The Nature of Explanation in Social Sciences [1 ed.] 1032522410, 9781032522418

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THE NATURE OF EXPLANATION IN SOCIAL SCIENCES

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the nature of explanations as given in both natural and social sciences. It discusses models of explanation adopted in natural and social sciences. The author also elaborates upon naturalistic and anti-naturalistic views and other types of explanations such as functional, purposive, etc. in social sciences. The volume elaborates upon themes like bridge principle; functional explanation; purposive explanation; teleological explanation; prediction; methodological individualism; methodological collectivism; illocutionary redescription; principle of action; and dispositional explanations to understand whether the explanations given in the realm of social sciences are the same or different from the explanations that are given in the field of natural sciences. This introductory book is a must read for students and scholars of philosophy of science, logic, science and technology studies, social sciences and philosophy in general. Rajesh Ranjan Tiwari is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Tilka Manjhi Bhagalpur University, Bhagalpur, India. He has specialised in the field of Philosophy of Science and Symbolic Logic. His areas of interest are Philosophy of Science, Logic, Applied Ethics and Gandhian Philosophy. He has been a teacher of Philosophy for about 35 years. He has published many research papers in some of the important Indian journals and authored different chapters in some of the important books related to Philosophy in India.

The Nature of Explanation in Social Sciences Rajesh Ranjan Tiwari

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Rajesh Ranjan Tiwari The right of Rajesh Ranjan Tiwari to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-52241-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-52242-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-40571-9 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003405719 Typeset in Sabon by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)

This book is affectionately dedicated to my mother and father to whom I owe everything of my life.

Contents

Foreword Preface

viii ix

Introduction 1 1 Nature of Explanation

5

2 Explanation in Natural Sciences

25

3 Explanation in Social Sciences: The Two Approaches

46

4 Explanation in Social Sciences: The Various Forms

64

5 Explanation and Prediction

84

6 Assessment and Conclusion

94

Bibliography Index

113 115

Foreword

This book is a treatise on Philosophy of Science. The book deserves credit and the author a big applause, because, although philosophy of science is now not a new subject, still teaching and research on it are very rare in India. Although the subject has been very popular among the students and teachers of philosophy in the universities of Western countries, very few universities in India are providing facilities for teaching and research in the subject. In this situation, if a student of philosophy of Tilka Manjhi Bhagalpur University, Bhagalpur (Bihar), offers philosophy of science as his subject of special study at the postgraduate stage, then chooses a subject related to the branch for his further study and research and finally presents it in the form of a book, it is really a praiseworthy effort. I have every hope that this book by Professor R.R. Tiwari will generate interest among the students and teachers of philosophy in India in the subject philosophy of science and motivate them to take up study and research in the subject, so that it may be popularised. And this popularisation of the subject is very necessary, to my mind, in this age of science. Philosophy must discard, at least to some extent, its traditional face, so that it may move forward successfully with the advancements and changes in the world seen every day. The book is written in a simple and clear language. The materials offered for study are organised and systematised in a very good manner. They will, I am sure, add to the work and value of the book and make it more worth receiving not only for the students and teachers of philosophy but also for the interested general readers. K.N. Tiwari Professor and former Head P.G. Department of Philosophy Tilka Manjhi Bhagalpur University, Bhagalpur

Preface

In our daily life we so often face situations which seek explanations. But the explanations given in our daily life are different from the explanations given in the field of science. Even in science, the explanations given in natural sciences are not always taken in their nature and scope exactly similar to those given in social sciences. In the present work, I have tried to ascertain the nature of the explanations given in the field of social sciences. In completing the work, I had to undergo tremendous difficulties due to the rare availability of materials. Of course, there is no dearth of work on the topic in the Western world, but in India, such work still seems to be rare. Most of the libraries hardly contain relevant materials either in the form of books or in the form of journals. So, in undertaking the work to write a book on the present topic, in a way I undertook a difficult task. However, this difficult task was made easy to me to a great extent by the scholarly guidance of my loving father Dr K.N. Tiwari, Prof. and former Head, P.G. Department of Philosophy, Tilka Manjhi Bhagalpur University, Bhagalpur. I am really unable to find words to express my gratefulness to him. I am very much thankful to the authorities connected with the library of the I.C.P.R., Lucknow, for allowing me to use their library. It is really here that I could get the lion’s share of the materials for my present work. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the members of the publishing team of Routledge for their tireless effort in bringing out this book in this attractive format. In the end, I must thank all those who have helped me in one way or the other in the completion of my present work.

Introduction

The modern age is an age of science. Although various claims from various sides are made regarding the beginning of science, and sometimes in India it is said that the seeds of science can be found long ago, such as in the period of the Vedas, it can be said without any dispute that modern science began from the West, in some of the striking visions of Newton – specifically in his three laws of motion. Technology is the practical child of science, as it is this which has enhanced the prestige of science by offering various practical and visual achievements. Science by itself, however, is a systematic branch of knowledge which unfolds the layers of nature in its different aspects or branches. Science provides us with deep knowledge about nature by discovering general laws and theories which unveil the secrets of nature in its different branches, such as dead matter or different chemical reactions or in the zoological and botanical sectors, as well as in the spheres of astronomy and astrology. All this is done to explain certain phenomena which usually seem to happen in nature. Explaining, in general, means finding out the cause or causes of some event which make the particular event occur. In explaining events, science also predicts because as we shall see ahead, explanation and prediction are the two sides of the same coin. With Newton and some other great scientists like Galileo, science began growing in the West at a tremendous speed, and there was, as a matter of fact, what may be called scientific revolution. But side by side with science, another branch of knowledge, known as philosophy of science, began to grow. The term philosophy of ­science did not have a definite connotation for quite some time, but what philosophy of science had been at the time of Kant, for example, and what it is now, is completely different. In the light of Kant’s principle about the formation of the world that ‘Understanding maketh nature out of the materials it does not make,’ there arose a philosophical discussion about the objectivity of the world. Also, Kant raised the problem of the real nature of the statements of physics. Kant called them synthetic a priori which, in general, means that the judgements of physics contain deeper truth about the nature of the world and still were a priori, that is, universal and necessary. This was for others a self-contradictory statement because judgements about the world were causal in nature, and they could not be universal and necessary at the DOI: 10.4324/9781003405719-1

2 Introduction same time. The laws of induction clearly indicate that the single exception of the truth of such a judgement could make it false. But with the advent of the philosophy of logical positivism and the philosophy of language analysis, philosophy of science assumed a definite meaning. With the rise of various philosophies such as philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of law, philosophy of history and so on, philosophy of science now began to mean definitely a branch of knowledge where the concepts or statements of science were sharply analysed. The philosophers of science tried to discover and understand the logic and the methodology behind the formation of natural laws and theories, as well as the act of explanation and prediction. The role of the philosophers of science now became the role of an onlooker who observed minutely the working of a scientist in the artificial laboratory constructed by him, as well as in the open laboratory of nature, where he observed phenomena, physical, astronomical, biological etc. in a reserved and specially directed way. This kind of division of act between the scientist and the philosophers of science made science a first-order activity and the philosophy of science a second-order activity. But the expressions ‘first-order’ and ‘second-order’ must not mislead and create an impression that science is a superior academic activity and philosophy of science is an inferior one. These are two different branches of knowledge and are equally important because science gets its material of study directly from nature and philosophy of science gets its material of study from science itself. The former is called the first-order activity and the latter is called second-order activity. But both studies are equal and important in their own ways, and they try to help each other. The study of nature for discovering laws and theories related to the working of nature and the study of how these natural laws and theories are formed, and how the main purpose of scientific study, that is, the explanation of an unusual event is made, are both in their own ways equally important studies. We have so far talked as if science is the study of nature and natural phenomena only. For many days, the actual position was really this. But seeing the tremendous progress made in natural science and practical uses thereof, scholars related to such subjects as psychology, sociology, political science, economics and history soon realised the importance of making these subjects also of the nature of exact sciences like those of the natural ones. Possibilities were being sought whether like natural sciences, general laws and theories could be made in these branches also and phenomena and events occurring in human realm, in the social, political or economic realms, could be satisfactorily explained. These subjects began to be called social sciences and serious attempts were started being made to make them exact sciences like the natural ones. But there was one great difficulty in the case of the so-called social sciences in comparison to the natural sciences. The objects with which the natural sciences dealt were, by and large, dead and non-living objects, the behaviour of which were understood to be governed by causal or deterministic laws.

Introduction  3 The case was different in social sciences. Social sciences have to deal with the behaviour of human beings who were not only living beings but also conscious and even self-conscious beings. It was impossible to study their behaviour based on the deterministic pattern of the natural objects. Human beings are free beings and they can make and change their decision in a completely different way. In such a condition, it is obviously very difficult to bind their behaviours, decisions etc. under some fixed universal laws and theories on the basis of which these individual behaviours could be explained and predicted, although such kind of difficulty began to be felt in the natural sciences also by the subsequent discovery of the quantum theory regarding the random movement of particles of natural objects or events. The causal or deterministic laws failed in this field also, and it was not easy to make such universal laws and theories, which could explain individual events with the help of the covering law model in the fashion of deductive-nomological explanation, for example. But the problem was sought to be resolved to a great extent with the help of the probabilistic laws. But the matter was not so easy in the case of so-called social science. It was not easy to deal with the very nature of the subjects with whose behaviour social sciences had to deal with. These subjects were human beings who had freedom of will and who could make choices and change them at any time and in any manner. This could first obstruct the social scientist from framing the covering laws of the nature of general laws and theories and then explaining individual human behaviour with the help of these covering laws or the deductive-nomological model. This raised serious problems for explaining phenomena in social sciences, and it is this problem that the present book mainly deals with. In a nutshell, the problem is to ascertain in exact terms the nature of explanation made in social sciences. We have said at the outset that the chief aim of science, whether natural or social, is to explain individual phenomena, either of the natural realm or of the human or social realm. Because natural science developed first and the social sciences followed, it was natural that the model of explanation adopted in natural science was attempted to be adopted in social sciences also. For example, if someone had to explain why a ball thrown high in air ultimately fell to the ground, he adopted the following type of explanation known as covering law model: Every object thrown higher from the ground ultimately falls to the ground. The ball thrown higher was a material object. Therefore, it ultimately fell to the ground. Similarly, in social sciences, if someone had to explain why the price of onion is rising high every day, he will try to explain it in the following manner: If the demand of any commodity rises in the market and its supply decreases, the price naturally rises high.

4 Introduction In the case of onions this is actually the condition in the market. Therefore, the price of the onion is daily rising high. Both the explanations are known to be covering law model explanations and both of them are held valid by at least a large group of philosophers of science, generally known as the naturalists. But another group of philosophers of science known as non-naturalists, such as William Dray, Peter Winch etc., could not accept that the explanation was as valid in the case of social phenomena made above, as it was valid in case of the natural phenomena as made above. There are other models of explanation such as functional explanation, purposive or teleological explanation etc. which are more appropriate in case of events in social sciences. Thus, there arises a sharp controversy between the naturalists and non-naturalists on the issue of the nature of explanation. It is with the nature and kind of problems highlighted above that the present book tries to deal with. For dealing with the problem in as intensive a manner as could be possible, we have divided our present work into six chapters, which in brief deal with the problem in the form of the following details. Chapter 1 deals with the nature of explanation in general and its distinction from scientific explanation. Chapter 2 deals with the models of explanation adopted in natural sciences generally in the form of deductive-nomological explanation and probabilistic explanation. Chapter 3 deals with the problem of the nature of explanation in social sciences, which gives rise to two approaches – naturalistic and anti-naturalistic. Chapter 4 deals with various types of explanations such as functional, purposive etc. which, according to anti-naturalists, are most suitable for social sciences. Chapter 5 deals with the nature of prediction, which we have said at the outset, is another side of the same coin, of which explanation is the first side. The relationship between the two will be attempted to be understood in detail in this chapter. Finally, in Chapter 6, or the final chapter, we have tried to make a critical assessment of all reviews of explanation found suitable for social sciences. On the basis of this critical assessment, we have finally tried to reach a conclusion in this respect, which we never claim to be really final. Controversies on the point of the nature of explanation in social sciences are still going on among philosophers of science and no final conclusion can be made at this point of time.

1 Nature of Explanation

Introductory The chief impetus for the rise and development of modern science has come from an urge to explain the phenomena of nature. Some of the curious phenomena have, of course, vexed people for many days. But several others, which the scientists felt the need to be explained, were quite obvious and common phenomena like earthquakes, cyclones, rain, the pressure of air etc. It is the virtue of real scientists who feel restive unless they find an explanation even for a phenomenon which is obvious to a common man. As Prof. Whitehead very remarkably says, ‘It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.’1 Anyway, explaining phenomena has been the chief concern of scientists. Our problem here is to analyse and discuss what this explanation is, that is, what actually a scientist does when he explains a phenomenon. At the beginning of its development, what went in the name of science was mostly confined to what is known as natural science. But in course of time, the scope of the subject has increased and it includes within it what goes by the name of social science also. Our concern here is mainly with the nature of the type of explanation that a social scientist gives in course of his analysis and study of the social phenomena. But a natural question may arise here: What makes a philosopher or a student of philosophy creep into the realm of science? It is the scientist, and not anybody else, who knows best what goes on in science. It is he who explains phenomena and knows what he does while explaining them. How is an outsider, a philosopher, then concerned with the problem of explanation as given in sciences? Really speaking, questions of this type can be answered only by bringing about the actual distinction as well as the relation between science and philosophy of science. What we are going to do here by way of trying to understand the nature of explanation as used in sciences, especially in social sciences, along with many other activities, comes under a subject which is known as philosophy of science. So naturally, questions of the above type can only be answered if we try to understand to some extent what is the business of philosophy of science or, in other words, what type of questions actually are that a philosopher or a student of philosophy raises and answers DOI: 10.4324/9781003405719-2

6  Nature of Explanation with regard to what is going on in the realm of science. Therefore, before entering into our proper subject matter regarding the nature of explanation as used in sciences, we would like to give here a brief account of the nature of philosophy of science and its distinction and relation with science itself. As a matter of fact, ‘philosophy of science’ is not a new term. Philosophy of science has been in use since many days past. But the meaning has not been always clear and precise. Philosophical discussions on such problems as whether results of science are truly objective, whether the universal propositions established by science are really universal, on what presuppositions science actually proceeds on its mission of establishing general propositions and explaining phenomena with the help of them etc. are some of the problems with which philosophers of science have been engaged in the past also. For example, when Kant raised the question whether there are synthetic a priori propositions in physics, it was really a question related to philosophy of science. Kant answered the question in the affirmative. But Hume before him and, as a matter of fact, all the empirical philosophers before and after him questioned the real universal nature of scientific propositions. They argued that scientific propositions are all factual and no factual propositions are really universal. Such propositions can be available only in logic and mathematics. But then these propositions are not factual and empirical. So, these and other similar discussions about the nature of science and its propositions have always been going on, and there is nothing other than what may be called philosophy of science. But after the rise and development of logical positivism and the philosophy of linguistic analysis, the entire nature of philosophical discussions in any branch radically changed. In place of discussing factual problems of science or any other branch like religion, law, ethics etc. conceptual or linguistic problems of the discipline and the logical method involved in it were taken to be the real subject for discussion. Now in light of this development philosophy of science was given a precise meaning as well as a precise area of the discussion of various problems. As a matter of fact, various branches of philosophy, such as ‘Philosophy of Mathematics’, ‘Philosophy of Law’, ‘Philosophy of History’, ‘Philosophy of Education’ and several other such ‘Philosophies-of’ have come about. Philosophy of science is a link in this chain. Broadly speaking, all these ‘Philosophies-of’, have been mainly concerned with the analysis of the concepts and prepositions employed in their respective branches so as to have a clearer understanding of their meaning and nature. Besides, they have been engaged in analysing and elucidating the type of method or reasoning that is employed in their respective branches. This may give us a rough idea of what philosophy of science may be like. It is a branch of study where the concepts and judgements used in sciences are analysed with a view to having a clearer understanding of their meaning and nature. Moreover, it undertakes a study of the method employed in the sciences as well as the nature of the type of reasoning that the scientist employs to arrive at his conclusions. In a way, it may be said about all these

Nature of Explanation  7 different ‘Philosophies-of’, including the philosophy of science, that they represent a second-order activity in the sense that their basic subject matter has its rest in something beyond and outside them. For example, for the Philosophy of Law, it is the law from where the subject matter comes in. Similarly, in philosophy of science, the basic subject matter is derived from what goes on in different sciences. The different sciences therefore may be regarded as constituting a ‘first-order activity’ in relation to which philosophy of science is a ‘second-order activity’. But we will have to go into further details for having a clearer understanding of this distinction between first-order activity and second-order activity. Let us imagine a situation in which somebody is doing something somewhere, while someone else is looking at him from the outside as to what he is doing. Naturally, the activity of the first man will be regarded as a first-order activity and the activity of the onlooker will be regarded as a second-order activity, because it is only when the former starts doing something that the activity of the latter has any occasion to begin. A scientist carries out a first-order activity in as much as he studies facts by means of ordinary observation or by experiments carried out in a controlled situation in some laboratory. In doing all these he discovers laws and theories and tries to explain phenomena in the light of or with the help of them. A philosopher of science plays the role of an onlooker because he by himself does not study facts by observing them or by making laboratory experiments with regard to them. What he does is that he looks on from a distant place what the scientist is doing in his laboratory or in the vast world open outside and tries to understand them. In other words, it can be said that the type of study that the scientist is trying to make is a factual study. He tries to accumulate further information about facts by going into the analysis of them with the help of observational or experimental methods. By discovering laws or theories regarding different facts and events going on in the world, the scientist tries to enhance our knowledge about them by making new discoveries. The philosopher on the other hand adds nothing to our knowledge about facts. In fact, his study is not a factual study at all. His study is rather what may be called a conceptual study. He does not observe facts but observes the scientists’ observation of facts. In studying facts and making discoveries, the scientist definitely adopts a method. The scientist himself is not concerned about the method he adopts, or in other words, he does never consciously bother about the nature of the procedure he is adopting for studying his facts. But a philosopher’s concern is actually these things about which the scientist himself least bothers. The philosopher’s concern is the actual method that the scientist adopts in studying facts. Then again, a scientist while observing and experimenting with facts and events always tries to bind them under certain laws and theories with the help of which individual events might be explained. A philosopher’s concern here is as to how the scientist discovers laws, how he formulates his theories and how with their help he explains phenomena. Then again, what is the nature of the laws and theories

8  Nature of Explanation that the scientist formulates and what does he actually do by way of explaining phenomena? In other words, what is the explanation and how are scientific explanations actually given? These are some of the problems which a philosopher of science bothers for answering. It can be clearly seen in this way that a scientist’s activity is a first-order activity, wherein the source of the activities of a philosopher of science lies. The activity of the latter therefore is regarded as a second-order activity. The same thing may be expressed in a somewhat different terminology by saying that while science is a factual study, philosophy of science is a conceptual study. Going into further details of the job that the philosopher of science performs with regard to the activities going on in different sciences, we may point out that broadly speaking there are two different kinds of activities, of course not unrelated together, that a philosopher of science performs with regard to science. The first may be characterised as the methodology of science and the second activity may be characterised as meta-science. Thus, meta-science and methodology of science are two broad spheres of study that a philosopher of science is supposed to make. Under the methodology of science, we can specially include the study of the nature of the actual method that a scientist adopts in discovering laws and theories and then making explanation of phenomena with reference to them. The other sphere of study known as meta-science is chiefly concerned with the analysis and clarification of the meaning and implications of various concepts that a scientist uses. Sometimes, the scientist uses terms and concepts taken from our ordinary vocabulary, but even these are given definite meanings by him. We know quite well that our ordinary language and the terms used therein are imprecise and vague. But a scientist cannot work with such vague and imprecise concepts. He, therefore, gives definite and precise meanings to the concepts he uses. But more often a scientist has to coin new concepts to deal with the new discoveries he makes and he has to give fresh meaning to his concepts. A philosopher’s job is to see how meaning is given to these and other concepts by the scientist and how the meanings of the different concepts are interrelated. By doing all these, the philosopher of science adds to the clarification of scientific concepts. It is this kind of job of the philosopher of science which he performs, by way of elucidating the meanings of the various scientific concepts, that is known as meta-science. On the basis of the above analysis, we can make a distinction between the study which goes within a science and the study which is made about the science. The first is science; the second is philosophy of science. In other words, we can say that while a scientific study is a study about facts, a philosophical study of science is a study about science. The distinction between the two can be made further clear by having a look over the types of questions that a scientist and a philosopher of science try to raise and answer. ‘What is the acceleration of a freely falling body near the earth’s surface’, ‘what is the atomic weight of carbon’, ‘why does a piece of iron rust when exposed to air and water’, ‘why do commodities sometimes sell cheaper and

