The Structure of Scientific Theories, Explanation, and Unification. A Causal–Structural Account

Abstract

What are scientific theories and how should they be represented?In this paper I propose a causal-structural account, according to which scientific theories are to be represented as sets of interrelated causal and credal nets. In contrast with other accounts of scientific theories (such as Sneedian structuralism, Kitcher's unificationist view, and Darden's theory of theoretical components), this leaves room for causality to play a substantial role. As a result, an interesting account of explanation is provided which sheds light on explanatory unification within a causalist framework. The theory of classical genetics is used as a case study.

The unifying power of scientific theories. An alternative proposal from structuralism to Kitcher’s explanatory pattern

“…En particular, queda fuera de consideración en este trabajo el análisis de las críticas de parte de aquellos que consideran que la explicación está estrechamente relacionada con la causación (Salmon 1984;Dowe 2000;Hausman 1998;Glennan 1996 entre otros). Un señalamiento similar se le ha hecho al estructuralismo metateórico (Leuridan 2014), aun cuando los trabajos de Forge (2002), Díez (2002Díez ( , 2014, Moulines (2005) y Lorenzano (2005) mostrarían que los aspectos causales serían susceptibles de ser incorporados a la propuesta estructuralista sobre la explicación científica. Profundizar en esta temática excede los límites del presente trabajo.…”

Modelling mechanisms with causal cycles

“…SeeCasini et al (2011) for a fuller presentation of the motivation behind this sort of model, and §7 of this paper for pointers to possible limitations of the RBN approach.2 Woodward's concept of 'mechanism', or more precisely: of 'mechanistic model', is not explicitly multi-level or hierarchical, in contrast to those on which we focus in this paper. In the next section, the hierarchical nature will serve as one of the main reasons to adopt the RBN approach to mechanistic modelling.3 As such, his account of causality also forms the starting point for causal Bayes net accounts of the structure of scientific theories (seeLeuridan, 2014).…”