories to offer explanations for those that occur regularly or have already occurred. Philosophers have investigated the criteria by which a scientific theory can be said to have successfully explained a phenomenon, as well as what gives a scientific theory explanatory power. One early and influential theory of scientific explanation was put forward by Carl G. Hempel and Paul Oppenheim in 1948. Their Deductive-Nomological (D-N) model of explanation says that a scientific explanation succeeds by subsuming a phenomenon under a general law. An explanation, then, is a valid deductive argument. For empiricists like Hempel and other logical positivists, this provided a way of understanding explanation without appeal to causation. Although ignored for a decade, this view was subjected to substantial criticism, resulting in several widely believed counter examples to the theory.

In addition to their D-N model, Hempel and Oppenheim offered other statistical models of explanation which would account for statistical sciences. These theories have received criticism as well. Salmon attempted to provide an alternative account for some of the problems with Hempel and Oppenheim's model by developing his statistical relevance model. In addition to Salmon's model, others have suggested that explanation is primarily motivated by unifying disparate phenomena or primarily motivated by providing the causal or mechanical histories leading up to the phenomenon (or phenomena of that type).