Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-2xdlg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-01T20:20:54.006Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Explanation in Aristotle, Newton, and Toulmin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Fred Wilson
Fred Wilson*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The claim that scientific explanation is deductive has been attacked on both systematic and historical grounds. This paper briefly defends the claim against the systematic attack. Essential to this defence is a distinction between perfect and imperfect explanation. This distinction is then used to illuminate the differences and similarities between Aristotelian (anthropomorphic) explanations of certain facts and those of classical mechanics. In particular, it is argued that when one attempts to fit classical mechanics into the Aristotelian framework the latter becomes structurally incoherent. It is suggested that this, together with the fact that classical mechanics embodied the first piece of perfect knowledge, accounts, in part at least, for the historical fact of the rapid demise of the Aristotelian patterns as the new science developed. On the basis of this discussion, the inadequacies of the attack on the deductive model on historical grounds by Toulmin come to be seen.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , September 1969 , pp. 291 - 310
Copyright
Copyright © 1969 by The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

Part II of this article is to appear in the immediately succeeding issue, Vol. 36, No. 4, of this journal.

References

[1] Aquinas, T., The Pocket Aquinas (ed. Bourke, V. J.), Washington Square Press, 1960.Google Scholar
[2] Aristotle, Basic Works of Aristotle (ed. McKeon, R.), Random House, New York, 1941.Google Scholar
[3] Bergmann, G., Philosophy of Science, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin, 1958.Google Scholar
[4] Bergmann, G., “Russell's Examination of Leibniz Examined,” Philosophy of Science, vol. 23, 1956, pp. 175–203; reprinted in Bergmann, G., Meaning and Existence, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin, 1959, pp. 155-189.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[6] Brodbeck, M., “Explanation, Prediction, and ‘Imperfect’ Knowledge,” Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. III (eds. H. Feigl and G. Maxwell), University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1962, pp. 231–272.Google Scholar
[8] Brown, P., “Infinite Causal Regression,” The Philosophical Review, vol. 75, 1966, pp. 510–525.10.2307/2183226CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[10] Clendinnen, J., “Review of Hempel's Aspects of Scientific Explanation,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 44, 1966, pp. 95–101.Google Scholar
[15] Hempel, C. G. and Oppenheim, P., “The Logic of Explanation,” in Readings in the Philosophy of Science (eds. Feigl, H. and Brodbeck, M.), Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York, 1963, pp. 319–352.Google Scholar
[16] Hochberg, H., “Axiomatic Systems, Formalization, and Scientific Theories,” in Symposium on Sociological Theory (ed. Gross, L.), Harper and Row, New York, 1959, pp. 407–436.Google Scholar
[18] Kuhn, T., The Copernican Revolution, Random House, New York, 1959.Google Scholar
[20] Madden, E., Philosophical Problems of Psychology, Odyssey Press, New York, 1962.Google Scholar
[24] Ross, W. D., Aristotle, Meridian, World Publishing Co., Cleveland, 1961.Google Scholar
[25] Russell, B., The Principles of Mathematics, 2nd edit., George Allen and Unwin, London, 1937.Google Scholar
[26] Scriven, M., “Truisms as the Grounds for Historical Explanations,” in Theories of History (ed. Gardiner, P.), The Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois, 1959, pp. 443–475.Google Scholar
[28] Toulmin, S., Foresight and Understanding, Hutchinson, London, 1961.Google Scholar
[29] Turnbull, R. G., “Aristotle's Debt to the ‘Natural Philosophy’ of the Phaedo,” The Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 8, 1958, pp. 131–143.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[30] Turnbull, R. G., “Aseity and Dependence in Leibniz's Metaphysics,” Theoria, vol. 25, 1959, pp. 95–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[31] Veblen, T., “The Place of Science in Modern Civilization,” in his The Place of Science in Modern Civilization and Other Essays, Viking, New York, 1930, pp. 1–31.Google Scholar
[32] Weinberg, J., Abstraction, Relation, and Induction, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin, 1965.Google Scholar
[33] Wilson, F., “The Notion of Logical Necessity in the Later Philosophy of Rudolph Carnap,” in A. Hausman and F. Wilson, Carnap and Goodman: Two Formalists, Nijhoff, The Hague, 1967Google Scholar
[36] Wilson, F., “Barker on Geometry as A Priori,” Philosophical Studies, forthcoming.Google Scholar
[37] Wilson, F., “Weinberg's Refutation of Nominalism,” Dialogue, forthcoming.Google Scholar