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Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'The History of Animals' and 'Writings from Late Notebooks'

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2 ideas

14. Science / D. Explanation / 1. Explanation / b. Aims of explanation
Explanation is just showing the succession of things ever more clearly [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: Showing the succession of things ever more clearly is what's named 'explanation': no more than that!
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 35[52])
     A reaction: If you lay bare all causal sequences, you may not have explained anything until you have pointed out a pattern in the events. Explanations must partly depend on the interests of the enquirer, so pure catalogues of events won't do.
14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / k. Explanations by essence
Aristotelian explanation by essence may need to draw on knowledge of other essences [Aristotle, by Koslicki]
     Full Idea: From Aristotle's biology we learn that a successful scientific explanation of the necessary (but non-essential) features of one type of phenomenon (e.g. camels) my require appeal to facts about the essences of other types of phenomena (stomachs).
     From: report of Aristotle (The History of Animals [c.344 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - Essence, Necessity and Explanation 13.4