The Nature of Scientific Explanation

Preface

ix Preface This volume is based on a set of lectures delivered at the Charles University, Prague, in 1991, lectures subsequently expanded and delivered on several university campuses or before philosophical associations. I do not claim that any part of this book is especially profound or original. This does not mean that the topics discussed are insignificant. The book draws upon the work of many others who have made it possible for me to write. Some of the facts, observations, and ideas presented in these lectures may seem to the specialist in need of documentary corroboration. The author agrees but has decided to expose himself to the challenge of skeptical colleagues. Admittedly it is difficult to write about science in the abstract . There are many sciences, each employing a methodology of its own appropriate to its object of study. The Latin term, scientia, means knowledge. But not all knowledge can claim to be scientific. Enumeration is not science, nor is technology to be equated with science, though it is often thought of as such. Precise observation is not science, nor is the correlation of data that at first blush seem to be related. We speak of medical science when we mean the art of medicine. Engineering, too, is thought of as science but, like medicine, engineering draws upon a wealth of scientifically achieved information, but is not itself a science. The systematic collection of data is often taken to be scientific, as is the ability to make prediction based on the accumulation of preface x data with respect to past instances. The application of scientific information is essentially an art with its own rules of application, much like prudence is the application of wisdom. We may not think of theology as a science, but Aristotle made room for a “divine science.” Today we call it “natural theology” and distinguish it from sacred theology—that is, theology that has as its premises propositions derived from revelation. There is a whole cadre of disciplines we categorize as social science, but most of the time when we talk about science we have in mind natural science. Few think of philosophy and theology as science, although the case can be made that both in their foremost representatives constitute scientific inquiry. These lectures will argue from a realist perspective that the fundamental goal of science is to render intelligible that which is unintelligible in terms of itself. They will insist, contrary to popular opinion, that science is not reducible to description, to prediction, or to control, but rather is directed to an understanding of the processes of nature. It must be admitted that theories that purport to describe the nature of scientific explanation vary as widely as philosophies vary. A philosophy of science is but a part of one’s overarching metaphysical outlook, itself painstakingly derived from considerations of nature, law, intelligibility, causality, and inference. Most philosophies of science have been shaped by the social and intellectual milieu in which they arise. Our discussion of these will take notice of the historical situation in which they were initially offered, for the history of philosophy is much more a part of philosophy than the history of science is a part of physics. These lectures are delivered from an Aristotelian point of view, employing the texts of Aristotle as commented upon and amplified over the centuries. Although challenged by modernity, that point of view remains viable. As we will subsequently show, preface xi modernity cannot be understood apart from its break with Plato and Aristotle. The fortunes of Aristotle are bound up with the fortunes of metaphysics. Once the core of any philosophical curriculum , metaphysics has become, where it is still pursued, one specialized discipline among many. In the golden age of American philosophy—the age of Peirce, James, Royce, Whitehead, and Santayana—and later even by the pragmatic naturalists who followed the lead of John Dewey, the centrality of metaphysics was uncontested. The eclipse of metaphysics is due in part to the ascendant influence of British analytic philosophy insofar as it reduces philosophy to logical and linguistic analysis. Some will speak of analytical metaphysics, but that upon scrutiny may turn out to be an oxymoron. In the last decades of the twentieth century, pragmatic naturalists such as John Herman Randall, Jr., and Abraham Edel adapted Aristotle to suit their purpose, but remained philosophical realists. They did not subscribe to the analytic philosophy emanating from...