Nature of Explanation  9 sometimes dearer’, ‘why do certain people sometimes migrate from one place to another’, etc. are all typical scientific questions that a scientist so often bothers about and tries to answer. These are all factual questions which can be answered only by going through an empirical study of facts, whether natural or social. But on the other hand, questions like, ‘what is explanation’, ‘what makes an explanation scientifically adequate’, ‘what is meant by a law in science’, ‘how does a law differ from a theory’, ‘what is the method that a scientist employs in establishing laws’, ‘what is probability’, ‘how is the probability of a scientific conclusion ascertained’, ‘what is an electron’, ‘what is alienation’, etc. are all typical philosophical questions about sciences, whether natural or social. Even broader questions regarding the very nature or scope of the different sciences may be raised and discussed by the philosopher of science. For example, questions like ‘how is social science related to natural science’, ‘is the method of explanation adopted in social science the same as the one adopted in natural sciences’, ‘is social science a science at all’, are all philosophical questions about science which have very importantly absorbed the attention of the philosophers. Not only these, a philosopher of science may also be concerned about various questions related to science as a whole. For example, a question that so often bothers philosophers of science is whether there can be a science which is value-free. This question is more often raised in connection with the social sciences. Furthermore, a question regarding the general relationship between science and values also so often vexes the philosopher of science. The philosopher also discusses problems regarding the aims and achievements of various sciences.2 It is so often said that science is a pursuit after pure knowledge. The scientist has no other aim in his mind except the achievement of knowledge about the world. But we can very well see that science in its pursuit after theoretical knowledge has made magnificent practical achievements, and it is really the latter which have added greatly to the prestige of modern science. These achievements have proved to be a boon as well as a curse for humanity at large. Therefore, naturally, questions are raised regarding the real aim of science and the nature of achievements made by it. The philosophers of science are supposed to raise such questions also and discuss them threadbare so as to reach a satisfactory answer. Empirical sciences have been broadly divided into natural and social. Generally speaking, natural sciences deal with the facts and events of nature at large. Social sciences, on the other hand, deal with the action or behaviour of human beings as participants in social life. Physics, chemistry, geology, zoology etc. may be taken as examples of the first, while sociology, economics, political science etc. form the examples of the second. Naturally, there is a division of the philosophies of natural and social sciences. Generally speaking, there is hardly any difference between the aims that the two kinds of sciences try to achieve and therefore problems raised in the philosophy of natural science and that of social science would be more or less expected to be the same or at least similar in nature. Of course, in one the problems

10  Nature of Explanation would relate to natural phenomena while in the other they would relate to human behaviour. For example, in both of them, there is problem of the methodology adopted, problem of the nature of the scientific explanation, problem of the nature and status of laws and theories and so on. But if we cast a look over the solution or the answers presented to these problems in the two realms, there seems to be a lot of difference. Many of the philosophical issues regarding science centre around such problems as whether the methodology adopted in social sciences is or is to be the same as the one adopted in natural sciences, whether the nature of explanation as adopted in the social sciences is or is to be the same as adopted in natural sciences, whether social sciences can have the same kind of laws and theories as we find in natural sciences etc. And the answers to these questions have not always been the same. Philosophers differ among themselves regarding the answers to all of these questions. Broadly speaking, the philosophers of science divide themselves into two different camps over the above kinds of issues, the one being called naturalists and the other anti-naturalists. In general, the former wants to advocate a perfect unity of approach between natural and social sciences while the other camp tries to emphasise the basic difference between the natures of the very subject matter that the two kinds of sciences are concerned with. And therefore, in their view there is bound to be a fundamental difference in approach on all the above points between the two types of sciences. We shall have occasions in our following chapters to go into the details of these problems and reactions to them. Therefore, at this point it will not be very much worthwhile to go into further discussion of these problems. Towards the early part of our present analysis, we have raised a question regarding the worthwhileness of a philosopher’s interference into the realm of science and have tried to understand the same in our own ways. The problem may be raised once again with somewhat a different perspective in view. Sometimes, it has been felt as well as argued that a philosopher’s interference in the realm of science by way of philosophising over issues concerning science confuses issues rather than clarifying them. But such objections have been met from the side of both scientists and philosophers. They point out that philosophical discussions concerning scientific issues have always been beneficial for scientific development, specially, at the time of crisis when some prevalent scientific law or theory has begun to lose its importance due to contrary evidence. Scientists have sometimes passed through a period of crisis when no immediate pathway towards the development of a fresh theory is visible. At such a juncture, philosophical discussions about scientific issues have been undertaken not only by philosophers but also by scientists themselves. This shows that there is a genuine need for philosophising about science, whether natural or social. But the widely recognised distinction between the nature of the subject matters of the two types of sciences makes philosophical discussions about science more urgently necessary for social sciences than for natural sciences. In fact, it is sometimes felt that social sciences are

Nature of Explanation  11 nearer to philosophy than natural sciences. It seems that philosophising about social sciences has a direct impact on the studies going on in these sciences themselves. As J.O. Wisdom remarks in this connection, Although there is some reason for going into the philosophy of the natural sciences that would affect the sciences themselves, the reason with the social sciences is much stronger. Though most natural scientists have science in their bones, it is hardly ever so with the social scientists. In the case of the philosophy of social sciences, the need for the subject is widely recognised by the social scientists themselves. There would seem a tacit or even overt recognition that the philosophy of the social sciences has a close bearing on the practice of social science itself.3 Thus we can see that the need for philosophising about social sciences is rather very urgent, and most of all, the question of the nature of explanation as advanced by the social scientists in respect of social phenomena is very important. It is to this task that we now propose to return. Explanation in General There has been a variety of contexts in reference to which the need for explanation is felt. For example, sometimes a need for explaining a difficult passage from prose or poetry is felt, sometimes a need for explaining the defects in the working of a motorcar to a mechanic is felt and sometimes again some need for explanation is felt regarding the situations in reference to which, generally speaking, some kind of ‘why-questions’ do arise. There are other situations also in which a need for an explanation is felt. But it is neither necessary nor possible to count them all here. We are concerned here mainly with such situations which require explanation as an answer to some kind of ‘why- question’. ‘Why did x leave his paternal home to reside somewhere else’, ‘why does water freeze’, ‘why do people use language’, ‘why does the earthquake take place’ etc. are some of the explanation-seeking questions with which both the common man and scientist have been concerned for so many ages. Thus, although the word ‘explain’ has got a variety of uses, we will be concerned here mainly with that use of the word in which it seeks to answer some problems generally raised in the form of ‘why-questions’. But before going into any analysis of the logic or nature of the word ‘explanation’ used in this specific sense, the most primary question that arises is regarding the very meaning of the word ‘explanation’. What does ‘explanation’ mean, or in other words, what does somebody actually proceed to do when he is asked to explain something? The very etymology of the word ‘explain’ tells us that explaining something means making it plain or clear or intelligible or understandable. May whatever be the context, one common element implicitly lying behind any situation requiring explanation is that the

12  Nature of Explanation situation, in some sense or other, does not make clear sense to somebody, that is, it proves in some sense or other problematic to him. Naturally, therefore, explaining the situation to somebody means making it intelligible or understandable to him. The variety of uses to which the word ‘explanation’ is put in common usage makes it sometimes difficult to see whether there is anything common between the ordinary use of the term and its scientific use. But at least one thing seems common amongst all these uses, and that is that something which seems problematic has to be made plain or clear. As Charles Taylor very well remarks in this connection, ‘“Explanation” has many meanings and there would seem to be no common ground between its use in some ordinary context and its role in science.’ But the scientific sense is continuous with at least one common meaning in ordinary speech. Here ‘explain’ very often means ‘to make what appears strange and outlandish understandable’.4 As we have said above, of the various uses of the word ‘explain’ in our common parlance, we shall be mainly concerned with such situations of explanation which mostly arise in the form of why-questions. Such occasions for explanation arise in our everyday life with which even a common man is concerned or sometimes they may arise in such a way which are of special interest to the scientist. If a theft is committed in somebody’s house or if a quarrel between two parties of a society takes place, that may present an occasion for the common man to seek some explanation for the occurrence. In other words, ‘why or how was the theft committed’, ‘why the two parties went into a quarrel between them’, may be problems for the common man to be explained. But these are not the problems which generally vex the scientist. Scientists are mostly concerned with such problems which concern neither this nor that person nor this particular or that particular society but all. That is, they are concerned mainly with such problems relating to nature or to human beings as a whole which are of a general or universal nature. ‘Why does the level of mercury in barometer come down at a low atmospheric pressure’, ‘why does poison cause death’, ‘why did that particular water pipe burst’, ‘why is there a rush for purchasing a particular commodity’, ‘why are strikes so frequent these days’, etc. are the types of problem with which a scientist is usually concerned. The problems may relate to some particular incident or to some regular feature found in the nature or in the society. It cannot be said that common men in certain moments of thought are not in the least concerned with the above kinds of problems with which a scientist is more specifically concerned. The common man may not be interested in some of the kinds of problems which lead one into certain technicalities, but some of the natural or social problems of the universal nature sometimes vex the common man also. For example, a common man also sometimes feels the necessity of explaining or understanding some such problems as ‘why do earthquakes take place’, ‘why or how do epidemics spread’, ‘how is it that at a particular time

Nature of Explanation  13 rains are so frequent and at another particular time there is no rain at all’, etc. So, although sometimes it is with regard to the nature of problems that the common man and the scientist differ in matters of explanation, more often than not, they differ not so much regarding the nature of problems as regarding the ways they explain the situation, or regarding the kind of explanation that satisfies them. The problems that we have enumerated above have really vexed people since very ancient days. They have been guessing and advancing various types of explanations of these problems. It is in this connection that people have created various mythical and religious stories so that the enigmatic natural situations might be made understandable. They have all tried to understand the problems regarding earthquakes, rain, epidemics etc. in their own ways by mostly taking recourse to supernatural agencies. For example, when it is asked ‘why do earthquakes take place’, a person born and grown up in Hindu tradition may reply that the earth is situated on the head of a serpent God called ‘Shesnag’ and when occasionally he shakes his head, the earth begins to tremble. Similarly, when it is asked ‘why or how rains take place’, a person grown up in the Hindu tradition may say by way of answering this question that there is a God of rain called Indra in the heaven and the falling of rains on earth depends on his pleasure. Such explanations of natural phenomena by taking recourse to supernatural agencies may satisfy the person as above. But such explanations hardly satisfy a scientist. Being somehow satisfied on the psychological level regarding the intricacies of the problem does not make an explanation for the scientist. The scientist while explaining any problematic situation tries to arrive at some such objective ground, which is at least in principle open to all for verifications. He has his own criteria of explanation which, generally speaking, are based on logical, empirical and objective considerations. Naturally, therefore, what is called an explanation in the scientific sense differs from the explanation advanced by common people. The latter kinds of explanation are generally known as popular ­ ­explanations. So, there is a definite contrast between popular and scientific explanations, and we shall have to go into the greater details of the nature of the latter because it is with these that we shall be mainly concerned here. Scientific Explanation Although the way in which we have tried above to distinguish between popular and scientific explanations creates the impression that there are definite criteria of scientific explanations which may very easily be put down in terms of a few definite points. That is not really the case. For any explanation to be scientific, different criteria have been put forward by different thinkers. The most widely known of these criteria are the ones which were put forward by Hempel in his important essay ‘Studies in the Logic of Explanation’. But even in spite of that, Hempel himself recognises that ‘There is no sufficiently clear generally accepted understanding as to what counts as a scientific explanation.’5 Nevertheless, we shall have to go into the business of the

14  Nature of Explanation ascertainment of certain criteria for scientific explanation, howsoever controversial the process of arriving at these criteria may prove to be. As we have noted above, explanation-seeking situations of scientific importance generally issue forth in questions of the ‘why’ form. Hempel himself recognises this fact when he says, A scientific explanation may be regarded as an answer to a why-question such as ‘why do planets move in elliptical orbits with the sun at one’s focus’, ‘why does the moon look much larger when it is nearer the horizon than when it is high in the sky’, ‘why did the television apparatus on Ranger VI fail’…6 Similarly, Braithwaite says, Any proper answer to a ‘why question’ may be said to be an explanation of a sort. So, the different kinds of explanation can best be appreciated by considering the different sorts of answers that are appropriate to the same or to different ‘why questions’.7 Michael Scriven objects to such views of Hempel and Braithwaite that questions regarding scientific explanations always come up before us in the ‘why’ forms. He brings out examples such as the following to show that explanation-seeking questions of scientific importance are not always in the form of why-questions: ‘how can a neutron be detected when it has zero mass and zero charge’, ‘what is it about coped variables that make them so useful for the determination of interstellar distances’. He further says that in a similar fashion explanation-seeking questions may also be put in ‘which’, ‘whether’ and ‘when’ forms. Even ‘why’ questions may be easily rephrased in the form of ‘what’ or ‘how’ questions.8 But we think that the point raised by Scriven against Hempel and Braithwaite is not of very important significance. Even Hempel does not very rigidly assert that all explanation-seeking questions are why-questions. He very clearly continues after his lines quoted above in the following manner, ‘There are other modes of formulating what we will call explanation-seeking questions: we might ask “What caused the failure of the television apparatus on Ranger-VI?”’9 But then Hempel asserts that ‘A why-question always provides an adequate, if perhaps sometimes awkward, standard phrasing.’10 So in our view it is useless quarrelling over the grammatical forms of the explanation-seeking questions which are of scientific importance. Let us, therefore, engage ourselves in more important issues regarding the nature and criteria of scientific explanation. Hempel, whose writings have actually initiated the lively extensive debate on the nature of scientific explanation, tries to understand it in terms of a definite model known as ‘the covering-law model’. Perhaps Karl Popper’s writings on scientific methodology, especially his works, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, and Conjectures and Refutations have added

Nature of Explanation  15 significantly to the popularisation of this model as the model of scientific explanation. This covering law model presupposes that any explanation in the scientific sense must be an explanation in terms of causes and not in terms of reasons. As Hempel says, ‘Not all why-questions call for explanations. Some of them solicit reasons in support of an assertion.’11 Hempel distinguishes between explanation-seeking why-questions and reason-seeking or epistemic why-questions. The latter, according to him, actually seeks justifying reasons for someone’s belief in any proposition ‘p’, whereas the former presents an explanation of some fact or event or state of affairs in the causal sense. For example, when somebody advances reasons for answering the question ‘why he believes that God exists?’ he is answering the former type of why-question. But when somebody advances explanation in terms of causes for the question, for example, ‘why did the water pipe burst?’ he is explaining a fact or an event. But then such causal explanations of facts and events are not scientifically presented merely in terms of some causal antecedents; rather they are presented with the lacking of certain universal causal laws under which the specific event to be explained is subsumed. The covering law model, which has as its most important form (although not the only form) the causal form of explanation has two distinct forms, which we will deal with in detail in the following chapter. Here at this point we simply want to bring out the essential criteria of scientific explanation that Hempel puts down by keeping in mind his covering law model of explanation as the only representative form of scientific explanation. The statement relating to the event to be explained, Hempel calls ‘explanandum’ and the statement or statements presenting explanation for the explanandum, he calls ‘explanans’. Making this distinction, Hempel lays down the following criteria for any explanation to be scientifically or logically adequate: 1 The explanandum must be a logical consequence of explanans; in other words, the explanandum must be logically deducible from the information contained in the explanans. 2 The explanans must contain general law, and these must actually be required for the derivation of explanandum. 3 The explanans must have empirical contents, that is, it must be capable at least in principle to test by experiment or by observation. 4 The sentences constituting the explanans must be true.12 These criteria essentially imply that any scientific explanation, worth the name, must be presented in terms of certain law or laws as their fundamental ground. It is out of this ground that the explanandum is to be derived as a logical conclusion. If, for example, it is to be explained why this particular X has got Y, it will be explained only by putting it under a universal law that ‘All X’s are Y’s’. Under these criteria of a scientific explanation, Hempel also saw the symmetrical relation between explanation and prediction. He believes

16  Nature of Explanation that ‘The difference between the two is only of a pragmatic character.’13 But this we shall explain later on. Several immediate reactions were presented against the covering law model of explanation as presented by Hempel and supported by Nagel and others. It was pointed out that the criteria laid down by Hempel under the banner of covering law model simply present certain grounds out of which the explanandum may be derived as a matter of mechanical necessity. But merely presenting grounds for explanation is not explanation in proper. Explanation is first and foremost nothing but understanding, and the occurrence of an event is not understood in the perfect sense of the term merely by setting out the grounds for its production. This point is all the more significant so far as the question of explanation of human behaviour does not consist merely in giving out grounds or the causes for such behaviour, but it consists in deciphering or decoding the internal meaning of that behaviour. Several thinkers like Dray, Scriven, Taylor, Winch etc have repeatedly emphasised that understanding is the main component of explanation and without the former, there can be no talk of the latter. As Scriven says, … the concept of explanation is logically dependent on the concept of understanding just as the concept of discovery is logically dependent on the concept of knowledge-at-a-particular-time. One cannot discover what one already knows or what one never knows; nor can one explain what everyone or no one understands.14 Similarly, Michael Friedman argues in one of his important essays entitled ‘Explanation and Scientific Understanding’ that covering law model like that of Hempel may present grounds for believing that the explanandum has occurred, but merely presenting such ground is not understanding the occurrence of the phenomena as a whole. As he says, Merely having grounds for believing that the phenomenon in question does occur may only be a part of the understanding of the phenomenon, it is not sufficient for that. Scientific explanation may involve the provision of grounds for believing that the explained phenomena occurred, but it is not in virtue of the provision of such grounds that they give us understanding.15 Thus, regarding the actual nature of scientific explanation, there comes about a lively debate between those who take explanation as something based on the covering law model and those who take it as understanding or intelligibility. This debate has actually taken the form of what is known as ‘Erklaren vs. Verstehen’ debate. Comte, Mill, Hempel, Nagel etc. side with the first while Dray, Dilthey, Scriven, Winch, Taylor, Gadamer etc. side with the latter. In reaction to his views against the emphasis on taking explanation in terms of understanding, Hempel points out that understanding, intelligibility

