Modelli della spiegazione scientifica

Abstract

What is the structure of a scientific explanation? How many types of explanation are there? Does science really offer explanations? From the traditional model, according to which "explaining" means "finding causes" we have moved on to the deductive-nomological model (D-N), introduced by Hempel and Oppenheim in 1948, according to which the explanation is a logical inference drawn from specific laws and conditions, without any reference to causes. The D-N model was then integrated by statistical-inductive explanations, but the objections made to Salmon's model over recent decades have stimulated proposals for alternatives, including the pragmatic and the "unificationist" models, through to the retrieval of the notion of cause by Salmon himself. This book analyses the epistemological problems relating to the explanation, arriving at the retrieval of the link between explanation and truth that the twentieth century sought to eliminate.

Science and Philosophy

“…Such thematics, naturally, are not of immediate interest for the scientist. For example, while both the scientist and the philosopher of science will be interested in scientific explanations, in laws of nature and in theories, the primary interest of the scientist will almost certainly be to arrive at a formulation of these and to discover nomological connections between the phenomena; that of the philosopher of science, on the other hand, is to clarify what in fact should be understood by the notions of “scientific explanation”, “laws of nature” and “theory”, if anything with one eye on the (thoroughly philosophical) enterprise of pointing out possible differences between a theoretical construct of a scientific nature and a concept of a metaphysical nature (see for example Boniolo 2001, Casamonti 2006, Peruzzi 2009).…”