Statistical explanation
pp. 157-187
in: Guttorm Fløistad (ed), La philosophie contemporaine / Contemporary philosophy, Berlin, Springer, 1982Abstract
Since the 1940s, most studies in scientific explanation have been direct or indirect comments on Carl G. HempePs article "The Function of General Laws in History" (1942) and on Hempel's and Paul Oppenheim's joint article "Studies in the Logic of Explanation" (1948). (See [33] and [44].) These works present in a clear and explicit form the so-called subsumption theory of explanation: a particular fact or event is explained "by subsuming it under general laws, i.e., by showing that it occurred in accordance with those laws, in virtue of the realization of certain specified antecedent conditions", whereas "the explanation of a general regularity consists in subsuming it under another, more comprehensive regularity, under a more general law" ([44], p. 135). Following the suggestion of William Dray, this account of explanation is often called the covering-law model 1.
