THE FUNCTION OF THEORY AND SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION
As will become apparent, “scientific explanation” is a topic that raises a number of interrelated issues. Some background orientation will be useful before turning to the details of competing models. A presupposition of most recent discussion has been that science sometimes provides explanations (rather than something that falls short of explanation—e.g., “mere description”) and that the task of a “theory” or “model” of scientific explanation is to characterize the structure of such explanations. It is thus assumed that there is (at some suitably abstract and general level of description) a single kind or form of explanation that is “scientific”. In fact, the notion of “scientific between explanations found in science and some forms of explanation found in ordinary, nonscientific contexts. It is further assumed that it is the task of a theory of explanation to capture what is common to both scientific and some ordinary, non-scientific forms of explanation the task