Rövid leírás:

This thorough and clearly written introduction to scientific explanation is an excellent resource for students of philosophy of science, metaphysics and philosophy of psychology.

Hosszú leírás:

Science has multiple goals: to describe the world, as it is now; to predict the future and to make inferences about the past. Science also aims to understand the world ? to explain why it is the way it is. But what does it take to explain a phenomenon? How does science generate understanding and what does that take?

In this thorough and clearly written introduction to scientific explanation, Arnon Levy explores the following problems and questions:

• the background to the topic of scientific explanation, particularly the questions of what an explanation is, what makes a good explanation and why seek them in the first place








• empiricism about explanation: Hempel?s deductive-nomological model and its problems








• unificationism about explanation: must good scientific explanations fit into an overall ?explanatory store??








• causation and explanation: Lewis?s description-based model, Woodward?s interventionist view and Strevens?s criterion of selection theory








• connections between explanation and understanding








• models, idealization and explanation








• non-causal explanation and explanation in non-scientific contexts








• the nature of understanding.

Additional features, such as chapter summaries, suggestions for further reading and a glossary, make this an excellent resource for students of philosophy of science, metaphysics and epistemology.

Tartalomjegyzék:

1. Introduction: what this book (and isn?t) about  2. The history (and prehistory) of scientific explanation  3. The Move to Causal Accounts  4. Explanation and Difference-making  5. Production and Mechanistic Explanation  6. Models and Explanation  7. Beyond Causal Explanation  8. What is Understanding  9. Connecting understanding and explanation  10. Coda: the place of explanation.  Glossary  Index