Abstract
In this book we are concerned with the nature of explanations about the world around us, that is with empirical explanations. We can study the properties and interactions of many kinds of phenomena: earth, air, fire and water; solid material objects, magnetic and electrical fields of force, shadows, mirages, mirror images, atoms, and electrons, stars, quasars, and also plants and animals, including ourselves.
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Notes
G. H. von Wright, Explanation and Understanding (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964), p. 6.
See D. C. Dennet, ‘A Cure for the Common Code?’, in Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology, vol. II, N. Block (ed.) (London: Methuen, 1981), p. 69: ‘It is a mistake to make laws of the unreduced sciences exceptionless.’ He is glossing another author, and agrees with him. See also A. Flew in A Rational Animal (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), Chapters 3 and 7–9 and H. Putnam in Block, cited above, vol. I, Chapter 7 on the contingent necessity of physical laws.
R. Trigg, Understanding Social Science (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), p. 43.
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© 1987 Jennifer Trusted
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Trusted, J. (1987). Empirical Explanations. In: Inquiry and Understanding. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18823-9_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18823-9_1
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