Wesley Salmon provides an introduction to scientific explanation by recounting and analyzing the major developments that have occurred in the field since the publication in 1948 of Carl G. Hempel's and Paul Oppenheim's "Studies in the Logic of Explanation". He begins by considering the rise of the "received view" including accounts of statistical explanation in addition to the deductive-nomological model of the 1948 essay. He analyzes the controversies involving the covering law conception of scientific explanation, the nature of inductive or statisticl explanation, the role of causality in explanation, differing basic conceptions of explanation and the pragmatics of explanation - demonstrating how the "received view" has been seriously undermined, and has given way to its successors. After delineating these developments and transformations, the volume concludes with a review of current work central to this fundamental area in the philosophy of science.

This collection of essays reexamines the origins of logical empiricism and offers fresh insights into its relationship to contemporary philosophy of science.

Product Description: A reprint of the Bobbs-Merrill edition of 1970.These essays lead the reader through the land of the wonderful shrinking genie to the warehouse where the infinity machines are kept. By careful examination of a lamp that is switched on and off infinitely many times, or the workings of a machine that prints out an infinite decimal expansion of pi, we begin to understand how it is possible for Achilles to overtake the tortoise...read more

Product Description: For over two decades Wesley Salmon has helped to shape the course of debate in philosophy of science. He is a major contributor to the philosophical discussion of problems associated with causality and the author of two influential books on scientific explanation...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: The philosophical theory of scientific explanation proposed here involves a radically new treatment of causality that accords with the pervasively statistical character of contemporary science. Wesley C. Salmon describes three fundamental conceptions of scientific explanation--the epistemic, modal, and ontic...read more

Reviews the scope, nature, and applications of the philosophical discipline, focusing on methods for distinguishing between valid and fallacious arguments and inferences

Product Description: Space, Time, and Motion: A Philosophical Introduction [paperback] Salmon, Wesley C. [Nov 01, 1980] … 0816610045

Product Description: According to modern physics, many objectively improbable events actually occur, such as the spontaneous disintegration of radioactive atoms. Because of high levels of improbability, scientists are often at a loss to explain such phenomena...read more

Product Description: Not since Ernest Nagel’s 1939 monograph on the theory of probability has there been a comprehensive elementary survey of the philosophical problems of probablity and induction.  This is an authoritative and up-to-date treatment of the subject, and yet it is relatively brief and nontechnical...read more