Griph colloquium: Philip Kitcher on The Theory of Scientific Explanation: An Obituary

For eighty years the quest for a generaltheory of scientific explanation, launched by C.G. Hempel, has delivered anumber of candidates, all of which have turned out to be inadequate for thejob.  The best accounts we have focus onparticular species of explanation, abandoning the search for generality.  The moral of the history, this lectureargues, is that we should pronounce the death of the theory of scientificexplanation.  This conclusion will besupported by considering two areas in which explanations are offered andaccepted: mathematics and history.  Inlight of what study of those domains show, we can recognize a vast variety oftypes of explanation all over the sciences. A diagnosis: explanations don’t provide some special state ofunderstanding, that admits of characterization; rather they are best viewed asclearing up our failures to understand – and these are highly various.