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The philosophical theory of scientific explanation proposed here involves a radically new treatment of causality that accords with the pervasively statistical character of contemporary science. Wesley C. Salmon describes three fundamental conceptions of scientific explanation--the epistemic, modal, and ontic. He argues that the prevailing view (a version of the epistemic conception) is untenable and that the modal conception is scientifically out-dated. Significantly revising aspects of his earlier work, he defends a causal/mechanical theory that is a version of the ontic conception. Professor Salmon's theory furnishes a robust argument for scientific realism akin to the argument that convinced twentieth-century physical scientists of the existence of atoms and molecules. To do justice to such notions as irreducibly statistical laws and statistical explanation, he offers a novel account of physical randomness. The transition from the "reviewed view" of scientific explanation (that explanations are arguments) to the causal/mechanical model requires fundamental rethinking of basic explanatory concepts.

Science --- Sciences --- Philosophy. --- Methodology. --- Philosophie --- Méthodologie --- Philosophy --- Methodology --- -Science --- -Natural science --- Science of science --- -Methodology --- Méthodologie --- Normal science --- Philosophy of science --- Scientific method --- Logic, Symbolic and mathematical --- Aristotle. --- Bohr, Niels. --- Bromberger, Sylvain. --- Compton scattering. --- Davisson-Germer experiment. --- Humean problems. --- Jackson, Reggie. --- King, John L. --- Laplacian explanation. --- action-by-contact. --- aleatory explanation. --- alpha radiation. --- behaviorism. --- bone, worked. --- cancer. --- carriage accident. --- causal relation. --- collective (von Mises). --- contrast class. --- disjunctive dilution. --- effective calculability. --- energeticism. --- epidemiology. --- expectation. --- explanans-partition. --- explanans. --- first signal, light as. --- forecast, reliable. --- gambling system. --- gravitational radiation. --- high probability requirement. --- homogeneity. --- ignorance. --- improbable event. --- inferential version. --- lambda-definability. --- leukemia. --- logical empiricism. --- magnifying glass. --- materialism. --- microphysical entities. --- microscope. --- mononucleosis. --- necessary connection. --- nonrandomness. --- operationism. --- pair production/annihilation. --- partial entailment. --- plausibility. --- presupposition. --- psychotherapy. --- quantum domain. --- recursiveness. --- Nauka --- metodologia. --- filozofia. --- Science - Philosophy --- Science - Methodology