Nature of Explanation  17 etc. are psychological terms having no objective or logical ground. The same thing may be understandable or intelligible to someone and it may not be so to the other. According to Hempel, it is such people who emphasise that explanation is basically understanding who want to take explanation as making familiar what is unfamiliar. But this is never, according to him, the spirit in which the scientific explanations are being carried on. Many scientific explanations of familiar phenomena have been advanced in quite unfamiliar terms, and therefore, understanding or intelligibility in a psychological sense cannot be called explanation. Hempel clearly points out against Scriven that ‘Such expressions as “realm of understanding” and “comprehensible” do not belong to the vocabulary of logic, for they refer to the psychological or pragmatic aspects of explanation.’16 However, Hempel makes a distinction between psychological and scientific understanding and points out that understanding in the scientific sense may be regarded as the essence of explanation. But then Hempel understands scientific understanding in terms of his covering law model itself and therefore he seems to beg the entire question. This is very clear when he makes the following statement regarding the nature of what he calls scientific understanding, ‘The understanding it conveys lies rather in the insight that the explanandum fits into, or can be subsumed under a system of uniformities represented by empirical laws or theoretical principles.’17 This clearly shows that if understanding has to play any role in scientific explanation, it must be understood in terms of the explanation of any event by the subsumption of it under some covering law. He makes his intention all the more clear when he says, ‘All scientific explanation involves a subsumption of its subject matter under general regularities; that it seeks to provide a systematic understanding or empirical phenomena by showing that they fit into anomic nexus’.18 It seems understanding in some deeper sense than what Hempel tries to interpret it to be is necessary for any problematic situation being taken as explained. Michael Friedman seems to be right when he complains that philosophers like Hempel and Nagel have relatively precise proposals as to the nature of explanation-relation, but they have little to say about the connection between their proposals and scientific understanding.19 What Hempel’s model actually presents is the kind of relation the explanandum proposition must have with the explanans proposition. But it hardly takes care of the fact as to what kind of understanding such a relationship between explanans and explanandum actually gives with regard to the problematic situation. It is not very proper to discard understanding by taking it as a psychological notion, as Hempel and his followers actually do. Some of his followers are actually even more emphatic of the psychological nature of understanding than Hempel himself. For example, I.C. Jarvie remarks, ‘While what one man understands, another can be puzzled by, it cannot be that, what obeys the rules of valid deduction to one man does not to another.’20 The implication of the above quotation clearly is that, explanation-relation is nothing but a deductive relation between the explanans and the explanandum, and once

18  Nature of Explanation the notion of understanding is allowed to creep into it, the notion of explanation will suffer from the element of subjectivity and thereof it cannot be regarded as scientific explanation. But such fears regarding the notion of understanding do not seem to be very well founded. If understanding is a subjective something, the same can be said about knowledge also. This is also not very proper to maintain that the notion of understanding is immune to all objective tests and therefore it should not be given any place in the notion of explanation. Michael Scriven very importantly remarks in this context that ‘Understanding is not a subjectively appraised state any more than knowing is; both are objectively testable and are, in fact, tested in examination.’21 Peter Achinstein, who wants to give a very objective analysis of the nature of explanation in his book The Nature of Explanation also regards the notion of understanding as forming a necessary element in the notion of explanation. Of course, he points out that the notion of understanding must be made very clear. After defining ‘explanation’ in terms of understanding, Peter Achinstein proceeds on to clarify the notion of understanding. He equates understanding with complete knowledge-state. According to him, ‘A understands q’ means ‘A has a complete knowledge-state with regard to q’. This condition, according to him, is not only necessary, but sufficient also. Simply speaking, according to him, the explanation of any problematic situation ‘q’ means that ‘q’ is made understandable and ‘q’ is made understandable means that one who understands ‘q’ is in a complete knowledge-state with regard to ‘q’.22 Regarding however the definition of being in a complete knowledge-state with regard to ‘q’ there are several points that may be mentioned. Some of them are the following: 1 Being in such a state is knowing that there is some proposition that is a correct answer to ‘q’. 2 It is not simply knowing that there is a correct answer to ‘q’ which is necessary for understanding ‘q’, but this is also necessary that there is really a correct answer to ‘q’ because if there is no correct answer, then understanding ‘q’ will be an impossibility. One cannot, for example, understand why helium is the heaviest element since it is not really so. 3 It is not sufficient that somebody knows that there is a correct answer to q; he must also know that this is the correct answer. If these conditions are fulfilled, then and then only somebody will be taken as understanding ‘q’ and that will constitute the explanation of the problematic situation ‘q’. Thus, understanding cannot be completely divorced from explanation. In other words, no alleged explanation of any situation will be really an explanation if it does not provide an adequate understanding. And such an understanding surely does not consist in merely bringing the problematic situation under a covering law of a causal nature. It is of course a fact that those who have emphasised the role of understanding in explanation have really

Nature of Explanation  19 overemphasised it without making it perfectly clear what exact relation it is between the explanandum and the explanans that produces that kind of understanding which is necessary for taking any problematic situation as explained. Michael Friedman is honest enough to take to task the champions of understanding as much as he has taken to task the Hempelian who happen to be the champions of explanation. He very openly remarks that ‘Philosophers like Toulmin, Scriven, and Dray have a lot to say about understanding, but relatively vague ideas about just what relation it is that produces this understanding.’23 Thus, it is clear that any explanation worth the name must produce understanding regarding the situation which required explanation, and this kind of understanding cannot be held by merely seeing that the explanandum is a necessary consequence of the explanans. Really speaking, explanations may be of various natures and it is not adequate to find them under one specific model, understanding regarding a situation may be had through different means, sometimes, for example, by a mere description of the events or situations related to the situation in question. As a matter of fact, one of the chief characteristics of the scientific explanation is that it seeks to relate or link the explanandum situation to various other events or situations which seemed formerly to have no relation with the situation in question. In other words, a situation is taken to be scientifically explained if its link with various other situations is made clear. And that is sometimes possible by a mere description of the antecedent or other related situations. Charles Taylor sets down the following two properties of any scientific explanation: 1 It gives the antecedent conditions of the explicandum in terms of a set of factors which makes evident its connection with others. 2 It is capable of building in tiers, that is the co-relation which explains at one level can be taken as explicanda and explained at another.24 These points actually imply that what is important in scientific explanation is that it links the explanandum with other events in a systematic relationship, such that its place or status amongst others becomes clear and the situation is understood. Such an interlinking of the events makes the ‘explanans’ and the ‘explanandum’ relative terms such that what in one context is explanandum becomes explanans in relation to some other situation and what is explanans in one situation becomes explanandum in another. This interlinking is sometimes done, as we have said above, merely by a description of events which fills in the gap between the situation to be explained and the other situations which are related to it. Hempel and his followers sometimes complain against description that it is not an explanation. Explanation according to them is something more than mere description. But against such a view, Michael Scriven correctly points out that it cannot be said in an a priori manner that descriptions are not explanations. The question, according to him, is not whether descriptions are explanations. The question rather

20  Nature of Explanation is, what kind of descriptions can really be taken as explanation, or in other words, the question is, what counts as the right description. Scriven says by way of answering this question that tentatively we can say that The right description is the one which fills in a particular gap in the understanding of the person or people to whom the explanation is directed. That there is a gap in understanding, or a misunderstanding, seems plausible since whatever an explanation actually does, in order to be called an explanation at all it must be capable of making clear something not previously clear, that is, of increasing or producing understanding of something. The difference between explaining and describing does not consist in explaining being something ‘more than’ describing, but in its being the appropriate piece of describing, the appropriateness being a matter of its relation to a particular context. Thus, what could be in one context a mere description can in another be a full explanation.25 One important point which comes to our notice by the above consideration of the nature of explanation in the light of Scriven’s view is that the context is also an important factor while giving explanation of any occurrence or situation. The same situation may admit of different explanations in the different contexts. For example, if a child is failing at school, there may be potentially a large number of explanations in the light of the different contexts in which the explanation is sought. If somebody, say X, robs a bank and somebody else, say Y, asks him why he robbed the bank, X may answer: ‘because it gave him more money’. But this explanation may not be a satisfactory explanation for Y because the context in which he is asking the ‘why’ question may be different from the context in which X is answering the question. The context in which Y asked the question was perhaps why X robbed at all, whether it was in a bank or anywhere else. But the context in which X answered the question was perhaps why he robbed the bank rather than anything else such as a rich man’s house. In simple words, having a different context in mind, Y wanted an explanation from X which actually was not that which he advanced. And it was so because X had a different context in his own mind. The difference of the contexts in which Y asked the question and X took the question asked by Y may be schematically represented as follows: For Y –     X

{does not rob} banks {robs}

For X –    

X

robs {other things} {banks}

Nature of Explanation  21 The difference of context implies that there are different sets of alternatives against the background of which explanations may be asked for and given. Such a possibility of alternatives behind any situation seeking explanation is called ‘contrast spaces’ or ‘Spaces of alternatives’. In terms of this expression, we can say that there are different contrast spaces for the question and answer of the same explanation-situation. Taking this terminology in use Alan Garfinkel remarks significantly in his important book Forms of Explanation, Explanation always takes place relative to a background space of alternatives. Different spaces of alternatives may therefore require different explanations. And sometimes we can compare two explanations to see how their contrast spaces differ. This gives us a measure of the dislocation between two explanations.26 In the above example Y was asking the ‘why’ question in the contrast space that he wanted to reform X, but X replied the ‘why’ question in the contrast space that he robbed such places which brought him more money. All the above considerations bring us to one focal point, and that is that, although there is a sharp difference between popular and scientific explanations, still-scientific explanations cannot be legitimately bound down under certain specific mechanical model. There are various factors involved in any explanation situation and therefore no single model can do justice to all these factors. What is crucial amongst all these factors of an explanation-seeking situation is the factor of understanding and therefore that can be on no account be ignored. But again, scientific understanding cannot be a private understanding of any nature. It must have certain objective grounds which are in principle open to all and which in some sense or other admit of empirical verification. Therefore, mythical explanations which take recourse to certain supernatural agencies cannot be regarded as scientific explanations simply because they make the explanation situation somehow intelligible to some people. There are explanations which are based merely on certain dogmatic or tenacious beliefs having no objective evidence. These cannot be taken as scientific explanations. Scientific explanations must have certain distinguishing features, but again these features must not be laid down in so narrow and mechanical terms that they blatantly ignore many important factors related to any explanation situation. Keeping all these points in view, we may tentatively put down the following points as some of the general criteria for any explanation to be called scientific: It must be objective, that is based on objective considerations. 1 2 It must have empirical evidences. 3 It must somehow produce an understanding regarding the explanation-­ situation. 4 It must link the explanation-situation to other situation in such a manner that the explanation actually gives what is called by many thinkers a

22  Nature of Explanation ‘global’ understanding of the situation rather than local. That is, the situation must be understood is a broad perspective in relation to other situations. 5 It must make reference to the context in which it is being advanced. In the light of these general criteria we may see that the rigid rules that Hempel laid down in his essay ‘Studies in the Nature of Explanation’ cannot be taken as very much adequate. However, in his later writings Hempel, faced with so many criticisms against his criteria, seems to be much more liberal in putting down the criteria of scientific explanation. The two criteria that he lays down regarding scientific explanation in his later book Philosophy of Natural Science are as follows: The explanans must be relevant to the explanandum. 1 2 The explanans must be testable. We can very well see that instead of saying, as he formerly said, that the explanandum must be logically deducible from the explanans, Hempel now says simply that the latter must be relevant to the former. By the relevance of the explanans to the explanandum, generally it may be meant that the information given in the former must be such that on the basis of them it seems perfectly reasonable to conclude the occurrence of the latter. It cannot be said outright that Hempel would be averse to this interpretation of the term ‘relevance’ here, but then by the ‘reasonableness’ of the conclusion of the explanandum from the explanans he would very narrowly mean either (1) the deductibility of the former from the latter or (2) the latter presenting an inductive support for the former. Actually, this criterion of relevance has been advanced by Hempel by keeping in mind the two specific models of explanation, which we will see in the following chapter. Thus, although the criterion apparently seems very liberal, it is not so in reality. It is formulated by keeping in mind certain technical forms of explanation, which according to Hempel, are actually used by the natural scientists in explaining natural phenomena. But whether these forms or models of explanation are adequate for explaining social phenomena is a big controversial question, the details of which we will have an occasion to see in our following chapters. Hempel, of course, is of opinion that these and these alone are the models appropriate for explaining social phenomena also, but others do not agree. Hence although on a very general level of interpretation, the criterion may be acceptable to it will hardly be acceptable to many philosophers of social science in the sense in which Hempel wants it to be taken. More or less, similar is the case with the second criterion also. Taken generally, it is a very important criterion for any explanation to be called scientific. Whatever is advanced as an explanation for something must be such that its truth is verified directly or indirectly with reference to empirical evidences. By indirect verification it means the possibility of deriving conclusions from

Nature of Explanation  23 the materials of explanation whose truth may be ascertained with reference to facts of experience. If actual verification is not possible, at least verification in principle must be possible. For, if this is not so, then explanations couched in mythical or supernatural or superstitious terms will also be regarded as scientific explanations. But again, the criterion must not be taken in the very technical sense of carrying on laboratory experimentations or even observations of a very exact nature, because although such tests are possible in natural sciences, they may not always be possible in social sciences. But even in spite of taking these two criteria as valid in the sense we have tried to classify above; they cannot perhaps be taken as sufficient for all explanations to be called scientific. In other words, by merely fulfilling these two conditions, we may not always be able to generate that kind of understanding regarding every situation of explanation for which the explanation was deemed necessary. Especially, situations relating to social phenomena are very frequently such that unless the internal meaning of the phenomenon or action is made clear, the explanation-situation cannot be made perfectly clear or intelligible. It has been argued by many philosophers of social sciences that merely stating the antecedent causal conditions of the coming about of any social phenomenon does not make it perfectly clear. Hempel has, as we shall see in due course, put down the above two criteria of scientific explanation by conceiving scientific explanation mainly in terms of causal explanation, that is, explanation with reference to antecedent causal condition backed up by causal laws. Hence, ultimately, we have to say that although some general features of scientific explanation may be marked so as to distinguish it from popular explanations, it is very difficult to lay down certain very specific criteria to define scientific explanation. Even Hempel, as we have seen in the very first paragraph of this section, admits the difficulties regarding the ascertainment of the nature of scientific explanation in very definite terms. Notes 1 Quoted by L.S. Stebbing in her book A Modern Introduction to Logic (Harper Torch book, 1961) P. 235. 2 S. Toulmin, The Philosophy of Science (Hutchinson University Library, London, 1967) P. 9. 3 J.O. Wisdom, Philosophy of the Social Sciences (Gower Publications, Aldershot, England 1987) PP. 1, 2. 4 Charles Taylor, ‘The Explanation of Purposive Behaviour’ included in Explanation in the Behavioural Sciences (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1970) Ed. by Robert Borger and Frank Cioffi, P. 49. 5 C.G. Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation (The Free Press, 1965) P. 489. 6 Ibid., P. 334. 7 R.B. Braithwaite, Scientific Explanation (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1953) P. 319. 8 Michael Scriven ‘Explanations, Predictions and Laws’, included in Theories of Explanation (Oxford univ. Press, 1988) Ed. by Joseph C. Pitt, P. 52. 9 C.G. Hempel, Op. cit. P. 334.

24  Nature of Explanation 0 Ibid., P. 334. 1 11 Ibid., P. 335. 12 Ibid., P. 247–48. 13 Ibid., P. 249. 14 Michael Scriven, Op. cit. P. 72. 15 Michael Friedman, ‘Explanation and Scientific Understanding’, included in Theories of Explanation (Oxford univ. Press, 1988) Ed. by J.C. Pitt, P. 191. 16 C.G. Hempel, Op. cit. P. 413. 17 Ibid., P. 488. 18 Ibid., P. 488. 19 Michael Friedman, Op. cit. P. 189. 20 I.C. Jarvie, ‘Understanding and Explanation in Sociology and Social Anthropology’, included in Explanation in the Behavioral Sciences (Cambridge univ. Press, 1970) Ed. by R. Borger and Frank Cioffi, P. 231. 21 Michael Scriven, Op. cit. P. 53. 22 Peter Achinstein, The Nature of Explanation (Oxford univ. Press, New York, 1983) PP. 25–26. 23 Michael Friedman, Op. cit. P. 189. 24 Charles Taylor, Op. cit. P. 50. 25 Michael Scriven, Op. cit. P. 53. 26 Alan Garfinkel, Forms of Explanation (Yale univ. Press, New Haven & London, 1981) P. 25.

2 Explanation in Natural Sciences

Our discussion so far has made it clear that although scientific explanation is not the same as the one usually advanced by the common people, still it is very difficult to pinpoint certain very definite criteria of the former. We have seen that understanding forms the essence of explanation, although as to the exact meaning of ‘understanding’, thinkers differ. Hempel has emphasised that understanding cannot be taken in a psychological sense, it must rather be taken in a scientific sense. And the scientific sense of understanding consists, according to him, in making the explanandum subsumable under a general principle. In other words, the occurrence of an explanandum phenomenon is understood, according to him, if the explanandum statement is made deducible from some general empirical principle. This sense of understanding may not be acceptable to all. In fact, there are a host of thinkers who do not at all accept this sense of understanding as proper and sufficient for cases of explanation of human or social phenomena. For, as Winch and several other thinkers point out, there is an ‘inside’ of human behaviour which is lacking in the occurrence of natural phenomena. Nevertheless, the notion of understanding as taken by Hempel is generally taken as applicable to the case of natural phenomena. Naturally, therefore despite the opposition against Hempel’s view of explanation, it is more or less accepted that this view holds, by and large, valid for the case of explanation in natural sciences. As our aim here in this chapter is to look into the nature of explanation as used in natural sciences, we will like to elucidate Hempel’s account of the nature of the same. As a matter of fact, it is Hempel, more than any other thinker, who has attempted to elaborate the nature of scientific explanation as mostly used in natural sciences. Of course, he insists that the modes of explanation present in natural sciences are not confined to them alone and that the explanation given in social sciences and history are also basically of the same modes. It is this part of Hempel’s view that the champions of understanding or Verstehen mainly oppose. But to this aspect of the matter, we shall not pay our attention for the time being. We shall simply try to see here the nature of explanation as understood and presented by Hempel. Quite in consonance with his view that the occurrence of an event may be understood in the scientific sense by making the explanandum statement deducible from DOI: 10.4324/9781003405719-3

26  Explanation in Natural Sciences some principle of uniformity, Hempel presents the nature of explanations as used in science in two different forms: (1) deductive-nomological (D-N) and (2) statistical or probabilistic. As we shall see, both these forms of explanation require certain general statements of uniformities as their basic foundation. These uniformities may be found in terms of laws and theories. Laws and theories both are general statements but still, they have technical differences regarding their specific nature. In presenting the explanation of the above two forms, both laws and theories are taken to recourse. Therefore, we shall try to see here Hempel’s covering law model of explanation with reference to both laws and theories. Explanation with Reference to Laws We have said above that explanations of the so-called covering law model, which are taken as characteristic of the explanations found in natural sciences, necessarily require certain general statements of uniformities. These uniformities are the uniformities found in nature. It is on the basis of these natural uniformities that individual natural events are sought to be explained. Not only individual natural events but also the uniformities of lower generality themselves are sought to be explained on the basis of uniformities of higher generalities. As we have seen above, these generalities are either laws or theories. But here we are concerned with the explanations made with reference to laws. As the laws, according to Hempel, are of two kinds – g­ enuinely universal and statistical – therefore explanations with reference to laws are, according to him, of two kinds also which we have already named above. We shall see both these forms of explanation with reference to laws separately. Let us take them one by one. Deductive-Nomological Explanation

Generally speaking, this kind of explanation consists in showing the deductibility of what is to be explained from certain particular event or events in accordance with certain general laws known as covering laws. The particular event or events which are taken help of in explaining phenomena are generally known as initial conditions. The event to be explained is known as explanandum and the statement that expresses it is known as the explanandum statement. The initial conditions and general laws from which taken together the explanandum statement is deduced are known as explanans or explanans statement. Thus, the deductive-nomological explanation precisely consists of certain law or laws together with certain initial conditions as explanans statement from which the explanandum statement deductively follows. The explanation is known as nomological because it necessarily incorporates certain universal law or laws and is known as deductive because the

Explanation in Natural Sciences  27 explanandum follows deductively out of the explanans statement. If the universal laws are symbolised as L1, L2 … Ln and the initial conditions as C1, C2 … Cn then we can put the deductive-nomological form of explanation in the following schematic form: L1, L2 - - Ln

Explanans statement C1, C2 - - Cn - Explanandum statement. E Example of this form of explanation may be multiple. The simplest example may be taken as follows by way of borrowing it from Karl Popper. Let us suppose that a string spread somewhere breaks down and someone asks the question ‘why did the string break’ Here the phenomenon of the string being broken, or the statement ‘the string broke’ is to be explained. Hence this is the explanandum statement. It is explained by the following two explanans statements: 1 Whenever a weight of more than a particular limit is clung on a string, it breaks down. 2 A weight more than a reasonable limit was clung on this string. Therefore, the string broke. The former of these statements clearly states a universal natural law and the second states a particular event. The former is known as the covering law and the latter as the initial condition. There may be cases of explanation which may involve more than one covering law and more than one initial condition. For example when on an extremely cold morning two friends see a water pipe burst somewhere, one asks the other, ‘why did the water pipe burst’ The other may explain it in the following manner: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

The pipe was full of water. Whenever the temperature falls down to the freezing point, water freezes. The temperature in the night fell down below the freezing point. The water in the pipe therefore froze. Whenever water freezes, its volume increases. The pipe could not resist the increased volume of the frozen water. Therefore, it burst.

