?Explain? in the Natural Sciences: Are Our Criteria Biased?
| Scientific Paper | |
|---|---|
| Title | "Explain" in the Natural Sciences: Are Our Criteria Biased? |
| Author(s) | [[]] |
| Keywords | explanation, epistemology, logic, predictive power, economy, mechanism, everyday experience, bias |
| Published | 1989 |
| Journal | Physics Essays |
| Volume | 2 |
| Number | 2 |
| Pages | 191-196 |
Abstract
Six dimensions of criteria for what we call an explanation in the natural sciences are detailed. It is stressed that these dimensions form an abstract vector space, and hence each dimension has to be satisfied for an explanation to be acceptable. It is then investigated whether the criteria in these six dimensions are biased due to their being based on direct, human, everyday experience which pertains only to a very tiny domain of nature, namely the one directly perceivable with human senses. Such bias is indeed found in most of the dimensions. As a consequence, the possibility is raised that unless we alter our criteria for "explanation," we may not find such explanations for phenomena that are in domains of nature far removed from direct human perception.