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Explanatory Unification and Scientific Understanding

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Eric Barnes
Eric Barnes*
Affiliation:
Denison University
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Extract

The theory of explanatory unification was first proposed by Michael Friedman (1974) and developed in more detail by Philip Kitcher (1981,1989). The primary motivation for this theory is the case that the theory adequately accounts for the genesis of scientific understanding. Standard models of explanation are, moreover, allegedly constructed on the basis of a misconception of the nature of understanding. My thesis is that the unificationist account of understanding proposed by Friedman and Kitcher is false, and hence, that the theory of explanatory unification is fundamentally misconceived.

How does an explanation of some explanandum render the explanandum as ‘understood’? Carl Hempel wrote of the D-N covering law model that it shows that “given the particular circumstances and the laws in question, the occurrence of the phenomenon was to be expected; and it is in this sense that the explanation allows us to understand why the phenomenon occurred.”

Type
Part I. Methodology and Explanation
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1992 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1992 , 1992 , pp. 3 - 12
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

I am grateful to the National Endowment for the Humanities for a summer seminar stipend which supported research culminating in this paper. I am indebted to Paul Humphreys both for comments on this paper and for teaching an excellent seminar.

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