Here we see that the explanation of the phenomenon of the bursting of the pipe involves six explanans statements, some of which are empirical laws and some are statements of particular facts. Statements no. 2 and no. 5 state universal laws while the rest state particular facts or initial conditions. We may rearrange them as the laws taken together and the initial conditions taken together at the second stage and then we will have a clear case of the

28  Explanation in Natural Sciences D-N model of explanation. We can very well see that the above example uses more than one universal law and initial condition. Several other examples may also be cited to show the use of the D-N model of explanation in sciences. The general point about this particular model of explanation however is that it answers the question ‘why did the explanandum phenomenon occur’ by showing that the phenomenon resulted from certain particular instances (symbolised as C1, C2 … Cn) in accordance with certain universal empirical laws (symbolised as L1, L2 … Ln). By pointing this out, the D-N model of explanation shows that given the particular circumstances and the relevant laws, the occurrence of the explanandum phenomenon was to be expected. If explaining the occurrence of a phenomenon necessarily means understanding why it occurred, Hempel will point out that ‘It is in this sense (that is, in the above sense) that the explanation enables us to understand why the phenomenon occurred.’1 It is thus clear that in a deductive-nomological form of explanation the explanandum is a logical consequence of the explanans. Moreover, the use of general empirical laws is essential for this form of explanation because it is in virtue of these laws that the particular facts, known as initial conditions, become able to explain the explanandum phenomenon. According to Hempel, no scientific explanation, which does not use a universal law, is an explanation in the real sense of the term. Sometimes it may happen that the explanandum statement follows deductively from a statement of the nature of initial condition merely without any reference to some law. For example, let us take the following – The water in the pipe froze and the pipe burst. Therefore, the pipe burst. Here we can see that the explanandum ‘The pipe burst’ deductively follows from the mere statement of initial condition on the strength of the inference rule known as the rule of simplification. But still, it cannot be regarded as an example of explanation, because it has not used any universal law in the explanans. Hempel clearly states in this connection, ‘A D-N explanation will have to contain, in its explanans, some general laws that are required for the deduction of the explanandum, i.e., whose deletion would make the argument invalid.’2 It may happen sometimes, however, that the universal law required in a particular case of scientific explanation may not be explicitly mentioned and the explanation may be expressed elliptically by keeping the relevant law or laws simply implicit. Common men or even scientists, more often than not, explain phenomena explicitly by merely stating the initial conditions. For example, when it is asked, ‘why did this iron bar rust’, the explanation is generally given by saying ‘because it was exposed to air and water’. But we can very well see that the explanation implicitly contains in it the presupposition of the universal law to the effect that ‘whenever an iron bar is exposed

Explanation in Natural Sciences  29 to air and water, it rusts’. There may be similar several other cases where explanation may be given by simply pointing out the initial conditions that actually led to the occurrence of the explanandum phenomenon. But it does not mean that the complete form of explanation did not require certain universal law or laws for the full understanding of the fact why the explanandum event actually did occur. The scientists may put their explanations in various forms in accordance with the nature of the audience they are facing. But whenever these explanations will be spelt out in their full logical forms, they will prove to be the explanation of the D-N model outlined above. The D-N model of explanation, as spelt out and exemplified above, gives the impression that this model of explanation is always used for explaining individual occurrences only known as explanandum phenomena. Moreover, it is a fact that Hempel first outlined this model of explanation as a model for explaining individual natural phenomena only. But later on, he realised and asserted that this model could be used not only for explaining individual phenomena but also for the uniformities of the general laws themselves. This can be done by subsuming the laws of lesser generality under the laws of higher generality or under theoretical generalities known as scientific theories. Of course, in such cases of explanation, there will be nothing like the statement of initial conditions; rather there will be statements of theories and laws alone which will jointly imply the explanandum law, that is, the law to be explained. For example, somebody may ask for the explanation of the rising of not any particular balloon but of balloons as such, or again somebody may ask not only of rusting of a particular piece of iron rod but of all the iron rods which rust. For example, the question may be asked ‘why do balloons rise in the air’, ‘why does iron rust’, ‘why does water expand when it freezes’ etc. We explain all these why-questions about uniformities by means of other laws of greater generalities and theories by taking help of the D-N model itself. The case of the rising of the balloon may be explained by saying that we all know that the rising balloons contain hydrogen and helium and it is a general law of nature that hydrogen and helium are lighter than the mixture of oxygen, nitrogen etc. which constitute our atmosphere and again that a gas which is lighter per unit of volume than another gas will go upward. To be more precise, the following two universal laws: 1 Hydrogen and helium are lighter than the mixture of gases constituting the atmosphere, and 2 A gas that is lighter per unit of volume than another gas will go upward, Jointly imply that balloons containing hydrogen or helium will rise in the air. Thus, here a law of lesser generality has been explained by making it deducible from two laws of higher generalities. The D-N model of explanation therefore can be used for explaining laws also because its essence consists in the deductibility of the explanandum statement from the explanans statement which consists of laws or theories. That Hempel wants such

30  Explanation in Natural Sciences explanations also to be called the D-N model of explanation is very clear from his own following words, ‘The general conception of explanation by deductive subsumption under general laws of theoretical principles will be called the deductive-nomological model or the D-N model of explanation.’3 Such laws he likes to call covering laws by borrowing the phrase from William Dray. He himself recognises this debt when he asserts in continuation with the lines just quoted, ‘The laws invoked in such an explanation will be referred to, in William Dray’s suggestive phrase, as covering laws.’4 Of course, Hempel adds here that Dray had used the phrase ‘covering law’ for only the universal laws used in the D-N model of explanation outlined above, but he wants to use the same phrase for the probabilistic laws also which are used in another model of scientific explanation. This form of explanation we will elucidate below after a few moments. Thus, the phrase ‘covering law’ includes in Hempel’s use both the genuinely universal laws used in the D-N model of explanation as well as the probabilistic laws used in the statistical form of explanation. We have seen above that the use of universal law is very essential according to Hempel for the scientific explanations of the D-N model. Therefore, we must go to some extent into an elucidation of the actual nature of such laws. Such laws generally begin with a universal quantifier ‘all’. For example ‘All gases expand when heated under constant pressure’, states a universal law which may be used in a D-N form of explanation. In symbolic form, such laws may be expressed as (x) (Fx⊃ Gx), which generally means that in all cases when conditions of the kind F are realised, conditions of the kind G are also realised. But the important point to be marked is that all statements beginning with the quantifier ‘all’ are not genuinely universal statements, which may be used in scientific explanations. Many sentences beginning with ‘all’ are merely accidental generalisations from which the genuinely universal laws must be distinguished. For example, ‘All rocks contained in this box are red’ is seemingly a universal preposition, but really it is not. It is merely an accidental generalisation. As a matter of fact, it is not very easy to answer the question of ‘what distinguishes general laws from accidental generalisations’ and this is why the question has been widely discussed in recent years. But still, some of the very important points of distinction may be well marked. The very first and rather the most important distinction between the two types of generalisations is that whereas a genuinely universal law can support what is known as counterfactual conditionals, an accidental generalisation cannot. This point of difference has been very well marked by Nelson Goodman in his important essay ‘The Problem of Counterfactual Conditionals’. A counterfactual conditional is really a conditional or an implicative statement of the form ‘If A were the case, then B would be the case’ or ‘Had A been the case, then B would have been the case also.’ Thus, the statement ‘If a lump of sugar is put into water it will dissolve into it’ is the clear hypothetical form of the general law ‘A lump of sugar put into

Explanation in Natural Sciences  31 water dissolves into it.’ But we can see that this general law also supports the counterfactual conditional of the following form, ‘If A were a lump of sugar put into water it would have dissolved into it.’ In a similar fashion, all genuinely universal laws can support the above kind of counterfactual conditional. But the statement ‘All rocks contained in this box are red’ could not be used to support the following counterfactual conditional ‘Had this rock been a rock into this box, it would have been red.’ As a matter of fact, this seemingly general statement is no general statement at all; rather it is a simple summary formulation of a finite number of rocks contained in this box which are red. A genuinely universal law will not only support the counterfactual conditional of the above kind but of a subjunctive conditional of the following kind also, ‘If A would come to happen then so would B also.’ For example the above general law about sugar can support the following subjunctive conditional also, ‘If A is a lump of sugar which would be put into water, then it would dissolve into it.’ An accidental generalisation of the above kind cannot support such subjunctive conditional either. Due to its nature of being genuinely universal, a universal scientific law may qualify as a law even if it has no instances whatever. For example, we know that a freely falling body from rest to the earth conforms to the formula that its rate of acceleration while freely falling is 32’/sec/sec. But his formula can be extended to hold for any celestial body that has the same radius and mass as that of the earth. If the mass differs, the formula can be suitably adjusted to apply in the case of the celestial body. But this cannot be the case regarding accidental generalisations. It is due to these vital differences that whereas a genuinely universal law is used to serve as a basis for scientific explanation, accidental generalisation cannot be used to perform that job. We have thus seen the general nature of a deductive-nomological form of explanation and have also tried to elucidate to some extent the nature of the universal law that such a form of explanation employs. However, the laws that are generally used in the natural sciences for the explanation of the phenomena are causal laws. A causal law is a universal statement of causal connection between two kinds of events A and B for example. Generally formulated, it will be of the form that the event of the kind A causes an event of another kind B. In other words, a causal statement is of the form ‘A causes B’ which means that under proper conditions A will be invariably followed by B. This can be conveniently put in the form ‘If the event A, then the event B also’ which is of genuinely universal form and at the same time causal in nature. Empirical laws of the sciences are generally of this causal form. So, the explanations of phenomena carried through the D-N form in the natural sciences are generally made on the basis of universal laws which are causal in nature. Such explanations are specifically known as causal explanations which are basically of the D-N form because such explanations employ universal causal laws as well as the individual causal events playing the role of initial conditions. But it is to be noted that causal explanations are not the

32  Explanation in Natural Sciences only explanations which come under the D-N model. Explanations of general laws, for example, by deductive subsumption under theoretical principles are clearly not causal explanations, although they are deductive-nomological. But the point to be given specific attention is that even in the case of the explanation of individual events, the deductive-nomological explanations are not always causal. Causal explanations use causal laws which are essentially laws of succession. But in science, there are laws of co-existence also which cannot be called causal in the strict sense of the term. Boyle’s law, Charles’ law as well as Ohm’s law are examples of such laws. To take a concrete example, let us suppose that a simple pendulum takes 2 sec to complete one full swing. This fact might be explained by pointing out that its length is 100 cm and that the period ‘t’ (in sec) of any simple pendulum is connected with its length ‘l’ (in cm) by the general law that t = π √ l/g, where g is the acceleration of the free fall. This general law, by the help of which the above explanation takes the D-N form, is a law of mathematical relationship between the length and period of the pendulum at one and the same time. Therefore, it cannot be regarded as a law of succession, that is a causal law. It is rather a law of co-existence. Not only this, that is not only it is that sometimes a particular event is explained not by reference to causal antecedent, but by reference to some co-existing vent, it might sometimes happen that a particular event could be satisfactorily explained by reference to subsequent reference. Hempel himself takes the following example to illustrate this point. A beam of light travels from the point ‘A’ in one optical medium to a point ‘B’ in another medium which borders upon the first along a plane. According to Fermat’s principle of least time, the beam will follow a path that makes the travelling time from ‘A’ to ‘B’ the minimum as compared to the alternative paths available. Let us suppose that the path from ‘A’ to ‘B’ as determined by Fermat’s principle passes through an intermediate point ‘C’. Then this fact may be explained by the D-N form by means of Fermat’s law in conjunction with the initial conditions formed by the relevant data concerning the optical media and the information that the beams travelled from ‘A’ to ‘B’. In this explanation, we find that the beam arriving at ‘B’ serves as one of the explanatory factors. But this event takes place only after the beams pass through ‘C’, which is the explanandum phenomenon here. Hempel notes that a sense of uneasiness might come up within us from the idea that an explanation is given with reference to an event which occurs subsequent to explanandum event. But to any such sense of uneasiness, Hempel wants to reply through his following lines, While all causal explanations seem more natural or plausible, it is not clear what precise construal could be given to the notion of factors ‘bringing about’ a given event and what reason there would be for denying the status of explanation to all accounts invoking occurrences that temporally succeed the event to be explained.5

Explanation in Natural Sciences  33 Thus, we can see that although the explanations of the deductive-nomological model are for the most part causal explanations, they are not necessarily so causal explanations because they constitute only one variety of the explanations of D-N model. Statistical-Probabilistic Explanation

It seems there was a time when Hempel believed that the D-N form of explanation was the only form which could be properly taken as the form of scientific explanation. This is very clear from his view expressed in his essay ‘Studies in the Logic of Explanation’ (written in collaboration with Oppenheim) published in 1948. There, by way of putting down the necessary criteria for any explanation to be scientific he asserts, ‘The explanandum must be a logical consequence of the explanans; in other words, the explanandum must be logically deducible from the information contained in the explanans; for other-wise, the explanans would not constitute adequate grounds for the explanandum.’6 Here logical deducibility of the explanandum from the explanans becomes a necessary criterion of scientific explanation. But later on, in the light of criticisms levelled against his exclusive preference for the D-N form as well as his own experiences and realisations about other forms of explanation given in sciences, he seems to have modified his view at least to an extent to which he accommodates a form of explanation known as statistical-probabilistic to be also the proper form of scientific explanation. Now, by way of laying down the criteria of the scientific explanation, he doesn’t take deducibility from the explanans of the explanandum to be necessary. It is rather sufficient if the explanans is ‘relevant’ to the explanandum. And by ‘relevance’ he means either that the explanandum is logically deducible from the explanans or that there is at least such a relation between the explanans and the explanandum that the occurrence of the latter may reasonably or with some amount of plausibility or with reasonable probability be inferred or expected to occur on the ground of the former. And it is this modification in his views that led him to recognise another form of scientific explanation, that is the statistical form. There is hardly any difference between the basic structures of the two forms of explanation according to him. The laws – initial condition – explanandum model is kept in fact in what is known as the statistical or the probabilistic form of explanation also. The main difference is with regard to the nature of law or laws which are employed. Whereas the laws employed in the D-N explanation are genuinely universal laws, the laws employed in the statistical explanations are merely probabilistic in nature. How genuinely universal laws differ from a law of statistical or probabilistic nature, we shall see in a somewhat detailed form a few paragraphs ahead. For the time being we may mention that a probabilistic or statistical law is of the form – P (G, F) = r, which means that the statistical probability for an event of a kind F to be also of the kind G is r. This can be contrasted very well with (x) (Fx⊃Gx), which

34  Explanation in Natural Sciences represents a law of genuinely universal form. We know that this clearly means that for all cases any instance of F is an instance of G also. As a concrete example of a statistical law, we may take that ‘the statistical probability of a coin tossed at random to fall down with its tail above is .5’, or that ‘the statistical probability of rolling an irregular die of yielding an ace is .15’. On the other hand, a concrete example of a genuinely universal law may be taken to be that ‘Gases expand when heated under constant pressure.’ There is another important difference also which follows from the difference in the nature of laws employed in two cases. In the case of D-N explanations the explanandum is subsumed under the laws with the consequence that the explanandum follows from the explanans with logical certainty, but in the case of statistical-probabilistic explanation, the explanandum is derived from the explanans only with a kind of ‘practical’ certainty or with a very high degree of probability. All these points will be made clearer while we proceed on. Hempel classifies statistical explanations into (1) deductive-statistical and (2) inductive-statistical. As both of these forms of explanations use statistical laws, they are both known as statistical. But as in the case of the former, a law of narrower statistical uniformity is subsumed under the one of higher statistical generality such that the former deductively follows from the latter, it is known as deductive-statistical. In the other case, however, the occurrence of a particular event is derived in a probabilistic form from certain probabilistic laws and initial conditions such that the former does not deductively follow from the latter; rather it may be said to follow from the latter only in a peculiar non-deductive sense. This is why it is known as inductive-­statistical by Hempel. To quote his own words in connection with the second form of statistical explanation, ‘The other involves subsumption in a peculiar non-­ deductive sense of a particular occurrence under statistical laws. It will be called inductive-statistical explanation.’7 Let us now see the two forms of statistical explanations below: A Deductive-statistical explanation – As we have said above, in an explanation of deductive-statistical form, a statistical law of narrower generality is deduced from similar laws of higher generality. For example, let us take the following two statistical laws regarding the tossing of a coin: 1 The random experiment of tossing a coin yields the tail with a statistical probability of .5. 2 The outcomes of different tossing of the coin are statistically independent such that the probability of any specified sequence of the results equals the product of the probabilities of the constituents of single outcomes. We can now see that the following probabilistic law follows deductively out of these two laws – the probability of the coin to come up after a long sequence of tossing is still .5. So here the laws employed in the explanans are statistical laws and the law derived out of them in the

Explanation in Natural Sciences  35 form of explanandum is also a statistical law. But the relationship between explanans and explanandum is of logical deductibility of the latter from the former. This is why such forms of explanations are known as deductive-statistical. However statistical laws are meant more often to be applied to particular occurrences so as to explain them. This is done through the other form of statistical explanation which Hempel calls inductive-statistical. So, it is this that we will now see. B Inductive-statistical explanation – In this form of explanation some event or occurrence is tried to be explained on the basis of one or more probabilistic laws together with certain statement or statements of individual events in the fashion of initial conditions of the deductive-nomological explanation. For example, if an explanation is sought for A being infected by a particular disease B, the event may be explained by saying ‘because he was in contact with X who was already caught by the disease B’. Now here from the proposition ‘was in contact with X who was already infected with the disease B’, it cannot be inferred with certainty that A would also be infected by the disease B. But it can be inferred with a sense of reasonable probability that ‘because A was in contact with X and X had already been caught by the disease B, A would also be infected by the disease B’. The above kind of explanation may be put in a schematic form in the following manner: 1 For any person living in contact with another person already caught by a particular disease B, there is every probability that the former will also be caught by the disease B. 2 A was in contact with X who was already infected with the disease. (makes highly probable) A was caught by the disease B. In the above schema we find that instead of a single line separating the explanandum from the explanans as in the D-N form of explanation, we have used here two lines. The double line used here signified that the explanans does not make the explanandum deductively certain but more or less probable, the fact or probability being shown by the expression within the brackets on the right side of the double line. It is this form of explanation which is known as inductive-statistical form. It is called inductive because the explanans here does not deductively imply the explanandum, but merely advance what may be called on inductive support for that. In other words, we can say that in such form of explanation, the conclusion does not follow from the premise with deductive certainty; rather, it is derived only with an inductive probability. While deriving the explanandum from the explanans, we can use the words like ‘almost certain’ or ‘practically certain’ or ‘very likely’ for the explanandum coming out of the explanans but not expressions like ‘necessarily follows from’ or ‘follows with deductive certainty’.

