Scientific Explanation

Abstract

Philosophers have tried to grasp the notion of scientific explanation, either by looking for some essential features, such as inherent logical properties that every explanation has to satisfy, or by arguing that a true scientific explanation must appeal to some specific kind of factual relationship existing in the world. For instance, Hempel’s model of explanation in science was based on clear conviction that all explanations could be characterized as an argument which states that the phenomenon to be explained follows deductively from some general laws. Although he did not deny the pragmatic side of explanation, the model of explanation he presented is abstracted from those contexts in which scientists use explanations. One may therefore wonder whether it is possible to find such a context-free notion of scientific explanation without losing sight of the cognitive purpose of providing explanations?