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GENERAL PREFACE

Dov Gabbay, Paul Thagard, and John Woods

Whenever science operates at the cutting edge of what is known, it invariably

runs into philosophical issues about the nature of knowledge and reality. Scientiﬁc

controversies raise such questions as the relation of theory and experiment, the

nature of explanation, and the extent to which science can approximate to the

truth. Within particular sciences, special concerns arise about what exists and

how it can be known, for example in physics about the nature of space and time,

and in psychology about the nature of consciousness. Hence the philosophy of

science is an essential part of the scientiﬁc investigation of the world.

In recent decades, philosophy of science has become an increasingly central

part of philosophy in general. Although there are still philosophers who think

that theories of knowledge and reality can be developed by pure reﬂection, much

current philosophical work ﬁnds it necessary and valuable to take into account

relevant scientiﬁc ﬁndings. For example, the philosophy of mind is now closely

tied to empirical psychology, and political theory often intersects with economics.

Thus philosophy of science provides a valuable bridge between philosophical and

scientiﬁc inquiry.

More and more, the philosophy of science concerns itself not just with general

issues about the nature and validity of science, but especially with particular issues

that arise in speciﬁc sciences. Accordingly, we have organized this Handbook into

many volumes reﬂecting the full range of current research in the philosophy of

science. We invited volume editors who are fully involved in the speciﬁc sciences,

and are delighted that they have solicited contributions by scientiﬁcally-informed

philosophers and (in a few cases) philosophically-informed scientists. The result

is the most comprehensive review ever provided of the philosophy of science.

Here are the volumes in the Handbook:

General Philosophy of Science: Focal Issues, edited by Theo Kuipers.

Philosophy of Physics, edited by John Earman and Jeremy Butterﬁeld.

Philosophy of Biology, edited by Mohan Matthen and Christopher Stephens.

Philosophy of Mathematics, edited by Andrew Irvine.

Philosophy of Logic, edited by Dale Jacquette.

Philosophy of Chemistry and Pharmacology, edited by Andrea Woody and

Robin Hendry.

Dov Gabbay, Paul Thagard, and John Woods

Philosophy of Statistics, edited by Prasanta S. Bandyopadhyay and Malcolm

Forster.

Philosophy of Information, edited by Pieter Adriaans and Johan van Ben-

them.

Philosophy of Technological Sciences, edited by Anthonie Meijers.

Philosophy of Complex Systems, edited by Cliﬀ Hooker and John Collier.

Philosophy of Earth Systems Science, edited by Bryson Brown and Kent

Peacock.

Philosophy of Psychology and Cognitive Science, edited by Paul Thagard.

Philosophy of Economics, edited by Uskali Maki.

Philosophy of Linguistics, edited by Martin Stokhof and Jeroen Groenendijk.

Philosophy of Anthropology and Sociology, edited by Stephen Turner and

Mark Risjord.

Philosophy of Medicine, edited by Fred Giﬀord.

Details about the contents and publishing schedule of the volumes can be found

at http://www.johnwoods.ca/HPS/.

As general editors, we are extremely grateful to the volume editors for arranging

such a distinguished array of contributors and for managing their contributions.

Production of these volumes has been a huge enterprise, and our warmest thanks

go to Jane Spurr and Carol Woods for putting them together. Thanks also to

Andy Deelen and Arjen Sevenster at Elsevier for their support and direction.

INTRODUCTION. EXPLICATION IN

PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

Theo A. F. Kuipers

1 AN IMPORTANT, THOUGH LARGELY IMPLICIT, METHOD IN

PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

Scientists use concepts, principles and intuitions that are partly speciﬁc for their

subject matter, but they also share part of them with colleagues working in diﬀer-

ent ﬁelds. Compare, for example, the chemical notion of the ‘valence’ of an atom

with the notion of ‘conﬁrmation’ of a hypothesis by certain evidence. An impor-

tant task of ‘the philosophy of (the special science of) chemistry’ is the explication

of the concept of ‘valence’. Similarly, an important task of ‘general philosophy

of science’ is the explication of the concept of ‘conﬁrmation’. In both cases it is

evident that this only makes sense if one tries to do justice, as much as possible,

to the actual use of these notions by scientists, without however following this use

slavishly. That is, occasionally a philosopher may have good reasons for suggest-

ing to scientists that they should deviate from a standard use. Frequently, this

amounts to a plea for diﬀerentiation in order to stop debates at cross-purposes

due to the conﬂation of diﬀerent meanings.

