Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-03T19:35:56.607Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

On “Minimal Model Explanations”: A Reply to Batterman and Rice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Marc Lange
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Batterman and Rice offer an account of “minimal model explanations” and argue against “common features accounts” of those explanations. This paper offers some objections to their proposals and arguments. It argues that their proposal cannot account for the apparent explanatory asymmetry of minimal model explanations. It argues that their account threatens ultimately to collapse into a “common features account.” Finally, it argues against their motivation for thinking that an explanation appealing to “common features” would have to explain the common features’ own prevalence.

Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 82 , Issue 2 , April 2015 , pp. 292 - 305
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

I would like to thank three anonymous referees for their very helpful suggestions and criticisms of an earlier draft of this paper. If I have misunderstood B&R’s paper, then I am sorry and hope that others can profit from my mistakes.

References

Batterman, Robert W., and Rice, Collin C. 2014. “Minimal Model Explanations.” Philosophy of Science 81:349–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braine, David. 1972. “Varieties of Necessity.” Supplementary Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 46:139–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fisher, Michael E. 1983. “Scaling, Universality and Renormalization Group Theory.” In Critical Phenomena: Lecture Notes in Physics 186, ed. Hahne, F. J. W., 1–139. Berlin: Springer.Google Scholar
Hempel, C. G. 2001. “Science Unlimited?” In The Philosophy of Carl G. Hempel: Studies in Science, Explanation, and Rationality, ed. Fetzer, James H., 329–43. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Herschel, John F. W. 1850. “Quetelet on Probabilities.” Edinburgh Review 42:1–57.Google Scholar
Lange, Marc. 2002. “Who’s Afraid of Ceteris-Paribus Laws? Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Them.” Erkenntnis 57:407–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lange, Marc 2013. “What Makes a Scientific Explanation Distinctively Mathematical?” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 64:485–511.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maxwell, James Clerk. 1860/1860. “Illustrations of the Dynamical Theory of Gases.” In The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell, Vol. 1, ed. W. D. Niven, 377–409. Repr. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Maxwell, James Clerk 1871. Theory of Heat. London: Longmans, Green.Google Scholar
Nerlich, Graham. 1991. “Hands, Knees, and Absolute Space.” In The Philosophy of Left and Right, ed. van Cleve, James and Frederick, Robert, 151–72. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Poincaré, Henri. 1908. Thermodynamique. 2nd ed. Paris: Gauthier-Villars.Google Scholar