Explanations Styles of Explanation in Science [Hardcover]

Our lives, states of health, relationships, behavior, experiences of the natural world, and the technologies that shape our contemporary existence are subject to a superfluity of competing, multi-faceted and sometimes incompatible explanations. Widespread confusion about the nature of explanation and its scope and limits pervades popular exposition of the natural sciences, popular history and philosophy of science. This fascinating book explores the way explanations work, why they vary between disciplines, periods, and cultures, and whether they have any necessary boundaries. In other words,Explanationsaims to achieve a better understanding of explanation, both within the sciences and the humanities. It features contributions from expert writers from a wide range of disciplines, including science, philosophy, mathematics, and social anthropology.

Preface
List of Contributors
IntroductionJohn Cornwell
1. What Good is an explanation?,Peter Lipton
2. Can science explain everything? Can science explain anything?,Steven Weinberg
3. Explaining the universe,Martin Rees
4. Does physics rule the roost of scientific explanation?,William C. Saslaw
5. Mathematical explanation,John D. Barrow
6. Ponderable matter: explanation in chemistry,Peter Atkins
7. The biology of the future and the future of biology,Steven Rose
8. Teleology: the explanation that bedevils biology,David Hanke
9. What is it not like to be a brain?,Colin McGinn
10. Ontology and scientific explanation,Tian Yu Cao
11. From explanation to interpretation in social anthropology,Jack Goody
12. Passing it on: redescribing scientific explanation,Jon Turney
Index

John Cornwellis an author and journalist, and Director of the Science and Human Dimension PlC¨