Abstract
The most common way of studying explanations in philosophy of science and science education is through case studies. Recently these have been supplemented with studies based on empirical methods. This chapter provides an empirical method for collecting and comparing exemplar explanations across scientific disciplines with the aim exposing possible qualitative differences between them. The method is based on the use of science textbooks as sources of explanations. I discuss a number of possible strategies for identifying explanations in these sources, and specify a set of reliable linguistic indicators that can be used for this purpose. A pilot study is presented to illustrate the method and its limitations.
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Notes
- 1.
Woody actually calls her method “quasi-empirical” (2004a, p. 13). This seems reasonable given that her empirical material is limited to just one textbook. However there is nothing semi-empirical about the methodology employed in the study.
- 2.
Textbooks are not only particularly suited for studies of explanations to students, they are also more generally good sources of explanations. Indeed, anyone interested in widely accepted explanations should be interested in textbooks, since the explanations found in scientific articles are not necessarily uncontroversial. Furthermore textbooks are useful for a study (like Woody’s) that aims to answer why explanations are so important in scientific practice, because textbook explanations can provide clues as to why and how explanations are valuable to practitioners since one of the aims of a textbook is to show future practitioners how to use the tools of the discipline (Woody 2004a, p. 18).
- 3.
See Chambliss (2001) for an example of a study of explanations based on assumptions about understanding.
- 4.
A different kind of objection to this approach might also be raised: Even if it can be safely assumed that any good explanation will increase the reader’s understanding of the explanandum, this does not mean that a good explanation is necessary for an increase in understanding. Thus we will be making the fallacy of affirming the consequent if we claim to have found explanations by identifying passages that increases the readers understanding. Lipton (2009) has explored other sources of understanding (for instance thought experiments), and this potential objection could be overcome by simply assuming that Lipton’s list of sources of understanding is exhaustive. If a textbook passage increases the readers understanding and does not belong to one of the other sources of understanding on Lipton’s list, it can safely be assumed that an explanation has been found.
- 5.
Rowan (1988) has also discussed the advantages and challenges related to the study of explanations through assumptions about either their function or their structure. She argues that if the purpose of the study is to improve teaching, then assumptions about the function of explanations is preferable, but unfortunately she does not give us any hints as to how the practical problems associated with this approach might be overcome.
- 6.
Bearing in mind the possible objection raised in note 4 about the possibility of other sources of understanding.
- 7.
The book was recommended to me by a lecturer in physical chemistry as the most rigorous presentation of chemical thermodynamics that he knew of.
- 8.
The final instance also appears in the caption to a picture (Young and Freedman 2010, p. 564).
- 9.
Furthermore, the physical format of the two books is quite different, so the number of words on a page with no equations or figures is about 50 % higher in University Physics than in Chemical Thermodynamics. Thus even if the key words were equally frequent in the two texts I would still have identified a more instances in University Physics than in Chemical Thermodynamics. One should thus be careful not to read too much into the absolute differences in the number of instances of any of the individual keywords between the two texts.
- 10.
This makes it more abundant than the words ‘explain’ and ‘understand’ which appear 821 and 500 times respectively, but less abundant that the word ‘because’ which appears 1009 times. The word ‘how’ occurs 2140 times but as mentioned the majority of these appear in how-much-questions.
- 11.
This type of questions is common in more recent introductory textbooks.
- 12.
Assuming that there is data to be found. It may be that the reason why explanation seeking questions are so hard to find in more advanced textbooks is because they are not posed, but given the commonness of explanation seeking questions in everyday discourse and the consensus among philosophers and scientists that explanations are important in science I find that highly unlikely.
- 13.
- 14.
An alternative approach would be to interview practicing scientists and ask them what characterizes good explanations for students or what they think are the main differences between the explanations from their discipline and explanations from other disciplines. How useful such an approach would be is an empirical question, and I am not aware that it has ever been attempted.
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Acknowledgements
This chapter benefitted from critical feedback from Hanne Andersen, Douglas Allchin and an anonymous reviewer. Furthermore it benefitted from insights and comments provided by the entire philosophy of contemporary science in practice group at Aarhus University. The group is supported by the Danish Council for Independent Research|Humanities.
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Goddiksen, M. (2015). An Empirical Method for the Study of Exemplar Explanations. In: Wagenknecht, S., Nersessian, N., Andersen, H. (eds) Empirical Philosophy of Science. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 21. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18600-9_6
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