Summary
In 1997, five decades after the publication of the landmark Hempel-Oppenheim article “Studies in the Logic of Explanation”([1948], 1970) Wesley Salmon published Causality and Explanation, a book that re-addresses the issue of scientific explanation. He provided an overview of the basic approaches to scientific explanation, stressed their weaknesses, and offered novel insights. However, he failed to mention Mary Hesse’s approach to the topic and analyze her standpoint. This essay brings front and center Hesse’s approach to scientific explanation formulated in the 1960s and argues that rereading Hesse’s account one can overcome the criticisms addressed towards another influential theory of explanation that of Bas van Fraassen’s. Furthermore, it could bring the traditional philosophy of science into a fruitful conversation with science and technology studies and gender studies in science, technology and medicine.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Baltas, A.: 2004, ‘On the Grammatical Aspects of Radical Scientific Discovery’, Philosophia Scientiae 8(1), 169–201.
Baltas, A., Machamer, P. and Pera, M.: 2000, Scientific Controversies: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives, Oxford University Press, New York.
Black, M.: 1962, Models and Metaphors: Studies in Language and Philosophy, Cornell University Press, New York.
Black, M.: 1993, ‘More About Metaphor’, in A. Ortony (ed.), Metaphor and Thought, Cambridge University Press, New York.
Downey, G., Dumit, J., Williams, S.: 1995, ‘Cyborg Anthropology’, Cultural Anthropology 10(2), 264–269.
Downey, G. and Rogers, J.: 1995, ‘On the Politics of Theorizing in a Postmodern Academy’, American Anthropologist 97(2), 269–281.
Galison, P.: 1997, Image and Logic, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Haraway, D.: 1991, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Routledge, New York.
Hesse, M.: 1963, ‘A New Look at Scientific Explanation’, in Rev. Met., xvii, pp. 98–108.
Hesse, M.: 1953, ‘Models in Physics’, B.J.P.S. 4, 198–214.
Hesse, M.: 1966, Models and Analogies in Science, University of Notre Dame Press, Indiana.
Hughes, J.: 1993, The Radioactivists: Community, Controversy and the Rise of Nuclear Physics, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Cambridge.
Jordanova, L.: 1989, Sexual Visions: Images of Gender in Science and Medicine Between the Eighteen and Twentieth Centuries, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI.
Keller, E.F.: 1985, Reflections on Gender and Science, Yale University Press, New Haven.
Keller, E.F.: 1995, Refiguring Life: Metaphors of Twentieth-century Biology, Columbia University Press, New York.
Kitcher, P. and Salmon, W.: 1987, ‘van Fraassen on Explanation’, Journal of Philosophy 84, 315–330.
Kitcher, P.: 1989, Scientific Explanation, Vol. 13, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Lakoff, G.: 1987. Women, Fire, and Other Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind, Chicago University Press, Chicago.
Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M.: 1980, Metaphors We Live By, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Lederman, M. and Bartsch, I.: 2001, The Gender and Science Reader, Routledge, New York.
Longino, H.: 1990, Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Martin, E.: 1996, ‘The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male–Female Roles’, in B. Laslett, S. Kohlestedt, et al. (eds.), Gender and Scientific Authority, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Merchant, C.: 1980, The Death of Nature, Harper, San Francisco.
Ortony, A.: 1993, Metaphor and Thought, Cambridge University Press, New York.
Rentetzi, M.: 2003, Gender, Politics and Radioactivity Research in Vienna, 1910–1938, Ph.D. Thesis, Virginia Tech.
Rentetzi, M.: 2005, ‘From Cambridge to Vienna: The Scintillation Counter in Female Hands’, Nuncius: Annali di Storia della Scienza (in press).
Rentetzi, M.: 2004, ‘Gender, Politics, and Radioactivity Research in Interwar Vienna: The Case of the Institute for Radium Research’, Isis 95, 359–393.
Rolin, K.: 1999, ‘Can Gender Ideologies Influence the Practice of the Physical Sciences?’, Perspectives on Science 7(4), 510–533.
Salmon, W.: 1977, ‘A Third Dogma of Empiricism’, in R. Butts and J. Hintikka (eds.), Basic Problems in Methodology and Linguistics, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, pp. 149–199.
Salmon, W.: 1997, Causality and Explanation, Oxford University Press, New York.
Salmon, W.: 1984, Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Stuewer, R.: 1985, ‘Artificial Disintegration and the Cambridge-Vienna Controversy’, in P. Achinstein and O. Hannaway (eds.), Observation, Experiment and Hypothesis in Modern Physical Sciences, MIT Press, Cambridge.
van Fraassen, B.: 1980, The Scientific Image, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Rentetzi, M. The Metaphorical Conception of Scientific Explanation: Rereading Mary Hesse. J Gen Philos Sci 36, 377–391 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-006-0091-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-006-0091-2