Explanations

Styles of Explanation in Science
Erscheinungsjahr 2004
ISBN: 978-0-19-860778-6
Verlag: OUP Oxford

Buch, Englisch, 266 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 567 g

Our lives, states of health, relationships, behaviour, experiences of the natural world, and the technologies that shape our contemporary existence are subject to a superfluity of competing, multi-faceted and sometimes incompatible explanations. Widespread confusion about the nature of 'explanation' and its scope and limits pervades popular exposition of the natural sciences, popular history and philosophy of science. This fascinating and intriguing book explores the way explanations work, why they vary between disciplines, periods, and cultures, and whether they have any necessary boundaries. In other words, Explanations aims to achieve a better understanding of explanation, both within the sciences and the humanities. It features contributions from expert writers from a wide range of disciplines, including science, philosophy, mathematics, and social anthropology.

Zielgruppe

General readers with an interest in science and philosophy, philosophers of science and scientists

Autoren/Hrsg.

Cornwell, John

Fachgebiete

• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Wissenschaften: Theorie, Epistemologie, Methodik
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Erkenntnistheorie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Wissenschaftstheorie, Wissenschaftsphilosophie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Preface

- List of contributors

- Introduction

- 1: Peter Lipton: What good is an explanation?

- 2: Steven Weinberg: Can science explain everything? Can science explain anything?

- 3: Martin Rees: Explaining the universe

- 4: William C. Saslaw: Does physics rule the roost of scientific explanation?

- 5: John D. Barrow: Mathematical explanation

- 6: Peter Atkins: Ponderable matter: explanation in chemistry

- 7: Steven Rose: The biology of the future and the future of biology

- 8: David Hanke: Teleology: the explanation that bedevils biology

- 9: Colin McGinn: What is it not like to be a brain?

- 10: Tian Yu Cao: Ontology and scientific explanation

- 11: Jack Goody: From explanation to interpretation in social anthropology

- 12: Jon Turney: Passing it on: redescribing scientific explanation

- Index

Über Autor(innen)

John Cornwell is an author and journalist, and Director of the Science and Human Dimension Project at Jesus College, Cambridge. He is the editor of two previous collections, also published by OUP: Nature's Imagination (1994) and Consciousness and Human Identity (1998).