Explanatory unification

Abstract

Explanations contribute to our understanding of the world by embedding phenomena into general nomic patterns that we recognize in the world. Many of these patterns are, of course, causal ones, but the declaration as "causal" often fails to determine the explanatory power of the pattern. More important is the systematization capacity and the empirical content of the pattern or theory with respect to explanations. We can specify these parameters more precisely within the framework of the structuralist view of theories. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers.