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Summary Hempel - Aspects of Scientific Explanation
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- Oxford University (OX)
Notes on Hempel's 'Aspects of Scientific Explanation' and deductive-nomological model of explanation
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Carl Hempel - Studies in the Logic of ExplanationIntro
● To explain a phenomena is to answer a ‘why?’ question rather than a ‘what?’ question
○ i.e. explanation stands in contrast to description
Elementary survey of scientific explanation
● An explanation has two main constituents:
○ explanandum - the sentence describing the phenomena to be explained
(rather than the phenomenon itself)
○ explanans - the group of sentences that are adduced to account for the
phenomenon. this is divided into two parts:
■ sentences which state specific antecedent conditions
■ sentences which represent general laws
● A sound explanation must meet logical and empirical conditions of adequacy
○ what are the logical conditions of adequacy?
■ the explanandum must be logically deducible from the
explanans
■ the explanans must contain general laws, but not
necessarily non law-like statements
● in other words, some scientific
explanations won’t make reference to the empirical world e.g. we could
derive the regularities governing the motion of double stars from the
laws of celestial mechanics
■ the explanans must be capable (in principle) of being
tested empirically
○ what are the empirical conditions of adequacy?
■ the sentences of the explanans must be true
● if they were only highly confirmed by
available evidence, then as science the same explanation would move
from being correct to being incorrect, as more information became
available
● instead, in saying that they must be true,
we allow ourselves to say that although an explanation once appeared
adequate, it in fact never was
● (doesn’t this condition mean that no
explanation will ever be empirically adequate? would a solution be to
accept adequacy relative to available evidence?)
● Explanation and prediction take the same form: the difference between the two is that
prediction comes before a phenomenon, whereas explanation presupposes that phenomenon
● ‘Explanations’ that don’t imply general laws, tacitly or explicitly, are not explanations
○ at best, an incomplete explanation may point towards a positive
correlation between antecedent conditions and phenomenon to be explained, and as
inviting further research in order to complete the account
● This type of explanation is often called causal explanation
○ in this case, the antecedent circumstances in the explanans are said to
jointly cause the event, in virtue of the stated empirical regularities that assert
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