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Some Remarks on the Logic of Explanation in the Social Sciences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Extract

If one were to write a history of the philosophy of science in the spirit of T. S. Kuhn, one would have to consider the model of scientific explanation which Popper proposed and Hempel and Oppenheim developed to be one of the great paradigms of contemporary analytical philosophy of science. This analogue to the historically important paradigms of the individual sciences seems to me to be justifiable for the following reasons: first, the Hempel—Oppenheim model (or HO-model, as I shall call it) claims universal methodological validity; second, discussions on the problem of explanation have centred on this model for some time; third, the recent cognitive progress in this field has been largely the result of the interrelation between criticism of this model on the one hand and its improvement and explication on the other hand; and lastly, this model stands for a particular comprehension of the problems and possibilities of science, a concept of quite important practical consequence.

Type
Papers
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1970

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References

page 64 note 1 Popper, Karl R., Logik der Forschung (Vienna, 1935)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hempel, Carl G. and Oppenheim, Paul, ‘The Logic of Explanation’, Philosophy and Science, xv (1948)Google Scholar, reprinted in Feigl, H. and Brodbeck, May (eds), Readings in the Philosophy of Science (New York, 1953)Google Scholar. This is to mention only the two important works, which stood at the beginning of an extensive discussion.

page 65 note 1 Sellars, W., ‘Counterfactuals, Dispositions and the Causal Modalities’, in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 11 (Minneapolis, 1958).Google Scholar

page 65 note 2 Goodman, N., ‘The Problem of Counterfactual Conditionals’, in Linsky, L. (ed.), Semantics and the Philosophy of Language (Urbana, Ill., 1952)Google Scholar

page 69 note 1 Winch, P., The Idea of a Social Science (London, 1958)Google Scholar

page 70 note 1 Cf. Danto, A. G., Analytical Philosophy of History (Cambridge, 1965) p.221.Google Scholar

page 72 note 1 Dray, W., Laws and Explanation in History (Oxford, 1957) pp. 128–42.Google Scholar

page 73 note 1 Ibid., p. 124.

page 73 note 2 Cf. ibid., p. 132.

page 73 note 3 Ibid., p. 132.

page 75 note 1 Cf. Stegmüller, W., Wissenschaftliche Erklarüng und Begr¨ndung (Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, 1969) p. 396.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 75 note 2 Cf. ibid., pp. 385 ff.

page 77 note 1 Cf. Habermas, J., ‘Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften’, Philosophische Rundschau, Beiheft 5 (Tübingen, 1967)Google Scholar; Habermas, likewise, Erkenntnis und Interesse (Frankfurt, 1968)Google Scholar Kap. iii H.; Giegel, J., Die Logik der seelischen Ereignisse (Frankfurt, 1969).Google Scholar

page 79 note 1 Habermas, J., Technik und Wissenschaft als Ideologie (Frankfurt, 1969).Google Scholar

page 80 note 1 Habermas, J., ‘Einführende Bemerkungen zu einer Theorie der Kommunikativen Kompetkuz’Google Scholar, unpubl., p. 7. Cf. Habermas, , ‘Der Universalitätsauspruch der Hermeneutik’, in Hermeneutik und Dialektik, 1 (Tübingen, 1970).Google Scholar