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Richard David-Rus
Institute of Anthropology Francisc I Rainer, Romanian Academy,
UNESCO Chair, Philosophy Department, University of Bucharest
 Understanding and Explanation
Major goals of scientific knowledge
The ultimate aim of scientific enterprise is to
explain the natural world and phenomena
around us
& this should lead to/induce understanding of
them
- Explanation got the deserved recognition and
attention from the philosophers of science
 Historically speaking
Scientific explanation
– major topic in philosophy of science (English speaking
world XXth - analytic philosophy century)
-dominated the working agenda for few decades
Scientific understanding
– minor subject in philosophy of science - totally
subordinated to the topic of explanation
 Recall the classics
Hempel’s model
Explanation = an argument
Premises: 2 sets of claims
universal generalizations (laws of nature) +
boundary conditions
Conclusion: the explanandum - the event to be
explained
e.g. breaking of the bottle full with water over the
winter-night
understanding – byproduct , subjective aspect of
explanation ..
 the assumptions behind
understanding neglected :
Due to anti-psychologist & anti-pragmatics attitude in
analytic philosophy of science

Explanation - can be capture objective relations to be

found through logical reconstruction

Understanding – belongs to the realm of pragmatics

- is not an object of the logic-philosophical analysis
 The redundant view
The importance of scientific understanding was (implicitly) recognized
Even in the received frame:

mid 70s –M. Friedman

– “redundant view” (in the frame of his unification approach on
explanation)
any analysis of explanation should tell us also about understanding
( how understanding is gained through explanation)

BUT no direct approach on understanding is possible

( it’s not rational to approach understanding without explanation )

Any analysis of understanding is redundant to one of explanation

This setting dominated the debate on explanation
seed for the one of the two dominant positions today
 fin de siècle
• after the great battles of the 70-80s (the time of
major alternative conception to the Hempelian
model)
• in the 90s the explanation subject enter a fatigue
confusion period announcing a kind of resetting
of the subject (beginning of this century
• dropping the grant views of a universal theory of
explanation valid for any sort of explanation
• SciU – emerged as a distinct subject in this new
landscape..
 Nowadays
• 2 opposed positions crystallized (roughly
speaking)
A conservative one – the redundant view -
originated in spirit in Friedman’s position
towards understanding (Khalifa, Strevens)
A one that claims the novelty and irreducibility of
understanding to the explanation topic
(de Regt, Newman, Wilkenfeld …)
 the Redundant View
Khalifa :
• Results could be rendered by the epistemology of
explanatory knowledge
Explanatory Model of Understanding(EMU) :
“Any philosophically relevant ideas about scientific
understanding can be captured by philosophical
ideas about the epistemology of scientific
explanation without loss.”
- tries to prove this by reference to existing accounts
on SciU (Grimm, de Regt)
Another way of attack -understanding without
explanation – against P. Lipton’s thesis
Even if we have it explanation is the ideal !
 the Reduandant View (cont)
M. Strevens
Simple View:
“An individual has scientific understanding of a
phenomenon just in case they grasp a correct
explanation of that phenomenon.”
Circularity? understanding as grasping? No
Grasping – unpacked by appeal to the distinction
understanding-why vs understanding –that&
understanding -with…
 Novelty View
understanding irreducible to explanation (an analysis of
explanation only…
There is an extra item not captured by explanatory
knowledge-
The main characteristic of such approaches – trying to
capture it
H. de Regt:
– understanding implies an skill (beyond what is laid out
in the explanation approaches)
The skill of applying /using theories (in order to build
explanatory models)
 Novelty View
Newman (in reply to Khalifa& Strevens) - ability
beyond semantic one, beyond mere propositional
grasping
i.e. comprehension ability & problem solving ability
(cognitive psychology)

Wilkenfeld&Hellman (in reply to Strevens)

- modeling of emergent properties of complex
systems .
- only grasping the simple rules does not suffice
 My take on the issue
• Sympathetic to NV
Claim – it shows greater potential in argumentation
also
Opens new ways (beyond classical paradigm that
showed their limitation) to investigate on
explanation and understanding
Better covered by the scientific practice (also
facilitates a better contact betw. scientific
knowledge (practice ) and the philosophical &
methodological &logical reflection upon it
(philosophy of science)
 Justification -
Khalifa’s critique on de Regt
– tries to show that skills requirement Is not necessary but if
we admit it it’s trivial
Reference to Hempel’s model:
K accuses dR that it reduces the model to knowledge of
premises &conclusion
Forgets what Hempel says that understanding is given by the
insight into the way explanandum fits into the system of
uniformities” (laws)
Skills can be reduced to propositional knowledge of
inferential links
BUT this means to entirely ignore the distinction betw.
knowledge-how to knowledge-that
 A frame for advancing the inquiry
• Takes models & modeling as reference
(ignored in classical setting)
Advantages:
- A local frame - a better grip on scientific
practice
- supports a dynamic view on it
- Could deliver sharper insights into the
discussed problems
 take an aspect for example
A rich typology of models
• Models include various sorts of
representations
• Non-propositional representation are among
(Bailer-Jones) often playing a major role
• Provide understanding beyond propositional
knowledge
• We hit on the issue of understanding without
explanation
 So
Good chances to get a better resolution on the
discussed issues in a modeling frame
&
The main strategy being:
-to focus on specific types of models
- in specific scientific areas
- and even in particular contexts of inquiry
…
Thank you !