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Full Idea
Explications be most satisfactory that show how the effect is produced by the more primitive affects of matter (bulk, shape and motion) but are not to be despised that deduce them from more familiar qualities such as heat, weight, fluidity, fermentation.
Gist of Idea
The best explanations get down to primary basics, but others go less deep
Source
Robert Boyle (Certain Physical Essays [1672], II:22), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 23.4
Book Ref
Pasnau,Robert: 'Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671' [OUP 2011], p.530
A Reaction
[Compressed, and continued from Idea 16736] So there is a causal structure, and the best explanations go to the bottom of it, but lesser explanations only go half way down. So a very skimpy explanation ('dormative power') is still an explanation.
Related Idea
Idea 16736 Explanation is generally to deduce it from something better known, which comes in degrees [Boyle]
| 16737 | The best explanations get down to primary basics, but others go less deep [Boyle] |
| 12737 | Nature can be fully explained by final causes alone, or by efficient causes alone [Leibniz] |
| 14873 | If we find a hypothesis that explains many things, we conclude that it explains everything [Nietzsche] |
| 12176 | Science does not aim at ultimate explanations [Popper] |
| 3128 | It's not at all clear that explanation needs to stop anywhere [Rey] |
| 15057 | Ultimate explanations are in 'grounds', which account for other truths, which hold in virtue of the grounding [Fine,K] |
| 16564 | There are four types of bottom-level activities which will explain phenomena [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 14320 | Subatomic particles may terminate explanation, if they lack structure [Mumford] |
| 14337 | Maybe dispositions can replace the 'laws of nature' as the basis of explanation [Mumford] |
| 14343 | To avoid a regress in explanations, ungrounded dispositions will always have to be posited [Mumford] |
| 15011 | If the ultimate explanation is a list of entities, no laws, patterns or mechanisms can be cited [Sider] |
| 14389 | There is nothing wrong with an infinite regress of mechanisms and regularities [Leuridan] |