 | Faye J. The nature of scientific thinking: on interpretation, explanatation, and understanding. - Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. - xiv, 333 p. - Bibliogr.: p.316-325. - Ind.: p.325-333. - ISBN 978-1-137-38982-4
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Preface and Acknowledgements .................................. vii
1 Forms of Understanding ....................................... 1
1 A subjective feature of explanation ....................... 2
2 The unification view ...................................... 4
3 The causal-mechanical view ............................... 12
4 The visualization view ................................... 15
2 Understanding as Organized Beliefs .......................... 24
1 The content view ......................................... 26
2 Skills and intelligibility ............................... 34
3 The organization view .................................... 37
4 Embodied and embedded understanding ...................... 41
5 Levels of understanding .................................. 48
6 Norms of understanding? .................................. 51
7 Cognitive schemata ....................................... 56
3 On Interpretation ........................................... 60
1 Two notions of interpretation ............................ 60
2 Interpretations in the natural sciences .................. 64
3 Roads to interpretation .................................. 68
4 Interpretation and the discovery of scientific
hypothesis ............................................... 75
5 Interpretation and the construction of scientific
concepts ................................................. 79
4 Representations ............................................. 85
1 What is a representation? ................................ 87
2 Representing and understanding ........................... 91
3 What do laws represent? .................................. 99
4 The linguistic approach to theories ..................... 103
5 Models as focal points of scientific explanation ........ 108
5 Scientific Explanation ..................................... 114
1 Nomic explanations ...................................... 117
2 The Hempelian view ...................................... 122
3 The received criticism .................................. 125
6 Causal Explanations ........................................ 136
1 From embodiment to modal reflections .................... 137
2 Causal explanation as reflective understanding .......... 142
3 Causation in physics .................................... 147
4 Causation in biology .................................... 149
5 Causal beliefs about causal facts ....................... 154
6 Context-dependent relations and context-dependent
descriptions ............................................ 157
7 Other Types of Explanations ................................ 162
1 Types of explanations ................................... 163
2 Structural explanations ................................. 168
3 Functional explanations or evolutionary explanations? ... 171
8 The Pragmatics of Explanation .............................. 183
1 Why is explanation a matter of pragmatics? .............. 186
2 The contrastive dimension of why-questions .............. 193
3 van Fraassen on explanation ............................. 195
4 Critiques of van Fraassen ............................... 203
9 Not Just Why-questions ..................................... 210
1 Why-questions in science ................................ 213
2 The paradigm argument ................................... 216
3 The relation argument ................................... 220
4 The reason argument ..................................... 225
5 The translation argument ................................ 231
6 The contrast-class argument ............................. 234
7 The relevance argument .................................. 237
10 A Rhetorical Approach to Explanation ....................... 241
1 The problem context ..................................... 241
2 Individual cognitive interests .......................... 245
3 Explanation as speech act ............................... 248
4 Explanation as a rhetorical means of communication ...... 251
5 The rhetorical situation ................................ 255
6 Explanatory relevance ................................... 259
7 Explanatory force ....................................... 262
11 Pluralism and the Unity of Science ......................... 270
1 The epistemological issue ............................... 272
2 The methodological issue ................................ 276
3 The ontological issue ................................... 279
4 Conclusion .............................................. 284
Notes ......................................................... 289
Literature .................................................... 316
Index ......................................................... 327
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