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Depth: An Account of Scientific Explanation
What does it mean for scientists to truly understand, rather than to merely describe, how the world works? Michael Strevens proposes a novel theory of scientific explanation and understanding that overhauls and augments the familiar causal approach to explanation. What is replaced is the test for explanatorily relevant causal Strevens discards the usual criterion of counterfactual dependence in favor of a criterion that turns on a process of progressive abstraction away from a fully detailed, physical causal story. The augmentations include the introduction of a new, non-causal explanatory relevance relation―entanglement―and an independent theory of the role of black-boxing and functional specification in explanation.
The abstraction-centered notion of difference-making leads to a rich causal treatment of many aspects of explanation that have been either ignored or handled inadequately by earlier causal approaches, including the explanation of laws and other regularities, with particular attention to the explanation of physically contingent high-level laws, idealization in explanation, and probabilistic explanation in deterministic systems, as in statistical physics, evolutionary biology, and medicine.
The result is an account of explanation that has especially significant consequences for the higher-level biology, psychology, economics, and other social sciences.
The abstraction-centered notion of difference-making leads to a rich causal treatment of many aspects of explanation that have been either ignored or handled inadequately by earlier causal approaches, including the explanation of laws and other regularities, with particular attention to the explanation of physically contingent high-level laws, idealization in explanation, and probabilistic explanation in deterministic systems, as in statistical physics, evolutionary biology, and medicine.
The result is an account of explanation that has especially significant consequences for the higher-level biology, psychology, economics, and other social sciences.
- GenresPhilosophyScience
536 pages, Paperback
First published January 15, 2009
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January 16, 2014
Depth is probably the work of greatest general interest in the philosophy of science that Strevens has produced, and its later sections serve to show why the project in probabilities that he spends so much time on during
Bigger than Chaos
and
Tychomancy
is so central to his account. Overall, I strongly recommend the first half of the book to anyone at all interested in the philosophy of science, and the entire book to those who are also interested in how it fits together with contemporary literature on probability.
Like Strevens' other work, the book is impressive because of its general interest in scientific domains, not focussing narrowly on a single domain but working widely in fields including psychology, fluid mechanics, and economics. As someone who has a more restricted interest in a single domain, at least for the purposes of my present research, this leaves a significant hunger for greater detail in that domain, but the absence of such detail is actually good, as it leaves room for exploring the application of the general account proposed by Strevens.
The book is thoughtfully written and theoretically rich. The sections breakdown very cleanly, and so the book can be read and digested as sections of interest rather than attempted whole-cloth, which is important for a book that clocks in at around 500 pages of text, including notes. There are several subsections which are, themselves, worth reading for those interested in multiple realizability and conceptual analysis, but it is likely that Strevens tackles them in more detail in some of his papers. (He has a forthcoming book on conceptual analysis that deals with some of the literature on conceptual entanglement that he touches on in Depth.)
Overall, the book is an important read for those who are interested in contemporary philosophy of science, as Strevens does a particularly good job at giving a novel account, while offering insights into how his account interacts with and differs from other popular accounts, like those of Salmon or Kitcher. While it is certainly not an introductory work, by any stretch of the term, it is a useful way to get acquainted with the background literature and what folks at the center of this discussion (which Strevens most certainly is) regard as worth reading and responding to.
A quick disclaimer: Michael Strevens is my current thesis advisor; tied into this is my respect for him as a person and philosopher. I don't think that has colored this review in any important way, but it is important to have noted.
Like Strevens' other work, the book is impressive because of its general interest in scientific domains, not focussing narrowly on a single domain but working widely in fields including psychology, fluid mechanics, and economics. As someone who has a more restricted interest in a single domain, at least for the purposes of my present research, this leaves a significant hunger for greater detail in that domain, but the absence of such detail is actually good, as it leaves room for exploring the application of the general account proposed by Strevens.
The book is thoughtfully written and theoretically rich. The sections breakdown very cleanly, and so the book can be read and digested as sections of interest rather than attempted whole-cloth, which is important for a book that clocks in at around 500 pages of text, including notes. There are several subsections which are, themselves, worth reading for those interested in multiple realizability and conceptual analysis, but it is likely that Strevens tackles them in more detail in some of his papers. (He has a forthcoming book on conceptual analysis that deals with some of the literature on conceptual entanglement that he touches on in Depth.)
Overall, the book is an important read for those who are interested in contemporary philosophy of science, as Strevens does a particularly good job at giving a novel account, while offering insights into how his account interacts with and differs from other popular accounts, like those of Salmon or Kitcher. While it is certainly not an introductory work, by any stretch of the term, it is a useful way to get acquainted with the background literature and what folks at the center of this discussion (which Strevens most certainly is) regard as worth reading and responding to.
A quick disclaimer: Michael Strevens is my current thesis advisor; tied into this is my respect for him as a person and philosopher. I don't think that has colored this review in any important way, but it is important to have noted.
Displaying 1 of 1 review