Illari, P;
(2019)
Mechanisms, Models and Laws in Understanding Supernovae.
Journal for General Philosophy of Science
10.1007/s10838-018-9435-y.
(In press).
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Abstract
There has been a burst of work in the last couple of decades on mechanistic explanation, as an alternative to the traditional covering-law model of scientific explanation. That work makes some interesting claims about mechanistic explanations rendering phenomena ‘intelligible’, but does not develop this idea in great depth. There has also been a growth of interest in giving an account of scientific understanding, as a complement to an account of explanation, specifically addressing a three-place relationship between explanation, world, and the scientific community. The aim of this paper is to use the contextual theory of scientific understanding to build an account of understanding phenomena using mechanistic explanations. This account will be developed and illustrated by examining the mechanisms of supernovae, which will allow synthesis of treatment of the life sciences and social sciences on the one hand, where many accounts of mechanisms were originally developed, and treatment of physics on the other hand, where the contextual theory drew its original inspiration.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Mechanisms, Models and Laws in Understanding Supernovae |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s10838-018-9435-y |
| Publisher version: | http://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-018-9435-y |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
| Keywords: | Understanding, Mechanisms, Mechanistic explanation, The contextual theory of scientific understanding, Intelligibility, Supernovae, SN1987A |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Science and Technology Studies |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10068284 |
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