In pursuing philosophical enquiries in the foundations of physics, I have found myself operating with a concept of explanation which has a quite different logical syntax from the concept which Hempel has explicated. I suspect that the concept of explanation I operate with is not especially idiosyncratic, is not fully captured in the existing philosophical literature (though I am open to correction here), and that it may be the more appropriate concept if we are to consider explanation as the goal of physics. I therefore propose to give here a short account of the structure of this alternative concept of explanation.