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Beyond Hempel: Reframing the Debate about Scientific Explanation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 January 2022

Fons Dewulf Open the ORCID record for Fons Dewulf [Opens in a new window]
Fons Dewulf*
Affiliation:
Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
*
Email: fons.dewulf@kuleuven.be
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Abstract

I argue that Carl Hempel’s pioneering work on scientific explanation introduced an assumption that Hempel never motivated, namely, that explanation is an aim of science. Ever since, it has remained largely unquestioned in analytic philosophy of science. By expanding the historical scope of the debate on explanation to philosophers from the first half of the twentieth century, I show that the debate should include a critical reflection on Hempel’s assumption. This reflection includes two problems: how to motivate one’s position on the aims of scientific knowledge and how to decide which examples count as expressions of those aims.

Type
Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 89 , Issue 3 , July 2022 , pp. 585 - 603
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Philosophy of Science Association

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