Bod, Rens (2004) Explaining New Phenomena in Terms of Previous Phenomena. [Preprint]

Preview

PDF maximalism10.pdf Download (66kB)

Abstract

It has become increasingly clear that natural phenomena cannot be formally deduced from laws but that almost every phenomenon has its own particular way of being linked to higher-level generalizations, usually via approximations, normalizations and corrections. This article deals with the following problem: if there are no general principles to link laws to phenomena, and if each phenomenon has its own way of being explained, how can we -- or how can a theory -- explain any new phenomenon? I will argue that while particular explanations only apply to the specific phenomena they describe, parts of such explanations can be productively reused in explaining new phenomena. This leads to a view on theory, which I call maximalism, according to which new phenomena are understood in terms of previous phenomena. On the maximalist view, a theory is not a system of axioms or a class of models, but a dynamically updated corpus of explanations. New phenomena are explained by combining fragments of explanations of previous phenomena. I will give an instantiation of this view, based on a corpus of phenomena from classical and fluid mechanics, and show that the maximalist approach is not only used but also needed in scientific practice.

---

Export/Citation:

EndNote | BibTeX | Dublin Core | ASCII/Text Citation (Chicago) | HTML Citation | OpenURL

Social Networking:

Share |

---

Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Bod, Rens
Keywords:	particularism, exemplar-based explanation, model-based reasoning, analogy-based explanation, maximalism
Subjects:	General Issues > Structure of Theories General Issues > Models and Idealization General Issues > Laws of Nature General Issues > Explanation Specific Sciences > Physics
Depositing User:	Rens Bod
Date Deposited:	06 Feb 2004
Last Modified:	07 Oct 2010 15:12
Item ID:	1602
Subjects:	General Issues > Structure of Theories General Issues > Models and Idealization General Issues > Laws of Nature General Issues > Explanation Specific Sciences > Physics
Date:	February 2004
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/1602

Monthly Views for the past 3 years

Monthly Downloads for the past 3 years

Plum Analytics

Actions (login required)

View Item