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Full Idea
The history of science suggests that most often explanation is reduction to the unfamiliar.
Gist of Idea
Scientific explanation tends to reduce things to the unfamiliar (not the familiar)
Source
J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.11)
Book Ref
'Explanation and Its Limits', ed/tr. Knowles,Dudley [CUP 1990], p.11
A Reaction
Boyle was keen to reduce things to the familiar, but that was early days for science, and some nasty shocks were coming our way. What would Boyle make of quantum non-locality?
Related Ideas
Idea 16736 Explanation is generally to deduce it from something better known, which comes in degrees [Boyle]
Idea 15960 Explanation is deducing a phenomenon from some nature better known to us [Boyle]
| 16619 | We observe qualities, and use 'induction' to refer to the substances lying under them [Gassendi] |
| 15308 | Science is the reduction of diverse forces and powers to a smaller number that explain them [Kant] |
| 22646 | We have a passion for knowing the parts of something, rather than the whole [James] |
| 6552 | You can only explain the qualities of large objects using entities which lack those qualities [Heisenberg] |
| 20653 | Six reduction levels: groups, lives, cells, molecules, atoms, particles [Putnam/Oppenheim, by Watson] |
| 17075 | Scientific explanation tends to reduce things to the unfamiliar (not the familiar) [Smart] |
| 15310 | Solidity comes from the power of repulsion, and shape from the power of attraction [Harré/Madden] |
| 12315 | We can explain by showing constitution, as well as showing causes [Stanford] |
| 17088 | Reducing one science to another is often said to be the perfect explanation [Ruben] |
| 2396 | Reductive explanation is not the be-all and the end-all of explanation [Chalmers] |
| 7060 | One form of explanation is by decomposition [Heil] |
| 15059 | Grounding is an explanation of truth, and needs all the virtues of good explanations [Fine,K] |
| 13926 | Best explanations, especially natural ones, need grounding, notably by persistent objects [Haslanger] |
| 11053 | Explanatory reduction is stronger than ontological reduction [Hanna] |