Explanation and Understanding

Science has multiple goals: to describe the world, as it is now; to predict the future and to make inferences about the past. Science also aims to understand the world – to explain why it is the way it is. But what does it take to explain a phenomenon? How does science generate understanding and what does that take?

In this thorough and clearly written introduction to scientific explanation, Arnon Levy explores the following problems and questions:

• the background to the topic of scientific e...