36  Explanation in Natural Sciences The above schema of inductive-statistical explanation may very well suggest that this form of explanation shares some common features with the deductive-nomological form of explanation. For instance, in both cases the given event, that is, the explanandum, is explained with reference to certain law or laws with the help of some statements about some particular occurrences (initial conditions). But there are differences between the two in two very important respects: 1 Whereas in the deductive-nomological explanation the laws are of genuinely universal form, in the inductive-statistical form of explanation the laws are of statistical or probabilistic nature. 2 Whereas in the case of deductive-nomological explanation, the explanandum is connected with the explanans by the relation of deductive implication, in the case of probabilistic explanation it is connected with the explanans with a peculiar kind of implication-relation, which may be called probabilistic implication. This simply means that in the latter case, the explanans merely extends inductive support to the explanandum and does not logically imply it. As the main thing which gives special character to the probabilistic form of explanation is the special kind of law which is used here; we would like to deal to some extent with the nature of such laws. As a matter of fact, there are various theories of probability and there has been very extensive discussion for giving mathematical formulations to the exact quantum of probability with which in particular cases the explanans extends inductive support to the explanandum. But here instead of going into the intricacies of various theories of probability, we shall like to mention the most favoured one, which is known as the relative frequency theory. Prior to the relative frequency theory, the theory of probability which was prevalent may be called the classical theory. According to this theory if there are, for example, 1,000 balls in a basket, 600 of which are white and the rest 400 red, then a general probability statement regarding the probability of a white ball coming out in our hand in random drawing of the balls from the basket will be 600/1,000, that is .6. Similarly, if a coin is tossed several times, the probability of the coin falling down to the earth with its tail upwards will be .5. But we can just see that there is a very obvious mistake in the above kind of probability statements. For example, if in the case of white and red balls, all the 400 red balls were kept in the basket on the top, that is, above the white balls, then the probability of the white balls coming out in several experiments would have been merely 0 instead of .6. This clearly shows that there is an obvious sort of inadequacy in the classical theory. In the relative frequency theory, however, which is also known as a mathematical theory of statistical probability, such inadequacy is removed to a very great extent. Under this kind of theory, for establishing any probabilistic law regarding occurrence of any event or incident, a

Explanation in Natural Sciences  37 number of random experiments are carried on to see the frequency of the occurrence of the event. In the words of Hempel, Roughly, a random experiment is a kind of process or event which can be repeated indefinitely by man or by nature, and which yields in each case one out of a certain finite or infinite set of ‘results’ or ‘outcomes’ in such a way that while the outcomes vary from case to case in an irregular and unpredictable manner, the relative frequencies with which the different outcomes occur tend to become more or less constant as the number of performances increases.8 By ‘relative frequency’ we mean the proportion of the cases in which a particular event occurs in case of various random experiments done with reference to that. For example, let us suppose that we have to ascertain the probability of the rolling of an ace with a given die that is not known to be regular. For this, we make a large number of throws with the die and see in how many cases an ace turns up. Let us suppose that the experiment of rolling a given die is performed 300 times and during all these experiments the ace turns up 62 times. Then the relative frequency of the ace turning up will be 62/300. If the various random experiments done with the die are symbolised as ‘D’ and an ace turning up is symbolised as ‘A’, then the probability of the turning up in terms of its relative frequency will be P (A, D) = 62/300. Similar procedures may be adopted to see the probability of the head or tail coming up while tossing a coin several times. It is on the basis of making similar various random experiments that in sciences various probabilistic laws regarding the occurrence of phenomena are formulated in terms of relative frequency, and such laws are successfully and effectively used in explaining individual occurrences. What a scientist is concerned with in making a probability statement or a probabilistic law with respect to various phenomena is the relative frequency with which a certain outcome ‘O’ can be expected in a long series of repetitions of some random experiment ‘H’. However, such laws based on relative frequency cannot be taken as strictly true or strictly unchangeable in the long series of repetitions of the relevant random experiment. For example, the proportion of aces obtained in throwing a die will perhaps slightly change if the series of throws is extended. And even in the two series of exactly the same length, the number of aces may differ. Thus, probabilistic laws based on relative frequency established on the ground of number of random experiments may always be found to be different if the number of random experiments is increased. But again, it is also the case that as the number of random experiments increases, the relative frequency of each of the different outcomes tends to change less and less even though the result of successive experiments continues to vary. This means that in spite of the variations in a long series of performances of random experiment ‘R’ the proportion of cases with outcome ‘O’ is almost certain to be close to ‘r’ in the probabilistic law {P (O, R) = r}.

38  Explanation in Natural Sciences Scientific hypothesis in the form of statistical probability can be tested by examining the long-run relative frequency of the outcome concerned. The confirmation of such hypothesis is then judged in terms of the closeness of the agreement between hypothetical probability and the observed frequency. The logic of such tests of course presents some difficulties which are of the following nature – let us take a hypothesis ‘H’ to the effect that the probability of rolling of an ace with a certain die is .15. Now the hypothesis ‘H’ does not deductively imply any test implications specifying how many aces will occur in a finite series of throws of a die. Hence if the proportion of aces actually obtained in a large number of throws differs from .15, this does not refute ‘H’ in the sense in which a hypothesis of strictly universal form is rejected. Similarly, if a long run of throws of the given die gives a proportion of aces very close to .15, it does not confirm ‘H’ in the sense in which a hypothesis of a universal form is confirmed. Hence ‘H’ does never logically exclude the possibility that the proportion of aces obtained in a long series of throws of a given die differs from .15. But still it may be said quite correctly that such differences are highly improbable in the statistical sense, that is, if the experiment of performing a long series of throws is repeated a large number of times, we will see that only a small proportion of the long series will give a probability result regarding the aces that differs considerably from .15. Thus, we may say that if the hypothesis ‘H’ is true then it is highly probable or practically certain that in a long run of the random experiments the observed portion of aces still differs very little from the probability value established, that is, .15. Similarly, if the relative frequency obtained by a long run of random experiments is not close to the probability assigned to the probabilistic hypothesis, the hypothesis is very likely to be false. Thus, we find that the probabilistic hypotheses are to be accepted or rejected on the basis of statistical evidence concerning observed frequencies. But for this, appropriate standards will have to be specified. That is, we will have to specify (1) What deviations of observed frequencies from the probability stated by a hypothesis are to be taken as the grounds for rejecting the hypothesis and (2) How close an agreement between observed frequencies and hypothetical probability is to be taken as a condition for accepting the hypothesis. The answer to these questions depends very much upon the context in which a research is carried out and the objective which are thought to be achieved through that. Thus, if the hypothesis concerns the question of the effectiveness and safety of a new vaccine, then the decision about its acceptance will have to be taken not only by seeing how well the statistical test results agree with the probability specified by that hypothesis, but also by seeing how serious could be the consequences of accepting it and acting on it. The problems that arise in this context have actually been discussed under the theory of statistical tests and decisions developed on the basis of the mathematical theory of probability and statistics. We cannot afford to go here into the details of all the relevant discussions.

Explanation in Natural Sciences  39 In spite of the above difficulty regarding the confirmation and refutation of probability hypotheses, many important laws and theoretical principles of the natural sciences are of a probabilistic nature, although they are very often of a more complicated form than the simple probability statements that we have taken for our illustration above. Some of the important probability laws of modern science are regarding the radioactive decay or the half-life of radium or that of polonium. Again, in the kinetic theory of gases, various uniformities in the behaviour of gases are expressed in terms of probabilistic laws. We can thus see that although probability laws are not as universal as the laws employed in D-N explanation and again although the relation between the explanans and explanandum in the probability explanation is not as rigidly logical as in the case of deductive-nomological, still probabilistic laws and probabilistic explanations are widely used in natural sciences with great amount of practical success. One point must be guarded against regarding the comparative nature of genuinely universal laws and probabilistic laws. It is so often pointed out that it is a mistake to distinguish between the two kinds of laws because it is said that as a matter of fact, all scientific laws are probabilistic. It is argued that even in the case of the so-called universal laws the supporting evidences are always finite and logically inconclusive. Therefore, such laws also can be nothing more than highly probable. But, as Hempel points out, This argument misses the point that the distinction between laws of universal form and laws of probabilistic form does not refer to the strength of the evidential support for the two kinds of statements, but to their form, which reflects the logical character of the claim they make. A law of universal form is basically a statement to the effect that in all cases where conditions of kind F are realised, conditions of kind G are realised as well; a law of probabilistic form asserts that under certain conditions, constituting the performance of a random experiment R, a certain kind of outcome will occur in a specified percentage of cases.9 However, in spite of the above important difference in the logical character of the two laws, there is a striking similarity also on account of which both of them are, in a sense, equally universal. About genuinely universal statements, we can very well realise that they imply assertions not only regarding the examined cases but also regarding the unexamined cases of the past, present and future. As a matter of fact, they imply counterfactual and subjunctive conditionals which in a way concern all the possible cases, whether existent or non-existent. It is just this character of the universal laws that give them their explanatory power. We have to note that this character is there in the laws of probabilistic form also. For example, the law that the radioactive decay of radium226 is a random process with an associated half-life of 1620 years is not only a report about the decay rates of radium226 which have

40  Explanation in Natural Sciences been observed; it rather concerns the decay process of any case of radium226, whether of past, present or future, and it also implies counterfactual and subjunctive conditionals, such as, ‘if two lumps of radium226 were to combine into one, the decay rate would remain the same as if the lump were separate.’ And it is really this character of the probabilistic laws that gives them also their explanatory power. Thus, although the difference between the genuinely universal laws and probabilistic laws as used in the two modes of explanation referred above is important, the difference is to be understood in a correct perspective. From whatever we have said above regarding the inductive-statistical explanation, it is clear that when an event is explained with reference to the statistical or probabilistic laws, the explanans does not confer any logical certainty upon the occurrence of the explanandum; rather it extends to the explanandum merely an inductive support. This is why such explanations are regarded as essential inductive in nature. Due to this inductive nature of the probabilistic forms of explanations, it is sometimes said about them that really speaking they do not explain the occurrence of an event because the explanans does not logically exclude the possibility of the non-occurrence of the explanandum. As a reply to this objection, it may be pointed out that it is of course a fact that probabilistic forms of explanation are not as strong as the deductive-nomological form, but still, the non-availability of strictly universal laws in all the spheres of science have made an important room for the role of probabilistic laws and the explanations made on the basis of them. The role of probabilistic laws is growing very fast in sciences and the explanations that are made on the basis of them have proved to be very much successful. For example, the role of probabilistic laws in the study of the behaviour of gases cannot be overestimated. Thus, although not as stringent as that offered by the D-N model, the statistical modes of explanation also are to be regarded as genuine forms of explanation. The two modes of explanation elucidated above, which are broadly conceived under one model known as the ‘covering law model’, are the forms of explanation that are, according to Hempel and some other philosophers of sciences, used in sciences. However, Hempel recognises that the actual forms of explanation as used by the scientists on various occasions may not always strictly confirm to one or the other model outlined above. As we have pointed out earlier, there may be several explanations which are often of elliptical form in which the laws are not mentioned explicitly but on exposing the logical structure of the argument we may see that the laws were present there in suppressed form. Similarly, there may be incomplete explanations or even explanations of the type that Hempel calls ‘explanation-sketch’. By an ‘explanation-sketch’ Hempel means some general outlines of explanation which ‘might well be developed, by gradual elaboration and supplementation, into a more closely reasoned explanatory argument, based on hypotheses which are stated more fully and which permit of a

Explanation in Natural Sciences  41 critical appraisal by reference to empirical evidence’.10 Hempel further remarks that ‘The decision whether a proposed explanatory account is to be qualified as an elliptically formulated deductive-nomological or statistical explanation, as a partial explanation, as an explanation-sketch, or perhaps as none of these is a matter of judicious interpretation.’11 What, however, Hempel means by outlining the structure of all the scientific explanations in terms of covering law model is that any scientific explanation when fully elaborated and exposed take the form of either of these two. In other words, the covering law models represent the basic logical structure of the scientific explanations even in spite of the fact that actual scientific explanations are not always advanced exactly in terms of these models. Hempel himself very clearly states that These models are not meant to describe how working scientists actually formulate their explanatory accounts. Their purpose is rather to indicate in reasonably precise terms the logical structure and the rationale of various ways in which empirical science answers explanation-­seeking why-questions. The construction of our models, therefore, involves some measure of abstraction and of logical schematisation.12 What, however, is important to note is that, according to Hempel and his sympathisers and followers, the covering law model is the model of explanation which is used not only in the natural sciences but also in the social sciences including history. There have been thinkers who have strongly argued for the difference in the nature of explanation advanced in social sciences and history. They have pointed out that the nature of explanation as actually used in social sciences and history, if analysed, would reveal that they are of various other models and not strictly of the Hempel’s covering law model. But Hempel in his turn has taken into account all these so-called different forms of explanation as proposed by the various philosophers of social science and history and has extensively argued that they are all basically of the covering law structure. He has done it, for example, in case of the functional explanation, teleological explanation, dispositional explanation and various other kinds of explanations as proposed by important thinkers like Dray, Scriven etc. His standpoint seems to be that from a practical standpoint there may be different forms of explanation, but in the strict scientific sense, an explanation is always basically of the covering law model. Scientists may not always explicitly use this model of explanation, but implicitly all the genuinely scientific explanations are of the nature of either of the two models outlined above. He also says that scientists sometimes formulate their explanations in various other ways because of the fact that they have to face

42  Explanation in Natural Sciences various other kinds of audiences for whom they have to present their explanations. But that does not mean that their explanation is of a different form. Basically, according to him, all scientific explanations are of the covering law model. He is very emphatic on this point which is clear once again from his following statement, It is therefore beside the point to complain that the covering law models do not closely match the form in which working scientists actually present their explanation. Those formulations are generally chosen with a particular kind of audience and thus with particular pragmatic requirements in mind. This is true also of the way in which mathematicians present their proofs.13 Explanation with Reference to Theories We have found that what is most important in Hempel’s covering law model of explanation is the statement of certain uniformities in the explanans. These uniformities, as we have seen so far, are stated in terms of certain empirical or causal laws. But in science uniformities are formulated not only in terms of laws but also in terms of what are called theories. Science seeks greater and greater generalisations, that is, generalisations of more and more universal or broader scope. Even within the range of empirical generalisations, we have seen that there are generalisations of relatively lower and higher coverage. Furthermore, the laws of lower generalities are deduced from those of higher generalities by means of the covering law model itself. But when in a particular sphere there are a number of empirical generalisations, some of them being even of very high generality, the scientist tries to bind them together under some uniformities of such a broad and deep character that they are all explained with reference to them in the sense that they all systematically follow as conclusions out of them. Such uniformities of the broadest possible character are known as theories as contrasted to laws. Not only the existing laws of a particular sphere are deductible from the theories that are formulated by the scientist within that sphere, rather certain new laws may also be deduced from them. These theories are very different from ordinary empirical generalisations in as much as they employ certain terms which do not refer to ordinarily testable empirical entities. Besides, they also refer to certain processes which are not ordinarily speaking empirical processes. The terms in reference are known as ‘theoretical terms’ and the entities which they are supposed to refer to are known as ‘theoretical entities’. Similarly, the specific kind of non-empirical processes that are referred to by the scientist theoreticians are known as ‘theoretical processes’. Thus, a scientific theory is formulated in such a way that it necessarily employs certain theoretical terms and processes which are non-empirical in any ordinary sense of the term ‘empirical’. These theories nevertheless give us a very broad and at the same time a deeper understanding of the phenomena of the sphere to which a particular

Explanation in Natural Sciences  43 theory belongs. We try to explain individual natural phenomena of the particular sphere by taking recourse to certain empirical laws which the scientist becomes able to discover within that sphere. But for a deeper understanding of the events or the phenomena themselves, we sometimes feel the necessity of having an explanation of these laws themselves. Ordinarily, as we have repeatedly said above, attempts are made to explain the law of lower generality by subsuming those under laws of higher generalities. But the ultimate explanation of such laws can be found to the best satisfaction by taking recourse to theories because a particular theory of a particular sphere seems to bind all the laws of that sphere in a systematic deductive manner such that a very broad and deep vision about the entire sphere is generated and everything seems to be clearer in a broader and deeper perspective. For example, in the sphere of gases, we try to explain the phenomenon of the expansion of a gas in a jar by means of Boyle’s law. But when Boyle’s law itself requires explanation, we take recourse to the well-known theory about gases which is known as the ‘kinetic theory of gases’. Boyle’s law states that the pressure of a fixed mass of gas at constant temperature is inversely proportional to its volume. This law explains phenomena such as why the volume of a gas increases when heated. But then our curiosity may naturally arise regarding the law itself as to why it comes to be true. This curiosity can be answered and satisfied by taking recourse to the kinetic theory of gases which is a theory about the fundamental constitution of gases stating that a gas consists of molecules moving at random with tremendous velocity. It is due to this constitution of gases that when heated the molecules begin to move with still more tremendous velocity resulting in the expansion of the volume. And this naturally gives us a broader and deeper understanding about the phenomena of the expansion of gases when heated. Similarly, in the realm of light when several laws regarding reflection, refraction etc. are established to explain particular events relating to light, a curiosity naturally arises regarding the explanation of the laws of reflection, refraction etc. themselves. And this is done by means of the theories of light known as corpuscular theory and the wave theory. Of course, sometimes in the same sphere there are opposing theories used to explain the same phenomena or the same law each requiring further scientific investigation to be either confirmed or refuted. This has actually happened in the realm of light in the form of the above two theories or again in the realm of astronomy in the form of the Ptolemaic or the Copernican theories. In the case of the former, controversy is still going on regarding the greater conformability of one over the other, while in case of the latter the controversy has more or less been settled in favor of the Copernican theory. So far as the question of the nature of explanation made with reference to theories is concerned, certain new features come about here. The basic nature of explanation made with reference to theories also is of course either deductive or inductive, more or less, on the pattern of deductive-nomological explanation or statistical explanation in accordance with the fact that the

44  Explanation in Natural Sciences theories used are of a universal form or of a statistical form. But certain new features come up mainly due to the fact that the theories employ theoretical terms and theoretical processes referring to entitles and processes that are somehow non-empirical in nature. Because these terms and processes refer to non-empirical or theoretical entities, therefore it is difficult to deduce directly from them certain laws or uniformities of empirical nature. For this, it is necessary that the theoretical terms of the theories be somehow related to phenomena with which we are already acquainted, that is, which are in some sense or other empirical in nature. Such principles which relate theories to empirical phenomena are technically known as bridge principles which, as it were, serve as a link between the theories and the ordinary empirical laws. Thus, in any explanation with the help of theories there are two kinds of principles which are used as explanans. These two kinds of principles may be called in the words of Hempel himself ‘Internal principles’, and ‘Bridge principles’. Internal principles characterise the basic theoretical entities and processes invoked by a theory and the laws to which such entities and processes are supposed to conform. The bridge principles are the principles which relate the theoretical entities and processes of the theory to such empirical phenomena with which we are already acquainted. In the explanation with reference to theories, therefore, the explanans consists of the internal principles of a theory and the bridge principle, while the explanandum consists of some law which either deductively follows or is inductively supported by the explanans. For example, let us take the case of the explanation of Graham’s law of diffusion which states that ‘At fixed temperature and pressure, the rates at which different gases in a container diffuse through a thin hole are inversely proportional to the square roots of their molecular weights.’ This law is explained by means of: a. The internal principles contained in the kinetic theory of gases about the random character of molecular motion and the probabilistic law governing them, and b. The bridge principle consisting of the hypothesis that the diffusion rate is proportional to the average velocity of its molecules. Similarly, Boyle’s law of gases is explained by making it deducible from a. The internal principles of the kinetic theory of gases as mentioned above, and b. The following two bridge principles: 1 The pressure exerted by a gas in a container resulted by the impact of the molecules upon the containing walls and is quantitatively equal to the average value of the total momentum that the molecules exert per second to a unit square of the wall, and 2 The mean kinetic energy of the molecules of a fixed mass of a gas remains constant as long as the temperature remains constant.

