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Summary Hempel - Scientific Explanation
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Hempel on 'The Function of General Laws in History'
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Carl Hempel - Aspects of Scientific Explanation (collection)The Function of General Laws in History
● General laws etc are vital to historical understanding
● General laws take the form of universal hypotheses, whereby whenever an event of
specific kind C occurs, an event of kind E occurs in a certain spatiotemporal relation (usually
Cause and Effect)
● Laws connect events in patterns of prediction and explanation
● A scientific explanation consists of:
○ a set of statements of some of the conditions of the world - C1, C2 etc
○ a set of universal hypothesis such that:
■ both sets of statements are reasonably well confirmed by
empirical evidence
■ from the two sets the sentence stating the occurrence of
event E can be deduced
● A complete description of an event would include a complete explanation, which would
require all characteristics of the event being described according to universal laws. This is
impossible, in both history (social sciences) and the natural sciences
● The use of universal empirical hypotheses distinguish genuine from pseudo-explanations,
which rely upon metaphor , vague analogies and intuitive ‘plausibility’
● For any scientific explanation, the original conditions, the universal statements and the
relationship between the two can all be checked empirically
● The logical structure of scientific prediction is very similar to that of scientific
explanation:
○ a statement about a future event is derived from
■ statements about known past or present conditions
■ statements of applicable general laws
● It may be said that an explanation is not complete unless it could have functioned as a
prediction
○ However, explanations are rarely stated so completely as to exhibit a
predictive character; often most or many universal generalizations AND
original/determining conditions are omitted entirely
● Historical explanation, as well as explanation in empirical sciences, aims to show that
events were to be expected in the light of certain conditions - rests on assumption of universal
laws
● Explanations offered in history often fail to explicitly state the general regularities they
presuppose, for two possible reasons:
○ The regularities relate to individual psychology, which is supposed to be
familiar to all and hence taken for granted
○ It would be difficult to state the purported regularities in such a way as
they would be consistent with all empirical observation e.g. people tend to migrate to
areas with better living conditions; or explanations in terms of class struggle etc
● We could suggest that the phenomena are of a statistical character, and thus the
generalizations only need to be probabilistic (isn’t this just ignorance of all conditions and all
generalizations?)
● Clearly explanatory analysis of historical events can only offer an explanatory sketch,
which does not admit so readily of an empirical test
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