What has been said about concepts, also applies to principles and intuitions of

scientists, which may or may not be paradoxical. Compare the subject speciﬁc

‘principle of the conservation of energy’ and the general intuition of ‘diminishing

returns from repeated tests’. Both aren’t crystal clear, they need explication; of

course, beginning with the explication of the concepts involved.

Although the term ‘explication’ is not often used by philosophers, it is clear

that when they discuss the meaning of concepts and propose or report speciﬁc

deﬁnitions, characterizations, models, theories, accounts, conceptions, (rational)

reconstructions or formalizations of them, they are practicing concept explication

in a more or less explicit and rigorous way. Similarly, when philosophers propose

or report speciﬁc analyses, accounts, reconstructions or formalizations of principles

and intuitions, or dissolutions of paradoxes, explication is at stake. Both kinds

of activity belong to the dominant ones among (systematic, constructive, analyt-

ical) philosophers, and not in the least among philosophers of science. However,

explicitly calling these activities ‘explication’ is not very popular, let alone using

the explication terminology in presenting results. There seem to be at least three

reasons for the reluctance to use the word ‘explication’. First, the word itself may

Handbook of the Philosophy of Science: General Philosophy of Science — Focal Issues, vii–xxiii.

Volume editor: Theo Kuipers. General editors: Dov M. Gabbay, Paul Thagard and John Woods.

viii

Theo A. F. Kuipers

be found a bit too aﬀected. Second, making the application of the method explicit

may not only lead to rather cumbersome texts, but also appear to be a dicult

task. Finally, many philosophers do not like to be associated with the logical em-

piricists that introduced ‘(concept) explication’ around 1950 as a technical term

for this philosophical method, viz. Rudolf Carnap and Carl Hempel.

This general volume of the Handbook of the Philosophy of Science deals with

focal issues of a general nature, whereas the special volumes address topics relative

to a speciﬁc discipline. Each volume contains several contributions that illustrate

(largely implicitly, as suggested) the use within philosophy of science of the method

of explication in one form or another. In a sense, it is what is left of the undoubt-

edly more rigorous ‘logical analysis’ with which philosophy of science started in the

ﬁrst half of the 20 th century and which had to give way to the ‘historical approach’

(see Aliseda and Gillies, this volume).

Below I will ﬁrst describe and further articulate the method of explication,

paying particular attention to evaluation reports of proposed explications, to the

principled possibility of progress, and to explication starting with idealization,

followed by successive concretization. Then I will give a survey of the ten chapters

in this volume, with emphasis on the most important concepts and intuitions of

which the explication is discussed.

2 EXPLICATION OF CONCEPTS AND INTUITIONS IN SCIENCE

The method of concept explication

As explained above, most philosophers apply the method of explication only

informally and implicitly. Hence, the reconstruction of this method is itself a

kind of meta-explication. Notably Rudolf Carnap [1950, 1966] and Carl Hempel

[1950/1966; 1952], but also John Kemeny and Paul Oppenheim [1952] have artic-

ulated the method. Here I will freely describe and develop the method in their

spirit. As suggested, it has been and can be applied in various degrees of rigor

and explicitness.

The point of departure of concept explication in general philosophy of science

is an informal, intuitive concept, the explicandum , which is frequently used by

scientists in diﬀerent ﬁelds. The aim is to deﬁne a concept, the explicatum , sat-

isfying three desiderata for concept formation in general and some speciﬁc ones.

The three general desiderata are precision , fruitfulness and simplicity .The speciﬁc

desiderata pertain to the similarity with the informal concept. This similarity is

to be evaluated by two kinds of criteria:

1. The explicatum should apply to evident, undisputed (types of) examples of

the informal concept and it should not apply to evident, undisputed (types

of) non-examples .

2. The explicatum should fulﬁl (other) conditions of adequacy that have been

derived from the informal concept, and occasionally it should violate con-

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