Scientific Explanation
A Study of the Function of Theory, Probability and Law in Science

The primary purpose of this book is to examine the logical features common to all the sciences.

Richard Bevan Braithwaite (Author)

9780521094429, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 1 May 1968

392 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 0.3 cm, 0.74 kg

The primary purpose of this book is to examine the logical features common to all the sciences. Each science proceeds by inventing general principles from which are deduced the consequences to be tested by observation and experiment; the author shows how the implications of this process explain some of its more baffling features and resolves many of the difficulties that philosophers have found in them. His exposition is by way of detailed examples.

Preface
1. Introduction
2. Scientific deductive systems and their representations
3. The status of the theoretical terms of a science
4. Models for scientific theories: their use and misuse
5. Statistical hypotheses, probability statements and class-ratio arithmetic
6. The meaning of probability statements within a scientific system
7. The choice between statistical hypotheses
8. The justification of induction
9. Laws of nature and causality
10. Causal and teleological explanation
11. Explanation of scientific laws
Index.

Subject Areas: Philosophy [HP]