Scientific explanation and understanding: unificationism reconsidered

European Journal for Philosophy of Science 7 (1):103-126 (2017)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The articulation of an overarching account of scientific explanation has long been a central preoccupation for the philosophers of science. Although a while ago the literature was dominated by two approaches—a causal account and a unificationist account—today the consensus seems to be that the causal account has won. In this paper, I challenge this consensus and attempt to revive unificationism. More specifically, I aim to accomplish three goals. First, I add new criticisms to the standard anti-unificationist arguments, in order to motivate the need for a revision of the doctrine. Second, and most importantly, I sketch such a revised version. Then I argue that, contrary to widespread belief, the causal account and this revised unificationist account of explanation are compatible. Moreover, I also maintain that the unificationist account has priority, since a most satisfactory theory of explanation can be obtained by incorporating the causal account, as a sub-component of the unificationist account. The driving force behind this reevaluation of the received view in the philosophy of explanation is a reconsideration of the role of scientific understanding.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

A defense of a unificationist theory of explanation.Rebecca Schweder - 2005 - Foundations of Science 10 (4):421-435.
Depth: An Account of Scientific Explanation.Michael Strevens - 2008 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Explanatory Unification and Scientific Understanding.Eric Barnes - 1992 - PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1992:3 - 12.
Wesley salmon's complementarity thesis: Causalism and unificationism reconciled?Henk W. de Regt - 2006 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 20 (2):129 – 147.
SCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDING-VIEWS FROM PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE. David-Rus - 2012 - Revue Roumaine de Philosophie 56 (2).
Rethinking mechanistic explanation.Stuart Glennan - 2002 - Proceedings of the Philosophy of Science Association 2002 (3):S342-353.
Understanding and the Norm of Explanation.John Turri - 2015 - Philosophia 43 (4):1171-1175.

Analytics

Added to PP
2016-05-12

Downloads
129 (#131,046)

6 months
5 (#246,492)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Sorin Bangu
University of Bergen

Citations of this work

Grounding Functionalism and Explanatory Unificationism.Alexios Stamatiadis-bréhier - 2023 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 9 (4):799-819.
Nomic moral naturalness.Alexios Stamatiadis-Bréhier - 2022 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy:1-22.
Understanding the Progress of Science.C. D. McCoy - 2023 - In Kareem Khalifa, Insa Lawler & Elay Shech (eds.), Scientific Understanding and Representation: Modeling in the Physical Sciences. Routledge. pp. 353-369.

View all 9 citations / Add more citations