Abstract

The paper deals with the procedure of explaining the secondary immune response. First, the basic concepts of the mechanistic account of explanation developed by Machamer, Darden and Craver will be considered. Subsequently, I will focus on the concepts describing the activation of the elements of the immunological system viewed as a signal decoding process. The analysis will make it possible to argue for the thesis that the explanations of the secondary immune response, formulated in immunology, aim to describe the possible procedures of simplifying the signal decoding process. The following considerations will make it possible to show the specificity of the mechanistic explanations formulated in immunology, and to demonstrate their significance for medical sciences.