Depth An Account of Scientific Explanation

Depth: An Account of Scientific Explanation by Michael Strevens
English | January 15, 2009 | ISBN: 0674031830, 0674062574 | PDF | 536 pages | 4.4 MB
What does it mean for scientists to truly understand, rather than to merely describe, how the world works? Michael Strevens proposes a novel theory of scientific explanation and understanding that overhauls and augments the familiar causal approach to explanation. What is replaced is the test for explanatorily relevant causal information: Strevens discards the usual criterion of counterfactual dependence in favor of a criterion that turns on a process of progressive abstraction away from a fully detailed, physical causal story. The augmentations include the introduction of a new, non-causal explanatory relevance relation―entanglement―and an independent theory of the role of black-boxing and functional specification in explanation.