Explanation in Natural Sciences  45 As we have hinted above, like the laws the theories also are either of a universalistic or statistical character. Accordingly, explanations with reference to theories relating to gases, for example, are mostly probabilistic or statistical in nature and therefore explanations of Graham’s law and Boyle’s law are probabilistic or statistical in nature. But theoretical explanations are or may be of the deductive-nomological character also in accordance with the fact that the theory invoked in a particular case is perfectly universal in nature. Theoretical explanations, as we have noted above, give us a broader and deeper understanding of a phenomenon because they help us to see the laws from a broader and deeper perspective. But there is hardly any difference in the logical rigour that the theory generates in comparison with the law. As the success of science more and more depends upon the invoking of more and more abstract theories with respect to which laws and phenomena of a particular realm gain explanations of a deeper sort, a science which abounds in theories is regarded as more developed in nature. It is alleged that social sciences lack in theories and therefore their status as sciences in comparison to natural sciences is inferior. How far such an allegation has truth or value, we shall see later on. Notes 1 C.G. Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation (The Free Press, 1965) P. 337. 2 Ibid., P. 338. 3 Ibid., P. 345. 4 Ibid., P. 345. 5 Ibid., P. 353–54. 6 Ibid., P. 247. 7 Ibid., P. 380. 8 Ibid., P. 386. 9 C.G. Hempel, Philosophy of Natural Science (Prentice-Hall Inc., 1966) P. 66. 10 C.G. Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation (The Free Press, 1965) P. 424. 11 Ibid., P. 424. 12 Ibid., P. 412. 13 Ibid., P. 428.

3 Explanation in Social Sciences The Two Approaches

In the previous chapter, we have seen the logical nature of explanation as used in natural sciences and have found that it is mainly of the covering law model. We have also seen Hempel emphasising that all scientific explanations, whether explicitly given in this model or not, are basically of that model. This is true according to him not only for natural sciences but for social sciences as well. It is specifically this latter claim which has been seriously questioned and opposed by many thinkers. It is pointed out by these thinkers that even if it is granted that the models presented by Hempel represent adequately the basic forms of explanation as used in natural sciences, they can hardly be taken as models adequate for explanations in social sciences. Social phenomena involve human behaviour and the latter can hardly be explained in the same mechanical or causal way in which natural phenomena are explained. For explanations in social sciences, therefore, these models are completely inept. Thus, there arises a very serious and lively controversy regarding the nature of explanation in social sciences. The controversy mainly centres on the problem whether explanations in social sciences are of the same nature as those used in natural sciences or they are completely different from those of the latter. Advocates of what is called unified science or the unity of science such as Hobbes, Comte, Mill, Hempel, Nagel and several others emphasise the methodological unity of the natural and the social claiming that explanations used in the two realms are basically of the same nature. Hempel, for example, emphasises time and again that explanations of human actions are ‘not essentially different from the causal explanations of physics and chemistry’.1 In contrast, there are thinkers like Dilthey, Dray, Winch, Taylor etc. who with equal vigour emphasise the methodological disunity between the natural and the social sciences and point out that explanations of human or social phenomena are completely different from those of natural phenomena. According to them, the concept of explanation entails the concept of understanding and understanding human action does not consist simply in pointing out their deducibility from certain antecedents with the help of certain causal laws. In a way, thinkers possessing this kind of view emphasise a contrast between explanation and understanding, between what is more technically (and at the same time DOI: 10.4324/9781003405719-4

Explanation in Social Sciences  47 popularly) known as Erklaren and Verstehen and show their allegiance with the latter. Emphasising the affinities between the social sciences and the humanities, these thinkers in general argue that social sciences cannot conform to the logic of natural sciences because of the nature of the objects they study. Explaining human behaviour is not simply to specify invariable laws out of which the behaviour may be deduced with a logical certainty or an inductive probability, but it is really making the behaviour in question intelligible. Again, making it intelligible mean illuminating its rationality in terms of the beliefs and motives, the norms and values and the intention and purposes of those who behave. William Dray, while reacting sharply to the Hempelian model of explanation as used in history, complains that the model suffers from a kind of illegitimate apriorism. By this, he means that Hempel and his followers quite illegitimately stipulate a specific meaning of the term ‘explanation’ and try to apply it forcefully to all the different branches of study. He suggests that ‘The task of a philosopher is not to stipulate a meaning for “explanation,” but to elicit it from practice generally agreed to be acceptable within the discipline concerned.’2 Thus, according to him, what is lacking in Hempel’s covering law theory is that it is not able to show proper sensitivity to the concept of explanation as used and understood in branches other than natural sciences. Offering an explanation of human action, according to him ‘simply does not coincide conceptually with showing an actions performance to have been deducible from other conditions in accordance with empirical laws’.3 Dray points to an alternative interest of the human sciences that is not of explaining or predicting the occurrence of an event but of understanding its meaning. According to him, it is the task of social scientists not only to explain actions as events with causes but to show their rationality as acts with reasons, that is decode their meaning or significance for the agents performing them. Thus, social sciences necessarily assume an interpretive dimension. It is the interpretation of the meaning or significance of human behaviour that enables us to understand it. And this interpretation is not necessarily causal. The social sciences concern themselves with that part of human behaviour which is ordinarily called ‘action’. This action is definitely different from mere movement of the body. To highlight this distinguishing feature of human actions as contrasted with mere bodily movement, Alexander Rosenberg very ably remarks, ‘Speech, not snoring, jumping, not falling, suicide, not just death are the subject matters of social sciences’.4 To make it better conform to social scientific and historical explanation, Hempel tried to modify his initial stringent position regarding the nature of explanation by pointing out that many explanations in these areas were simply explanation sketches. He further pointed out that many of the laws of history and social sciences were merely statistical laws rather than genuinely universal. By making majority of the laws merely statistical rather than universal, Hempel wanted to imply that instead of explaining the occurrence of any particular event, historical and social scientific explanations would simply point out the frequency with which an event would appear. Against these,

48  Explanation in Social Sciences however, Dray argues that explanation sketches and statistical generalisations are no solutions to the problem of explanation in history and social sciences. As a matter of fact, the very nature of explanations as given in these branches is different. The task of social sciences in explaining human actions is not simply to bring them under certain causal laws but to make them rational and intelligible. Following Dray, theorists in the neo-Wittgensteinian tradition like Winch, Taylor etc. go a step further by pointing out that the concern of social sciences with an agent’s reasons for performing a social action is a necessary presupposition of any attempt to uncover the meaning or reason behind that action. For this, it is necessary to go into an analysis of the beliefs, motives and purposes of the agents performing social actions. Such an analysis will give out the reasons why people acted in a particular case in the way they actually did. And that will be the real sense of explaining any human action, whether individual or social. Thus, we can see that there is a very lively controversy between the two kinds of views outlined above regarding the nature of explanation of human actions, which form the subject matter of social sciences and history. The first kind of approach as adopted by Mill, Hempel etc. is known as the naturalistic approach, while, in contrast, the second as adopted by Dray, Winch etc. is known as the anti-naturalistic approach. For a better understanding of the two approaches, let us deal at some length with the representative views of some of the thinkers from both sides. The Naturalistic Approach Both, as a matter of principle and as a matter of history, the advocates of this approach have been those who have advocated the doctrine of ‘Unified Science’ or ‘The Unity of Science’. But what this doctrine really amounts to sometimes proves to be a bit ambiguous. There are at least two kinds of approaches to this connection. There are thinkers like Hobbes, Comte, Newcomb etc. who advocate the doctrine of the unity of science on the ground that all the sciences whether dealing with natural phenomena or with human affairs can ultimately be reduced to the physical sciences like physics and chemistry, and then ultimately to physics alone. The principle of matter in motion, as Hobbes claims, can explain phenomena as much mechanically and causally in the human realm as in the natural realm. The success of Newtonian mechanics actually emboldened the thinkers to derive all the sciences ultimately from the science of physics. All social sciences can be reduced to psychology and the latter in term of physiology and then to physics. Hence any separate laws or principles are not required to explain human phenomena. They are all basically to be explained and understood in terms of the mechanical laws working in nature. All human actions are to be explained in terms of the so-called mental processes such as motives, intentions, beliefs and other such thought processes, but basically all these so-called psychological processes are physiological processes which are governed by

Explanation in Social Sciences  49 the same physical or mechanical laws which govern the natural phenomena. Therefore, all sciences are basically one and the same and there is no need of having separate principles for explaining human behaviour or social phenomena. This programme of reducing all sciences to physical sciences, although very ambitious, is at the same time very dubious. It is not clear in what exact sense this kind of reduction is to be affected. It seems very dubious that all human affairs can ultimately be understood in purely naturalistic and mechanical terms. This is why such a view has been criticised on various grounds, some of which we will see in our last chapter. The question of reduction has, of course, been taken up more recently also by both scientists and philosophers of science. There have been some advances also in this direction, as is very clear from the emergence and growth of such interdisciplinary sciences as physical chemistry, biophysics, microbiology etc. but still it is a matter of very likely debate amongst philosophers of science as to what is exactly meant by claiming to ‘reduce’ one science to another. It has generally been argued that reduction of one particular science to another must necessarily mean understanding and interpreting the concepts and the laws of the one in terms of the other. But how far success can be achieved in this direction is more a matter of scientific research rather than only of philosophical debate. (One may see in this connection in the last chapter of Hempel’s small but instructive book The Philosophy of Natural Science.) The question of the reduction of human sciences like sociology, political science etc. to physics in the above-noted sense requires still more vigorous and intensive scientific research for which we are not competent. Let us, therefore, take here for our consideration the less dubious claim of the advocates of the unity of science and that is regarding the methodological unity of all sciences. The claim, generally speaking, amounts to the effect that the methods required and adopted in natural sciences are equally valid and appropriate for social sciences also, and consequently therefore the logical properties of an adequate explanation in relation to one science are equally applicable to other sciences also. The most famous defence of this claim has been made, perhaps, by J.S. Mill in his monumental work A System of Logic (London, 1961), but it has been equally vigorously depended in more recent years by Hempel. With some modification, the name of Karl Popper also may be included in this list. We have said ‘with some modification’ because although Popper very vigorously supports the doctrine of the methodological unity of the sciences, he has his own specific views on many important issues relating to social sciences. This is why he has extensively criticised Mill on specific points in both of his works on the methodology of social sciences – The Poverty of Historicism and The Open Society and Its Enemies. We shall therefore try to see here the views of these three thinkers to some length. Mill is strongly opposed to anything like reduction of social sciences to the physical ones, but then he is very unambiguous about the methodological unity of the two sciences. This is very clear from his following statement

50  Explanation in Social Sciences which he makes while starting analysis of the natural and social sciences after analysing the method of science in general. He says, ‘The methods of investigation applicable to natural and social sciences must have been already described, if I have succeeded in enumerating and characterizing those of science in general.’5 This clearly shows that the logic of natural or social sciences is the same as that of any other science. Mill’s conception of scientific investigation is based upon his idea of causation to the effect that events of certain kind are always found in experience to be followed by events of another certain kind. Scientific investigation consists, according to him, in establishing generalisations regarding these causal investigations. Mill firmly believed that such general laws of causal nature could be very well established both in natural and social sciences. Maybe that we have not been able to discover many uniformities so far in the realm of social sciences due to some lack in our present resources, but that does not mean that general laws cannot be established in social sciences. Mill cites the example of metrology in which many laws guaranteeing successful prediction have not been possible so far. But that does not mean that changes in atmospheric conditions are not bound by regular causal laws. Similarly, he brings about the example of the theory of tides in which also so many laws have not been possible so far. Mill supposes that the science of human nature can be compared to metrology and tidology. Moreover, human nature is very complex and therefore we may be unable to do more than making statistical generalisations. But that does not mean that in the case of human and social conditions the laws are not possible. These broad statistical generalisations again are not enough by themselves; rather, they must be connected deductively with laws of nature from which they are derived. In case of human nature, these laws of nature are, according to Mill, the ‘laws of mind’. These laws of mind differ from empirical laws not in kind but in the degree of generality and exactitude. There can be, according to Mill, a science of human character also based on the laws of human mind. In his words, The laws of the formation of character are derivative laws, resulting from the general laws of mind, and to be obtained by deducing them from those general laws by supposing by any given circumstances and then considering what, according to the laws of mind, will be the influence of those circumstances on the formation of character.6 This leads Mill to his conception of the inverse deductive method. So, according to Mill, in dealing with the social phenomena the social scientist must wait and see what happens and then formulate the result in terms of the empirical findings, and finally connect them with the laws of human nature by deduction showing that such derivative laws were naturally expected to be the consequences of those ultimate laws. With all these attempts of showing the possibility for the establishment of general laws of society based on the laws of human mind, Mill actually wants to prove a parity of nature of

Explanation in Social Sciences  51 scientific investigations, whether carried on in natural sciences or in social sciences. The nature of explanation of the human behaviours, therefore, cannot be different according to him in principle from the nature of explanation of the natural phenomena. Mill puts his idea about the nature of scientific explanation in the following words: An individual fact is said to be explained by pointing out its cause, that is, by stating the law or laws … of which its production is an instance. Thus a conflagration is explained when it is proved to have arisen from a spark falling into a heap of combustibles; and in a similar manner, a law … is said to be explained when another law of laws are pointed out, of which that law itself is but a case and from which it could be deduced.7 It may be seen clearly that Mill talks here of the cases of explanation of both a particular event as well as of a law, and his theory of explanation is basically the same as that which Hempel explicitly developed in the form of the covering law model of explanation. Taking such law-based explanations as the model of scientific explanation, Mill argues for the parity of the model as used both in natural and social sciences. The only difference between the two according to him seems to be that whereas the laws in the former are of a physical nature, in the latter they are of the nature of psychological laws, which Mill calls ‘laws of mind’. Both kinds of laws, however, are of causal nature, which serves as the basis for explanation in their respective realms. We have seen earlier in Chapter 2 Hempel’s formulation of the covering law model in terms of the two forms of explanation. According to him, it is these two forms which are the forms of any scientific explanation worth the name. They are therefore equally valid for all the sciences, whether natural or social. It may be that at present we are not able to formulate laws in the realm of social sciences in as precise and definite a manner as we are able to do in the realm of natural sciences, but that does not in the least alter the case of the nature of explanation in the latter at least in principle. With growing research in these sciences, such laws may be formulated with utmost precision, and explanations advanced in an incomplete form so far may be made complete. This is very clear from the statement that Hempel himself makes under the heading ‘Explanation in the Non-physical Sciences’ after formulating the covering law model of explanation, Our characterization of scientific explanation is so far based on a study of cases taken from the physical sciences. But the general principles thus obtained apply also outside this area…. While frequently the regularities invoked cannot be stated with the same generality and precision as in physics or chemistry, it is clear at least that the general character of those explanations conforms to our earlier characterisation.8

52  Explanation in Social Sciences Or again, Such laws cannot be formulated at present with satisfactory precision and generality, and therefore, the suggested explanation is surely incomplete, but its intention is unmistakable to account for the phenomenon by integrating it into a general pattern of economic and socio-psychological regularities.9 He also concedes like Mill that most of the laws of social sciences may not be as strictly universal as those of natural sciences, but that also does not matter. These laws will be statistical or probabilistic in nature and the resulting explanations will be of an inductive nature. Hempel extensively argues about explanations as used in social sciences and history that they are basically of the same covering law model as those used in natural sciences. In this connection his essay ‘Function of Laws in History’ has become of classical importance. In this essay, he very forcefully argues that historical explanations also use the same kind of covering laws as are used in natural sciences. And therefore, basically, explanations used in history are exactly similar to those used in natural sciences. Human behaviour can very adequately be explained causally, and it is really such explanations which are genuinely called explanations because they can be tested empirically and are not influenced by personal prejudices and values. Human behaviour is taken to be explained in terms of human motives and purposes. But according to Hempel, motives are nothing other than causes and therefore explanations in terms of motives also are basically of the causal and deductive nature. In his own language, ‘The determining motives and beliefs, therefore, have to be classified among the antecedent conditions of a motivational explanation, and there is no formal difference on this account between motivational and causal explanation’.10 As we have said above, besides Mill and Hempel, Karl Popper also argues in favour of the methodological unity of sciences. Of course, Popper has his own specialties in many respects and due to these he sometimes very severely criticises advocates of methodological unity like Comte and Mill on many specific counts, but on the whole, he agrees with them that the methods adopted in natural and the social sciences are fundamentally the same. Unlike the former two, however, he concedes that there are differences also between the methods of the two sciences and the difference according to him mainly consists in the fact that ‘in most social situations if not in all, there is an element of nationality’.11 Nevertheless, fundamentally, the two kinds of sciences share the same kind of method. It is better to quote Popper himself in this connection, I do not intend to assert that there are no differences whatever between the methods of the theoretical sciences of nature and of society … But I agree with Comte and Mill – and with many others, such as C. Menger….. that the methods in the two fields are fundamentally the

Explanation in Social Sciences  53 same. The methods always consist in offering deductive causal explanations, and in testing them.12 Popper extensively elaborates the scientific method in almost all his important works (such as The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Conjectures and Refutations, The Poverty of Historicism etc.) and he also analyses the covering law model of explanation in these works. He broadly agrees with thinkers like Hempel that this the model of explanation is the scientific model, and this should be equally applicable both to natural and social sciences. He is of course alive to some specific facts such as that of sociology of knowledge, the prior political or cultural commitments of the social scientist in studying social phenomena etc. but then he emphasises that social scientists must take utmost care to eliminate these subjective factors to that objectivity be achieved in the realm of social sciences. Nevertheless, the method of explanation basically remains the same in social sciences as that of natural sciences. The social scientist must also, therefore, engage himself in formulating objective causal laws as far as possible, because adequate explanations of social phenomena could be given only with reference to them. Of course, recognising the difference between the two kinds of sciences to some extent, Popper also visualises the possibility of the application of a method called ‘the method of logical or rational construction’ or the ‘zero method’ by him in the realm of social sciences, but by and large the methods of explanation used in the two sciences are the same. Besides these advocates of the naturalistic approach in social sciences, mention may also be made of the view expressed by A.J. Ayer in one of his very influential essays entitled ‘Man as a Subject for Science’.13 In this essay, Ayer argues against the views of Ryle and Wittgenstein that motives are also causes. In fact, Ayer has made a vigorous attempt in his essay to reply to all those anti-naturalists who want to establish that human actions cannot be explained in the fashion of natural phenomena because the former are the results of human motives, which can be accounted for in terms of reasons and not of causes. Ayer tries to show against this that motives are also causes and therefore all explanations given in terms of motives are basically causal explanations. Amongst some of the less important contemporary advocates of the thesis of unity of science who proceed in the footsteps of Hempel are I.C. Jarvie, George C. Homans etc. Jarvie remarks in one of his essays in very clear terms that ‘Understanding a human being and understanding an atom are not different processes.’14 Similarly, Homans remarks, ‘The process of the explanation is the same for all sciences though the content of the propositions will naturally differ from science to science.’15 The Anti-naturalistic Approach We have said above that William Dray’s reactions to the covering law model of explanation of Hempel, especially with regard to historical explanations,

