The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 17.3 (2003) 224-236

. . . nothing is so chilling as a scientific explanation.

—C. S. Peirce (CP, 5.292)

There has been a recent focused effort in philosophical scholarship to bridge the perceived divide between pragmatism and analytic philosophy. This divide, it has been suggested, is over philosophical doctrines, methods, and even aims. This is not to say there has not been fruitful—even if antagonistic—dialogue between these two philosophical traditions. Clearly there has been, e.g., Russell's famous (or infamous) disputes with James and Dewey. Clearly also, there has been direct philosophical influence from one tradition to the other, e.g., Peirce and Dewey on Quine's naturalistic works. Nevertheless, all too often the seminal works of pragmatists, especially the classical "Big Three," have not been mined by analytic philosophers, e.g., Peirce's writings on vagueness or on reference. This neglect has been, I believe, to the detriment of analytic philosophy. I intend this paper to be one step in correcting this neglect by suggesting both that Peirce's take on (scientific) explanation is a corrective to the prevailing models of explanation and that these models supply (at least in part) fecund additions to Peirce's views. First I will lay out four contemporary models of explanation, followed by an explication of Peirce's views. Then I will suggest how each of these two approaches (the analytic models and the Peircean model) can help inform the other.

Contemporary Analytic Models of Explanation

It used to be so simple! Hempel (1965) gave us an apparently straightforward way of knowing what a scientific explanation is, his Covering-Law model. If there was some event to be explained (the explanandum), say, that my car wouldn't start this morning or that the jar broke when it fell, this was explained by providing the appropriate explanatory conditions (the explanans). Some of those conditions would consist of particular facts relevant to the case at hand (for example, that the jar was made of glass, not rubber). But those particular relevant facts were not enough. What was also needed was some sort of covering-law (or laws) that connected those particular facts with the event to be explained. So, we might need to cite laws dealing with fragility or friction coefficients or even gravity (since the jar would probably not have broken if I had been orbiting the earth on SkyLab, but would have gently floated around). Explanations, then, for Hempel, had the structure of a logical argument; indeed they were arguments. This Covering-Law model came in various versions. Besides the standard Deductive-Nomological version, Hempel recognized that many of our explanations involve probabilistic covering-laws, and these were portrayed as exhibiting an Inductive-Statistical argument structure.

Very soon after its enunciation by Hempel and Oppenheim (1948), the Covering-Law model of explanation was criticized on a number of grounds. Some criticisms focused on the internal inadequacy of the model. For example, Bromberger proposed his well-known flagpole counterexample. Here a vertical flagpole of a certain height stands on a flat, level piece of ground. The sun is at a certain elevation, resulting in the flagpole casting a shadow of a certain length. Given these particular facts, along with a law of rectilinear propagation of light, the length of the shadow can be deduced, in line with the Covering-Law model. In addition, given the length of the shadow and the position of the sun and the same law about light, the height of the flagpole can be deduced. Yet no one, said Bromberger, would seriously suggest that the flagpole's height is explained by this argument. Other counterexamples quickly followed (cf., Kitcher and Salmon [1989]).

In addition to criticisms that focused on the internal inadequacy of this model, other criticisms focused on its overall inadequacy. For example, Scriven (1962) argued early on that viewing explanation as an argument structure...