Fons Dewulf (Ghent)
Abstract: In this presentation I investigate the 20th century emergence of the philosophical inquiry into explanation. I challenge the standard history of explanation written by Wesley Salmon. I argue that our modern concept of explanation forms a radical break with previous modes of thinking about science – and that Hempel’s motivations for introducing the modern concept of explanation are, at least historically, unclear. I conclude that the current mainstream view, that science explains, is historically contingent and in need of more critical scrutiny.
My investigation starts from Hempel’s first use of the concept of explanation in his paper “The Function of general Laws in History” from 1942. Contrary to the standard reading, I argue that this paper is not about explanation as we now know it. On my reading, Hempel does not claim anything about historical explanation. Instead, he argues that the historical sciences use general laws in a similar way as the natural sciences contrary to the dominant view within contemporary German neokantian philosophy. Whenever Hempel talks about explanation and introduces the deductive nomological inference, he is presenting it as a formal mode of subsumption, which also serves as the methodological unity of science. My reading of this paper is supported by two different types of evidence. On the one hand, there are many passages in Hempel’s paper that only make sense as a reaction against specific German neokantians, namely Windelband, Rickert and Dilthey. On the other hand, the first reception of the 1942 paper also understands Hempel’s argument in this way. To prove this last point I investigate the first reaction against Hempel’s paper written in 1943 by Paul Oskar Kristeller.
Next, I show how the modern concept of explanation emerges in Hempel’s and Oppenheim’s 1948 paper “The Logic of scientific Explanation”. This paper radically shifts the underlying conception of science that was inherent in logical empiricist philosophy of science up until that time. Moreover, Hempel and Oppenheim do not seem to recognize this shift. I argue for this by, first, giving a short overview of the anti-explanatory vibes of early 20th European philosophy of science in Duhem, Poincaré and Cassirer. Second, I show how Hempel’s use of the deductive nomological account in 1942 is still in line with these vibes. Next, I argue that the 1948 paper introduces a radical shift which, however, goes unrecognized by Hempel himself.