54  Explanation in Social Sciences proved to be very significant and challenging both for the explanations given in historical context and those advanced in social sciences. Dray believed firmly that only a rational explanation of human behaviour could be the proper form of explanation in this context. Whatever Dray pointed out by way of exposing the nature of explanation was mainly directed towards the nature of historical explanation, but that proved to have important bearings on the question of the explanation of human action performed in a general social context. Thus, it is highly significant to outline his notion of rational explanation here. In this respect we can fair no better than quoting his own words which he utters by way of exposing the real nature of historical explanation. He says, The function of an explanation is to resolve puzzlement of some kind. When a historian sets out to explain a historical action, his problem is usually that he does not know what reason the agent had for doing it. To achieve understanding, what he seeks is information about what the agent believed to be the facts of his situation, including the likely results of taking various courses of action considered open to him, and what he wanted to accomplish: his purposes, goals or motives. Understanding is achieved when the historian can see the reasonableness of a man’s doing what this agent did, given the beliefs and purposes referred to; his action can then be explained as having been an ‘appropriate’ one. The point I want to emphasize is that what is brought out by such considerations is a conceptual connection between understanding a man’s action and discerning its rationale.16 Such an explanation Dray calls rational explanation. By way of giving out the general nature of such an explanation, he says, ‘Explanation which tried to establish a connection between beliefs, motives, and actions of the indicated sort I shall call “rational explanation”.’17 As it can be clearly seen, whatever Dray has said here about explanation is specifically applicable to historical explanation. But it proved to have significant effects on the problem of explanation considered in the context of any human action as contrasted with the explanation of the natural events. What Dray emphasised as significant in the case of the explanation of human behaviour was the role played by the beliefs, the motives, the purposes and the goals of the agent or the agents who acted. An explanation of human action merely in terms of causal antecedents based on objective observations or experiments could not be regarded as proper. Besides, the context in which the action was performed also forms a very significant part of the factors to be considered in giving an explanation of human action. All these points proved to go sharply against the Hempelian covering law model of explanation and therefore provided a very formidable basis for all those who believed that explanation of human action could not be given on the same model on which explanation of natural occurrences was given. In general,

Explanation in Social Sciences  55 social sciences are concerned with human action performed either in general social context or in political, economic or other such contexts. Therefore, the views such as those of Dray proved to have direct impact on the problem of explanation of social action. Besides Dray, Collingwood and Dilthey had also in their own ways spoken of the need for understanding the beliefs, motives etc. of the agents for having a proper understanding of any human action. In other words, they advocated the need for an empathic understanding of human behaviour in place of a mere external observation of the same. There were many defects in their views of course, but their emphasis upon the need of taking the specifically human factor in explaining human actions had definite effects on the problem of explanation in social sciences. Thinkers like Peter Winch, Taylor etc. particularly took the case of explanation in social sciences for their consideration and emphasised in the light of the views of the above kind that human action was conceptually different from the occurrence of the natural events. Therefore, an attempt at explaining the former on the lines of the latter is basically a misconceived attempt. The views of Peter Winch as depicted in his small book The Idea of a Social Science as well as in some of his influential essays have proved to be of immense importance in understanding the problem of explanation in social sciences. Therefore, we would like to give a brief picture of his view here. Winch begins with criticising Mill’s views concerning the assimilation of the methodology adopted in natural and social sciences. We have seen above in our explanation of Mill’s views that according to him there could hardly be any basic difference between natural and social sciences, and therefore the pattern of explanation which was adopted in the former was also to be repeated in the latter. Winch tries to cut at the very root of any such view by pointing out that ‘The notion of a human society involves a scheme of concepts which is logically incompatible with the kinds of explanation offered in the natural sciences.’18 His dissent from the view such as that of Mill, and as later on propounded by Hempel, becomes even more strongly clear when he says, ‘Anyone who thought that a study of the mechanics of the movement of animate creatures would throw light on the concept of animate life would be the victim of a conceptual misunderstanding.’19 Such remarks cast a very hard blow to all such attempts which were made to foster a unification of science by pointing out that human behaviour was just a more complex form of the behaviour of lower animals or even of the inanimate objects of nature. Winch pointed out that all human actions were meaningful as contrasted to the natural objects which were totally devoid of any meaning. And the meaning was a category which could never be bound under the laws of natural causation. Instead of being law-governed, human behaviour was according to him rule-governed, and it is this factor of being governed by rules and not by mechanical causal laws that gave human actions their meaning. Rules always worked, according to him, in a society and therefore apart from a society human action had no meaning. All meaningful human actions therefore were social actions which were rule-governed. To quote his

56  Explanation in Social Sciences own words in this connection, ‘All meaningful behaviour must be social, since it can be meaningful only if governed by rules, and rules presuppose a social setting.’20 Winch is a staunch Wittgensteinian in his belief and conviction, and therefore he has tried to interpret and understand the whole question of the understanding of human behaviour on the lines of our understanding of language. Every language is rule-governed. It is the rule regarding the use of the language which gives its meaning. Again, this meaning along with the rules which govern it has any sense only in a social context. Taking clues from all these things about language and its meaning, Winch points out that explaining human behaviour is really understanding the meaning or the point which lies behind it. And this meaning is not a thing which could be put under causal laws. As he says Understanding is grasping the point or meaning of what is being done or said. This is a notion far removed from the world of statistic and causal laws: it is closer to the realm of discourse and to the internal relations that link the parts of a realm of discourse.21 Again, this meaning can be clear by going through the rule by which it is governed. Taking human actions as rule-governed instead of being law-governed, Winch actually wants to imply that there may be marked a kind of regularity in human behaviour, which must not be compared with the regularity found in the occurrence of the natural events. Law-governed regularity is unbreakable but rule-governed regularity is breakable at least in principle. That is, in human realm there is always a possibility of the rule of action, and consequently the regularity, to be broken, but this is hardly the case in the sphere of natural events, unless there is a mistake in the calculation or the formulation of the law itself. The point can be illustrated by means of a simple example concerning traffic rules. There is a traffic rule to the effect that green light is a signal for the movement of the vehicles, while the red light is the signal for their halt. This rule actually brings about regularity in the movement of the vehicles. But the possibility of the breaking of the rule of the regularity such that a driver inspired of the red light may go on driving his vehicle can never be ruled out. In other words, the relation between the red light and the halting of the traffic is not of the same nature as that between the dense cloud and the rain or between taking of arsenic by someone and his death. All this difference is due to the very important factor that human beings have got the privilege of having a choice for their action which the natural events have not. The fact that human beings are capable of making decisions in accordance with their own choices makes a real conceptual difference between the nature of human actions and that of the natural occurrences. Winch has pointed out that human action has got the important characteristic of being meaningful and therefore understanding the behaviour of

Explanation in Social Sciences  57 human action necessarily implies understanding the meaning or point behind it. Now what actually is meant by saying that human action is meaningful, and Winch tries to analyse at some length the notion of the meaning of human actions. To see it is very important for seeing what actually an explanation of human behaviour in social context will mean for him. Winch says that to say that human action is meaningful is to say that it is performed for a reason. Now the question is, what is one’s acting for a reason? Winch tries to answer this question by taking the case of a person who voted for the Labour Party at the last general election. When asked about the reason for voting the Labour Party, the person concerned says that the Labour government could most likely be able to preserve industrial peace. The reply, according to Winch, is a clear-cut case of the fact that prior to voting, the person has thoroughly deliberated over the merits and demerits of voting the Labour Party and then has finally come to the conclusion that he will vote for the party. This is, according to Winch, ‘a paradigm case of someone performing an action for a reason’.22 But again, he points out that not all cases of meaningful human behaviour are as clear-cut as this. There are many cases of meaningful behaviour in which the reasons are not very explicitly known. But they are there in some form or other. Winch analyses different sorts of cases including the cases of pathological behaviour as well as of those in which active deliberation about alternatives were not taken. He argues for all such cases that there was a reason for acting in the ways the person really acted whether the reason was explicit or not. Winch takes the example of a man voting without deliberations and without subsequently being able to offer any reason for his act. He points out that although the person does not act for any reason, his act still has a definite sense, for ‘what he does is not simply to make a mark on a piece of paper; he is casting a vote.’23 What Winch wants to imply here is that even if the person concerned might not have conscious reasons for his action, his action still has a meaning. He might have voted Labour simply by way of following the example of his father and his friends. But this by itself forms the reason for his voting. Moreover, the fact that he is not simply making a mark on a paper but casting a vote clearly implies that he must have some understanding of the political set-up in which he was living and that he must be knowing to some extent the meaning and implications of casting a vote. Thus, no human action can be said to be completely devoid of meaning and without any reason. Even the possibility, if any, of binding human actions under any law depends according to Winch as their having some meaning and that meaning being governed by certain rules of the society in which the person concerned lives. Law-bound activities really mean that what one does now will also be repeated by him in future, if the circumstances are the same. But Winch points out that such a commitment of repeating something in future on the basis of what one does now is also based on the application of some rule of the society in which the person lives and acts. To quote his own words,

58  Explanation in Social Sciences I can only be committed in the future by what I do now if my present act is the application of a rule …… this is possible only where the act in question has a relation to a social context, this must be true even of the most private acts, if, that is, they are meaningful.24 Another very important point that Winch stresses in connection with the explanation of human action is the need for the social scientist’s participation in the motives, beliefs, purposes etc. of the agent or agents whose action he is going to explain. In this respect Winch is ready to give due respect and regard to such ideas as those of Collingwood and Dilthey who emphasised vicarious or empathic understanding of the acts of the agents concerned. He also appreciates in this connection the view of the idealists who emphasised that the understanding of human society was closely connected with the activity of the philosopher rather than of a scientist.25 All these point out that in Winch’s view, it does not suffice for a scientist simply to observe the actions of the agents from a distance in a neutral manner in an effort to understand them. What is, on the other hand, required is that the scientists must undergo close participation in the beliefs and ideas, the concepts and the motives by which the agents are being guided in their actions in a particular way. Without doing this, a proper understanding or explanation of social action cannot be possible. Even Weber who is generally taken as emphasising a causal explanation of human behaviour with the naturalists seems to recognise this fact when he so often speaks of an understanding of the ‘subjective sense’ with which the agents perform their actions, Understanding some one’s behaviour is not a substitute for explaining it, on the contrary, it is only a part of the necessary causal account, and has itself, like any other hypothesis, to be tested against the evidence. But the need for understanding the meaning which behaviour has to the agent performing it is what distinguishes the explanation of behaviour from explanation of inanimate events.26 Winch points out that the neutrality of human behaviour is often emphasised on the plea that the common men performing social actions are sometimes not even acquainted with the concepts with which the scientists think about them, and they are not even aware of the laws in terms of which the scientist tries to understand their actions. For example, they never think in terms of the economic concept of ‘liquidity preference’ or ‘the laws of supply and demand’. It is therefore useless for the economist to have a participation in the beliefs, ideas and concepts of people. He can just formulate his concepts and laws by observing their behaviour from some distance. Winch argues against such views by taking the example of liquidity preference itself. He accepts that it is a technical economic concept which is not generally used by businessmen in the conduct of their affairs. But, as he says,

Explanation in Social Sciences  59 It is logically tied to concepts which do enter into business activity, for its use by the economist presupposes his understanding of what it is to conduct a business, which in turn involves an understanding of such business concepts as money, profit, cost, risk etc. It is only the relation between his account and those concepts which makes it an account of economic activity as opposed, say, to a piece of theology.27 So according to Winch, any reflective understanding of the scientist in matter of social phenomena must presuppose the participant’s unreflective understanding. Criticising Mill again who wants to compare the behaviour of human beings with the working of a machine, Winch remarks, It is quite mistaken in principle to compare the activity of a student of a form of social behaviour with that of, say, an engineer studying the workings of a machine. … If we are going to compare the social student to an engineer, we shall do better to compare him to an apprentice engineer who is studying what engineering is all about. His understanding of social phenomena is more like the engineer’s understanding of his colleague’s activities than it is like the engineer’s understanding of his colleague’s activities than it is like the engineer’s understanding of the mechanical systems which he studies.28 All this implies that studying human behaviour is a totally different sort of activity as compared to that of the working of a machine or something like that. So, the pattern of explanation in case of the latter will be completely different from that of the former. While trying to explain or understand any human activity in social context, it is necessary to participate in the beliefs and ideas of the agents who are performing actions. It is only then that we may be able to understand the point or the meaning of these actions. Putting the same point in a different manner, Winch points out that while a natural scientist has to undergo only one socialisation process, a social scientist has to undergo two socialisation processes. For any scientist to be worth his name and activities has to be a member of the scientists’ community so as to participate in the concepts and ideas of that community. Both a natural scientist and a social scientist have to play this role. But a social scientist has to play an additional role besides the above one. He has also to be a member of the community of the agents whose activities he is studying or going to study. Without the latter, the social scientist will not be able to make out the real point or the meaning behind any social action. One implication of such a view is that for understanding any society one has to be somehow a member of that society. Taking help from Wittgenstein, Winch remarks that just as we have difficulty in understanding the meaning of a language with which we are not acquainted, similarly we have difficulty in understanding the meaning of social activities of which we are not a member. We may be

60  Explanation in Social Sciences able to formulate statistical laws about the likely occurrences of the words in the language but that does not give us an understanding of the language. Similarly, we may formulate statistical laws about external behaviour of the members of a society but that does not give us a proper understanding of their behaviour. It is in this sense that Winch has pointed out that the notion of understanding or the notion of meaning cannot be bound under causal or statistical laws. Comparing a social action with that of a language in the above sense, Winch remarks, Wittgenstein says somewhere that when we get into philosophical difficulties over the use of some of the concepts of our language, we are like savages confronted with something from an alien culture. I am simply indicating a corollary of this; that sociologist who misinterprets an alien culture are like philosophers getting into difficulties over the use of their own concepts.29 Like Winch, Charles Taylor also favours the doctrine of interpretative understanding for the explanation of social phenomena. Taylor takes scientific explanation as having the following two important properties – 1 It gives the antecedent conditions of the explanandum in terms of a set of factors which makes evident its connection with others. 2 It is capable of building in tiers, that is, the correlations which explain at one level can be taken as explanandum and explained at another.30 Thus, according to Taylor what is characteristic of scientific explanation is not that the event to be explained is deducible from certain laws and initial conditions but that it relates the explanandum to other events in such a manner that its place amongst them becomes clear. In other words, it now does not look as an isolated phenomenon, rather it is seen in an interrelationship with other linked phenomena. Scientific explanation thus links phenomena with a wider range. But this linking is not like the subsumption of a narrower generalisation under a broader one. In this connection, Taylor specifically points to Braithwaite’s view of explanation which he has expounded in his book Scientific Explanation, especially on pages 302–3. In the case of human behaviour and social phenomena, Taylor particularly favours the importance of purposive explanation. He criticises the views of the propounders of the doctrine of unified science according to which human science can be reduced to physical sciences in the sense that the explanation of purposive behaviour can be given in terms of neural or physiological changes. Taylor points out that a clear distinction between the lower and higher levels of behaviour must be made, which the behaviourists deny. The behaviour of the lower level could be explained exclusively in terms of neurological changes. But the higher human behaviour could not be explained in this way. The level of human behaviour sharply differs from the level of behaviour made by cats

Explanation in Social Sciences  61 and rats and therefore the former requires totally different conditions of explanation from those of the latter. Human behaviour is purposive behaviour and therefore it must be explained and understood in terms of purpose for the sake of which it is performed. Furthermore, talking in tune with Dray, Winch and others, Taylor also speaks of the necessity of developing a kind of intuition on the part of social scientist so as to become able to understand the inner meaning of human behaviour. The scientist may also have to change his life so as to be one with the life of them whose behaviour he wants to study and interpret. Explaining human behaviour is not like explaining natural behaviour and therefore the two cannot be compared. The explanation of human behaviour requires an interpretative understanding for which certain measure of insight must be developed. And this insight cannot be understood in a deductive or a formalised set-up. What Dray, Winch, Taylor etc. point out regarding the explanation or understanding of social behaviour has certainly an air of subjectivity or relativity about it. The chief merit of the Hempelian theory of explanation consists in the fact that it ensures objectivity to scientific explanations, which the doctrine of interpretive explanation perhaps fails to do. Winch, Taylor etc. tried to ensure this objectivity of scientific explanation in their own ways by laying emphasis on a kind of intersubjective verification. They could not rule out completely the point that objectivity was the concern of social sciences. But Gadamer goes beyond them in this respect. He openly and boldly points out in his book Truth and Method that objectivity is not our least concern in social sciences and therefore we must give up our concern with intersubjective interpretations also. Gadamer points out that all social scientific studies are directly influenced by personal prejudices and marks of tradition. He argues that the force of tradition operates upon knowledge in such a way that all interpretation of meaning is already prejudiced. Even the perception on an object like a desk is not unprejudiced according to him. It is rather an interpretation based on a limited, one-sided view of the desk. In a similar way any understanding of any immediate data of experience is theory-laden, that is, it is coloured is terms of the personal prejudices and the marks of one’s tradition and culture. One’s understanding of anything reflects his experience of the values of culture and society to which he belongs. Therefore, the introduction of a preconceived scientific method into social sciences is undesirable in so far as a proper understanding of the social phenomena is concerned. There is another aspect also which is equally important according to Gadamer. The prejudices which we have referred to above constantly undergo revisions and changes in and through the very act of interpretation. Thus, although on the one hand all interpretation is a projection of cultural prejudices, on the other hand the prejudices themselves are always changing in the light of the interpretations made. Thus, according to Gadamer, the process of interpretation is a dialogical process in which one understands the meaning of social behaviour in terms of one’s own prejudices and at the same time is forced to reconsider the prejudices in the light of the questions

62  Explanation in Social Sciences raised by the social phenomena. Human sciences are thus forms of historical self-consciousness. They do not express objective truth about human behaviour. It is therefore foolish to search for objectivity in human sciences. In human sciences only such truths can be available which a social scientist finds by interpreting phenomena in a specific cultural or historical prospective. The validity of the scientist’s result cannot depend on its consistency with the findings of the other scientists. Different cultural, historical or personal perspective permits insight into the different dimensions of the same phenomenon. If objectivity has got any meaning in social sciences, it must be understood in terms of the fruitfulness of an interpretation in revealing new dimensions. There is no other meaning of objectivity in social sciences. Thus, Gadamer hints for a purely subjectivist and relativistic understanding of the social phenomena viewed in the light of the prejudices or prejudgements of the interpreter. Naturally, therefore, an attempt at explaining social phenomena in the light of the Hempelian model is totally misconceived and misdirected according to him. Explanation in social sciences cannot conform to specific models. Explanation of the same phenomenon may differ from one interpreter to another in accordance with each one’s prejudices or cultural backgrounds. Understanding of the social phenomena therefore can only be subjective and relativistic. We have thus drawn a brief sketch of the debate between the naturalists and the anti-naturalists by presenting some of the representative views, on the whole, it can be seen that the naturalists advocate a unity between the methods of explanation as found in the natural and the social sciences, whereas the anti-naturalists emphasise a sharp distinction between the two. The debate is still going on, and it is not a very easy task to take side. But we will have to come to a definite conclusion for ourselves, which we will try to do in the last chapter. For the time being, let us see some of the forms of explanation which are generally taken as used by the social scientist. Notes 1 C.G. Hempel, ‘The Logic of Explanation’, included in Aspects of Scientific Explanation (The Free Press, New York, 1965), P. 254. 2 William Dray, ‘The Historical Explanation of Action Reconsidered’, included in The Philosophy of History (Oxford univ. Press, 1974) Ed. by P. Gardiner, P. 68. 3 Ibid., P. 68. 4 Alexander Rosenberg, Philosophy of Social Science (Oxford Clarendon Press, 1988) P. 15. 5 J.S. Mill, A System of Logic, Book VI, Chap. I 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid., Book III, Chap XII, Sec. I. 8 C.G. Hempel, Op. cit. P. 251. 9 Ibid., P. 252. 10 Ibid., P. 254. 11 K. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism (Ark Paperbacks, 1986) P. 140. 12 Ibid., PP. 130–31.

