Explanation and Understanding
eBook - ePub

Explanation and Understanding

  1. 240 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Explanation and Understanding

About this book

Science has multiple goals: to describe the world, as it is now; to predict the future and to make inferences about the past. Science also aims to understand the world – to explain why it is the way it is. But what does it take to explain a phenomenon? How does science generate understanding and what does that take?

In this thorough and clearly written introduction to scientific explanation, Arnon Levy explores the following problems and questions:

  • the background to the topic of scientific explanation, particularly the questions of what an explanation is, what makes a good explanation and why seek them in the first place
  • empiricism about explanation: Hempel's deductive-nomological model and its problems
  • unificationism about explanation: must good scientific explanations fit into an overall 'explanatory store'?
  • causation and explanation: Lewis's description-based model, Woodward's interventionist view and Strevens's criterion of selection theory
  • connections between explanation and understanding
  • models, idealization and explanation
  • non-causal explanation and explanation in non-scientific contexts
  • the nature of understanding.

Additional features, such as chapter summaries, suggestions for further reading and a glossary, make this an excellent resource for students of philosophy of science, metaphysics and epistemology.

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Yes, you can access Explanation and Understanding by Arnon Levy in PDF and/or ePUB format. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Publisher
Routledge
Year
2025
eBook ISBN
9781351791694
Topic
Philosophy

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. Half-Title Page
  3. Series Page
  4. Title Page
  5. Copyright Page
  6. Contents
  7. Acknowledgements
  8. 1 Introduction: What this book is (and isn't) about
  9. 2 Empiricist accounts of scientific explanation
  10. 3 The move to causal accounts
  11. 4 Explanation and difference-making
  12. 5 Production and mechanistic explanation
  13. 6 Models and explanation
  14. 7 Beyond causal explanation
  15. 8 What is understanding?
  16. 9 Connecting understanding and explanation
  17. 10 Coda: The place of explanation
  18. Glossary
  19. References
  20. Index