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Scientific Explanation: Three Basic Conceptions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Wesley C Salmon
Wesley C Salmon*
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
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Extract

When one takes a long look at the concept (or concepts) of scientific explanation, it is possible and plausible to distinguish three fundamental philosophical views. These might be called the epistemic, modal, and ontic. They can be discerned in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics and they are conspicuous in the twentieth-century literature. In its classic form—the inferential version—the epistemic conception takes scientific explanations to be arguments. During the period of almost four decades since the publication of the landmark Hempel-Oppenheim article, “Studies in the Logic of Explanation” (1948), the chairman of this symposium (Carl G. Hempel) has done more than anyone else to articulate, elaborate, and defend this basic conception and the familiar models that give it substance (Hempel 1965), though it has, of course, had many other champions as well. According to the modal conception, scientific explanations do their jobs by showing that what did happen had to happen.

Type
Part VII. Scientific Explanation
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1984 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1984 , 1984 , pp. 293 - 305
Copyright
Copyright © 1985 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

The material in this paper is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. GS-42056 and Grant No. SOC-7809146. Any Opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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