Understanding How Science Explains the World

About this book

All people desire to know. We want to not only know what has happened, but also why it happened, how it happened, whether it will happen again, whether it can be made to happen or not happen, and so on. In short, what we want are explanations. Asking and answering explanatory questions lies at the very heart of scientific practice. The primary aim of this book is to help readers understand how science explains the world. This book explores the nature and contours of scientific explanation, how such explanations are evaluated, as well as how they lead to knowledge and understanding. As well as providing an introduction to scientific explanation, it also tackles misconceptions and misunderstandings, while remaining accessible to a general audience with little or no prior philosophical training.

Contents

1. Why Explanation Matters in Science
2. The General Nature of Explanation
3. Specific Kinds of Explanations
4. Explanation and Prediction
5. Evaluating Explanations
6. Explanatory Quality and Felt Understanding
7. False Theories, But Accurate Explanations?
8. From Explanation to Knowledge

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Biography

Kevin McCain is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His academic research interests lie in epistemology and philosophy of science, focusing on the role of explanatory reasoning in the production of scientific knowledge. He is the author/editor of numerous articles and books, including Uncertainty: How It Makes Science Advance (Oxford University Press, 2019), What Is Scientific Knowledge (Routledge, 2019) and The Nature of Scientific Knowledge (Springer, 2016).