Overview
- Elaborated and illustrated with examples taken from actual scientific practices
- A presentation of core concepts of Scientific Explanation
- Investigates problems for Hempel, Salmon Kitcher and others
Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Philosophy (BRIEFSPHILOSOPH)
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Table of contents (4 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
When scientist investigate why things happen, they aim at giving an explanation. But what does a scientific explanation look like? In the first chapter (Theories of Scientific Explanation) of this book, the milestones in the debate on how to characterize scientific explanations are exposed. The second chapter (How to Study Scientific Explanation?) scrutinizes the working-method of three important philosophers of explanation, Carl Hempel, Philip Kitcher and Wesley Salmon and shows what went wrong. Next, it is the responsibility of current philosophers of explanation to go on where Hempel, Kitcher and Salmon failed. However, we should go on in a clever way. We call this clever way the pragmatic approach to scientific explanation and clarify briefly what this approach consists in. The third chapter (A Toolbox for Describing and Evaluating Explanatory Practices) elaborates the pragmatic approach by presenting a toolbox for analysing scientific explanation. In the last chapter (Examples of Descriptions and Evaluations of Explanatory Practices) the approach is illustrated with real-life examples of scientists aiming at explaining.
This book can be used as a textbook for intermediate philosophy of science courses and is also valuable as “suggested reading” for introductory courses in philosophy of science. The way the book is set up makes it an excellent study and research guide for advanced (MA and PhD) students that work on the topic of scientific explanation. Finally, it is a handy source and reference book for senior researchers in the field of scientific explanations and – more generally – for all philosophers of science.
Authors and Affiliations
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Scientific Explanation
Authors: Erik Weber, Jeroen Van Bouwel, Leen De Vreese
Series Title: SpringerBriefs in Philosophy
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6446-0
Publisher: Springer Dordrecht
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, Philosophy and Religion (R0)
Copyright Information: The Author(s) 2013
Softcover ISBN: 978-94-007-6445-3Published: 22 May 2013
eBook ISBN: 978-94-007-6446-0Published: 08 July 2014
Series ISSN: 2211-4548
Series E-ISSN: 2211-4556
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: X, 93
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Philosophy of Science, Philosophy, general