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More Telltale Signs: What Attention to Representation Reveals about Scientific Explanation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Andrea I. Woody
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Abstract

This essay explores the connection between representation and explanation in the sciences. I suggest that scientific representation schemes be viewed as pragmatic tools for acquiring the sort of articulated awareness that is the hallmark of nontrivial knowledge. Crystal field theory in chemistry illustrates this perspective. Certain representations achieve the status of being paradigmatically explanatory, thereby shaping models of intelligibility. In turn, these explanatory preferences serve largely to define and differentiate disciplinary communities by implicitly endorsing particular epistemic aims and values. In this way, the pragmatic nature of explanatory discourse effectively grants its intellectual utility.

Type
The Pragmatics of Scientific Representation
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 71 , Issue 5: Proceedings of the 2002 Biennial Meeting of The Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers , December 2004 , pp. 780 - 793
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

Thanks to Paul Teller, Steve Weininger, and Theodore Brown for constructive comments and discussion.

References

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