Four Decades of Scientific Explanation

Wesley Salmon provides an introduction to scientific explanation by recounting and analyzing the major developments that have occurred in the field since the publication in 1948 of Carl G. Hempel's and Paul Oppenheim's "Studies in the Logic of Explanation". He begins by considering the rise of the "received view" including accounts of statistical explanation in addition to the deductive-nomological model of the 1948 essay. He analyzes the controversies involving the covering law conception of scientific explanation, the nature of inductive or statisticl explanation, the role of causality in explanation, differing basic conceptions of explanation and the pragmatics of explanation - demonstrating how the "received view" has been seriously undermined, and has given way to its successors. After delineating these developments and transformations, the volume concludes with a review of current work central to this fundamental area in the philosophy of science.