Lecture

Explanation in the life and health sciences

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Topics covered

elucidating, explicating, explaining / types of explanation / explaining is not proving / explanatory strategies / molecularists and holists / levels of explanation / the postulate that 'everything can be explained' / 'deducing the real' / causes and laws / predicting is not explaining / explanation reduces the arbitrariness of description / explaining and understanding / 'like father, like son' / causes and conditions / function / explanatory vs. pragmatic clinical trials / ecological or contextual explanation / etiological investigation / 'explaining away' / cascades of equations & enzymatic cascades / explanatory power of a theory / causes and reasons