Explanation in Social Sciences  63 13 Philosophy, Politics and Society (Oxford univ. Press, 1967) Ed. by P. Laslett and W.G. Runciman. 14 I.C. Jarvie, ‘Understanding and Explanation in Sociology and Social Anthropology’ included in Explanation in the Behavioural Sciences (Cambridge univ. Press, 1970) Ed. by R. Borger and F. Cioffi, P. 237. 15 G.C. Homans, ‘The Relevance of Psychology to the Explanation of Social Phenomena’, included in ibid., P. 314. 16 William Dray, Op. cit., PP. 68–69. 17 Ibid., P. 69. 18 Peter Winch, The Idea of a Social Science (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1971) P. 72. 19 Ibid., P. 74. 20 Ibid., P. 116. 21 Ibid., P. 115. 22 Ibid., P. 46. 23 Ibid., P. 49. 24 Ibid., P. 50. 25 Ibid., P. 90. 26 W.G. Runciman (Ed.), Max Weber: Selections in Translation (Cambridge univ. Press, 1978) Translated by P. Mathews, Introduction, P. 5. 27 Peter Winch, Op. cit. P. 89. 28 Ibid., P. 88. 29 Ibid., P. 114. 30 Charles Taylor, ‘The Explanation of Purposive Behaviour’ included in Explanation in the Behavioural Sciences (Cambridge univ. Press, 1970) Ed. by R. Borger and F. Cioffi, P. 50.

4 Explanation in Social Sciences The Various Forms

What we have said so far makes at least this much clear that there is a sharp difference amongst thinkers regarding the nature of explanations as used in natural and social sciences. Although it is generally accepted that for natural science explanations with reference to causal antecedents and causal laws may be adequate, for social sciences and history, they are not adequate. A proper understanding of the types of phenomena studied in these fields calls for some other types of explanation. Several forms of explanation other than the covering law model have been claimed by different thinkers to be adequate for these fields. They further claim that these forms of explanations are not only logically adequate for these fields, rather they are actually used in these spheres. Let us see here some of these forms of explanation as a brief outline. Functional Explanation As the name suggests, this kind of explanation is the explanation of some item relating to an individual or a group in terms of its functions. For example, the fact of heart beating in living beings is explained in terms of its function of circulating blood throughout the organism. To be more explicit, if it is asked why does the heart of living beings beat, one answer to this question is that the function of heart beating is blood circulation throughout the organism. Thus, the phenomenon of heart beating is explained by reference to the function it serves. Similar examples may be taken in terms of certain specific behaviours of persons living in a society. For example, some of the religious or ritualistic behaviour of a particular group or society may be explained by pointing to its function of preserving the unity or the identity of the group or the society. Speaking about the import of the explanations of certain social groups or institutions in terms of their functions, Malinowski says, ‘To explain any item of culture, material or moral, means to indicate its functional place within an institution…’1 Similarly, he also says about the functional explanation of the culture that it ‘Aims at the explanation of anthropological facts at all levels of development by their function…’2 DOI: 10.4324/9781003405719-5

Explanation in Social Sciences  65 Functional explanations of the above type are generally invoked in cases of some recurrent activity or uniform behaviour pattern found in an individual or a group and the chief objective of such an explanation is to exhibit the contribution that this activity or pattern makes to the preservation or the development of the individual or the group in which it occurs. In other words, functional explanation seeks to understand a behaviour pattern of an individual or a society or a culture by determining the role that it plays in keeping the given system in a proper working order or maintaining it as a going concern. Functional explanation is also known as functional analysis and such type of analysis is mostly done in cases of organisms or systems which are deemed as organisms. The example of the analysis of heartbeat in terms of its function of blood circulation that has been cited above may be further elaborated to make it clear that the aim of such an analysis or explanation is to ensure that the bodily organism may be able to fulfil some of the necessary requirement for its proper working. The blood circulation helps the supply of nutrition and the removal of the waste generated in the body and by means of the fulfilment of these two functions the bodily organism is maintained. Similarly, those who make functional analysis of some of the social items or phenomena actually do so because of their taking the society as an organism. Keeping in view this organismic character of society, they explain some phenomena, such as some religious rite or custom, in terms of such a function which may be deemed necessary for preserving the society or the culture as a living and going concern. In this sense, it can be said that functional analysis or functional explanation is always goal-directed, and this goal is mainly that of the maintenance of the social or other types of organisms. The function that a particular phenomenon or item may serve for the social organism may be one which is consciously intended by the persons forming the society or it may be also some function or goal which is not so consciously intended. It is in this context that Merton speaks of manifest and latent functions. Manifest functions are intended functions whereas latent functions are the unintended ones. By taking the example of the rain-making ceremonials of the Hopi community, Merton remarks that they may fail to achieve their manifest objective of making rains but then, ‘They may fulfil the latent function of reinforcing the group identity by providing a periodic occasion on which the scattered members of a group assemble to engage in a common activity.’3 Similarly, Malinowski attributes important latent functions to religion and magic in as much as they establish and enhance mental attitudes such as reverence for the tradition, communal harmony, etc. which are very helpful for the maintenance of social group. To quote his own words, ‘The function of magic is to ritualize man’s optimism, to enhance his faith in the victory of hope over fear.’4 Thus, according to all those who advance functional explanations of phenomena, the chief aim of the functions invoked is somehow to preserve the social organism in question. As functional explanation is goal-directed, it is taken by some thinkers as a special form of teleological or purposive explanation. But there are others

66  Explanation in Social Sciences who oppose this kind of assimilation between functional and teleological explanations. Malinowski and Merton are the two reputed functionalists who have very strongly argued against taking functional explanations as teleological explanations. While marking out the scientific character of the functional analysis in terms of his covering law model, Hempel also sides with these two thinkers in keeping functional explanations separate from the teleological ones. Hempel cites examples of self-regulating laws and systems from physics and chemistry and tries to argue on the basis of them that such self-regulating laws should not be regarded as teleological in nature. According to him, ‘The laws of self-regulation themselves are causal in the broad sense of asserting that for systems of a specified kind, any one of a class of different “initial states” will lead to the same kind of final state.’5 He further points out that For most of the self-regulatory phenomena that come within the purview of functional analysis, the attribution of purpose is an illegitimate transfer of the concept of purpose from its domain of significant applicability to a much wider domain, where it is devoid of objective empirical import.6 But there are others like A. Ryan who emphatically assert that functional explanations are teleological explanations. In fact, Ryan asserts that in the context of functional explanation, the term ‘function’ actually means purpose or goal. To quote his own words, Functional explanations are only in place where an event or a series of events is explained by showing that it was required for some goal or other and that this fact is a sufficient condition for the event’s occurrence. In other words, teleological explanation is what we are concerned with. … It is impossible to assail the proposition that functional explanation is teleological explanation; and thus, it follows that non-teleological explanation is also non-functional explanation.7 It is not very relevant here for our purpose to go into the debate whether functional explanations are teleological explanations or not. Further light will be thrown upon the controversy when we will have the occasion to deal with the nature of purposive or the teleological explanation itself a few moments after. For the time being, it is more important for us to see that functional explanations are explanations which are used in social sciences, more specifically in sociology and anthropology. In fact, thinkers, who have been anxious to separate sociology as a discipline from psychology, have argued that functional explanations are the only right type of explanations that are to be used in sociology. Sociology is a study of the social phenomena taken in their wholeness and therefore explanation of social phenomena must be given in their wholeness. Explanation of social phenomena in terms

Explanation in Social Sciences  67 of the motives and desires of individual agents is reducing sociology to psychology, which is not proper. Sociologists, therefore, have mostly favoured what is called holistic explanations in place of individualistic ones. In other words, they have favoured the use of the method of holism in sociology in place of the method which is generally known as methodological individualism. Whether explanation in social sciences should be holistic or individualistic is itself a question of lively debate amongst social thinkers which we will see in some detail a few pages ahead. Let us for the time being see another kind of explanation mostly claimed to be used in social sciences and that is purposive or teleological explanation. Purposive or Teleological Explanation Human beings are conscious beings and therefore they so often act with a mind towards some goal which they want to achieve. Therefore, sometimes human actions are attempted to be explained in terms of purposes or goals towards which they are directed. Such explanations which are made with reference to a goal are known as purposive or teleological explanations. In other words, when a human behaviour, whether individual or social, is explained by reference to that for the sake of which it is performed, it is taken to be explained teleologically. In the words of Charles Taylor, An explanation is teleological if the events to be explained are accounted for in this way: if G is the goal ‘for the sake of which’ events are said to occur, B the event to be explained, and S the state of affairs obtaining prior to B, then B is explained by the fact that S was such that it required B for G to come about. In other words, a teleological explanation is defined as such by the form of the antecedent, a form in which the occurrence of event to be explained is made contingent on the situation’s being such that this event would bring about the end in question.8 In this characterisation of teleological explanation, it is clear that an explanation is teleological if the event to be explained is explained with reference to the goal towards which it is directed. But this statement of teleological explanation is a very general statement according to which even the goal-directed behaviour of unconscious objects and events may be regarded as teleological. But here we want to confine the use of the word to conscious human activities, which are mostly done in order to achieve some goal. It is perhaps in Taylor’s sense of teleological explanation that functional explanations also are treated as teleological explanations. But if we want to distinguish between the two types of explanations, which perhaps we must do, then we must confine teleological explanations to the explanations of the acts of conscious human beings and we must allow the unconscious goal-directed activity, whether of conscious or unconscious beings, to go to the sphere of functional explanations. Thus, teleological explanations are explanations of conscious

68  Explanation in Social Sciences human activity in terms of purpose or goal, keeping this in mind or in order to achieve which an individual or a group of individuals performs some activity. For example, when by way of explaining the act of jogging of a man, we say that he is jogging in order to attain health, it is a purposive explanation. Similarly, if we explain the act of voting of persons of a particular locality by saying that they voted for a particular party in order to be ruled by a government of their own choice, then it will be an example of a teleological or a purposive explanation. Purposive explanations are thus explanations in terms of reasons and not in terms of causes. In other words, they take into consideration the reason for which an action is done and not the cause which makes it occur. In this sense, a purposive explanation is a rational explanation, making the point or the meaning behind an action clear. We have seen that thinkers of the Verstehen School have emphasised in their own ways the element of meaning involved in all human actions. In other words, according to all of them, human actions have some point behind them. Teleological or purposive explanations try in their own ways to make this point or meaning behind some human action intelligible. Due to its specific nature, purposive explanations are sometimes equated with explanations in terms of an agent’s motive. An action done for a motive or for a purpose more or less comes to the same thing. At least some of the naturalist thinkers like Hempel, Ayer etc. have taken purposive explanations as special forms of motivational explanations or the other way round. For instance, Hempel says, ‘The explanation of an action in terms of the agent’s motives is sometimes considered as a special kind of teleological explanation.’9 And by taking teleological explanations motivational explanations, Hempel tries to establish that all teleological explanations are basically causal explanations because actions done by some motive or purpose are basically actions for some desire which is an antecedent condition of any action and therefore motivational or teleological explanations are basically causal explanations. This is very clear when we go into the actual spirit of the following consideration of Hempel. First, he asks a question in the following form: ‘Unquestionably many of the explanations which are offered for human actions involve reference to goals and motives; but does this make them essentially different from the causal explanations of physics and chemistry?’ And then he answers in the following manner, One difference which suggests itself lies in the circumstance that in motivated behaviour, the future appears to affect the present in a manner which is not found in the causal explanation of the physical sciences. But clearly, when the action of a person is motivated by the desire to reach a certain objective, then it is not the as yet unrealized future event of attaining that goal which can be said to determine his present behaviour, for indeed the goal may never be actually reached; rather it is (a) his desire, present before the action, to attain that particular objective,

Explanation in Social Sciences  69 and (b) his belief, likewise present before the action, that such and such course of action is most likely to have the desired effect … therefore there is no formal difference on this account between motivational and causal explanation.10 It is due to such an analysis of the teleological or motivational explanation that Hempel takes the term ‘teleological’ in the context of ‘explanations as a misnomer’.11 More or less Ayer also in his important essay ‘Man as a Subject for Science’ analyses explanations given in terms of reasons basically as forms of causal explanations because reasons given in terms of motives or purposes are basically causes of actions according to him. We do not want to go here into a full discussion of these views because we would like to deal below separately with rational explanations given in terms of motives and beliefs of the agents involved. For the time being, we have pointed out that explanations in terms of purpose and goal form one variety of various kinds of explanation that are claimed to be used in the explanation of social actions. Explanation as Redescription Hempel and his naturalist supporters have always insisted that mere description is not explanation; explanation is something more than mere description. But we have seen in Chapter 1 that thinkers like Scriven forcefully arguing against such a view on the ground that sometimes explanations are nothing more than descriptions because it is the latter in many contexts which make some event in question fully intelligible. Giving an example of description serving as a perfect explanation, Scriven points out that explaining how fusion processes enable the Sun to maintain its heat output consists in nothing but describing these processes and their products. So according to Scriven the question before us is not whether description counts as explanation, the question rather is what sort of description really counts as an explanation. We have therefore to find out the criterion of the right description which can serve as an explanation of some event. Scriven also suggests in this context that tentatively we can say that ‘Right description is the one which fills in a particular gap in the understanding of the person or people to whom the explanation is directed’.12 Explanations in history are very often of the type of description because so often a historical event is explained simply by narrating some of the events which preceded it. This is done for filling in the gap which exists in the understanding of the person or persons requiring the explanation regarding the event in question. Such preceding events may be taken as the causal links leading to the event in question because they are the antecedents. There is no harm in taking the events as causes leading to the event in question, but such events hardly seem to be always bound under certain causal laws, so that they may give rise to a covering law form of explanation, as sometimes Hempel wants to make out of them. Hempel repeatedly insists not only on the role of antecedent conditions but also, and

70  Explanation in Social Sciences rather more emphatically, on the causal laws. He asserts, for example, that ‘A set of events can be said to have caused the event to be explained only if the general laws can be indicated which connect “cause” and “effect”’.13 But as Mandelbaum insists, this is not which is usually involved when we make a causal analysis of an event. On the other hand, such an analysis of an event involves the analysis or the description of the complex event into a component series of sub-events. Taking the example of a man falling from a ladder, Mandelbaum argues that if we are asked to explain it, it may be done by analysing the event into the various component events such as the man’s fainting, losing his grip over himself, relaxing, his centre of gravity shifting etc. It is this sort of analysis of a particular complex event into its connected parts that we are called upon to make if we are asked why the man fell from the ladder. Mandelbaum concedes that it is, of course, a fact that in accounting for the man’s fall from the ladder, some implicit use of some such laws as ‘unsupported bodies do fall’ are taken help of, but ‘It is simply not true that there is any law which explains all of the particular cases in which men fall from ladder.’14 Thus, many events are explained not by the help of covering laws but simply by going through an analysis or a redescription of the component connected events which led to the event in question. As a redescription makes the occurrence of the event quite intelligible, it may be very well regarded as explaining the event. The above kind of redescription is all the more appropriate and sometimes the only convincing method when it is employed for making human actions intelligible. We have already noted above that in history such a method of explanation is so often taken recourse to. But it is so often used in social sciences also. Let us take an example of a policeman who utters before a man who is skating on the ice the following words, ‘The ice over there is very thin’. Let us suppose that an onlooker hears the statement but does not understand the full implication of it. He therefore asks, ‘why did the policeman utter like that?’ Clearly, the onlooker is seeking here for an explanation of the policeman’s action of uttering a particular statement. The explanation may very well be given by going into a redescription of the intention of the policeman which made him utter the above kind of words. To be more explicit, it may be pointed out that the policeman feared that the skater might go to that spot where the ice was thin and thereby, he might fall into danger. It is thus by way of making the skater conscious about its potential danger that the policeman made the above kind of statement. This redescription of the intention of the policeman makes his linguistic action of issuing a statement perfectly intelligible. Such a redescription of the intention lying behind a linguistic action has been termed ‘Illocutionary redescription’ by Skinner in his essay ‘Social Meaning and the Explanation of Social Action’.15 He further argues in the above essay that similar examples of non-linguistic social actions may also be taken where the point behind the action may be made fully intelligible by going into the redescription of the intention of the man or a group of men who has performed the action. And we know that the real

Explanation in Social Sciences  71 explanation of a social action lies in nothing other than making the internal meaning of or the point behind the act clear. Skinner takes another example of certain tribesmen who carry about with them boxes on their heads covered in a specific way which they treat with special regard. Now if we are to explain this social action of the tribesman, we can do it only by decoding or redescribing the meaning lying hidden within the action. Such a meaning may be decoded by pointing out that the tribesmen regard the boxes as their soul and they are carrying them on their heads specially covered because they think they are protecting in that way their souls against witchcraft. Thus, there may be many examples of such social actions whose explanation lies simply in going into a redescription of the intentions lying behind such actions, and therefore, it cannot be said that explanation in human realm is of only one type and that is of the covering law type. Explanation in Terms of Reasons, that is, in Terms of Beliefs, Motives etc. We have already made a general attempt in Chapter 3 to analyse the nature of rational actions and rational explanations while dealing with the views of the anti-naturalists like Dray and Winch. In general, actions done on account of some reason rather than due to some causes are known as rational actions. On this account, we have seen that even what we have called purposive actions are rational actions. Action done on account of some reason is known as rational action. Such reasons may include the motives, beliefs and purposes of the agents working. As a matter of fact, the notion of rationality is very troublesome because there is not one conception of it. Even then we generally believe that human actions are rational actions because they are done for some reason. This is why advocates of the anti-naturalist camp have always emphasised the necessity of decoding the reasons lying behind any human action while explaining it. Explaining an action means making it intelligible and making an action intelligible means seeing the point lying behind it. This can be done only if we go into an analysis of the beliefs, motives etc. of the agents on account of which they have performed the actions. Moreover, while doing such analysis the context in which the action is done must also be taken into consideration. All human actions, whether individual or social, are done with some motives and the person (or persons) doing it is (or are) always guided by some of the beliefs that he (or they) cherishes (or cherish). Therefore, bringing out the meaning of an action necessarily implies going into the beliefs and motives of the doers. Thus, the explanation of an action by reasons, that is, a rational explanation, includes under it the end or ends that the agent seeks to attain through that and the beliefs that he entertains regarding the availability, propriety, effectiveness etc. of the alternative means that he thinks will help him in attaining the end. For example, if a certain group of people migrates to some another place, the

72  Explanation in Social Sciences action may be explained by pointing to the motive of the group such as that of residing at a place where all sorts of commodities for ease and comfort are available and the belief of the group that it can attain its objective only if it changes the place and goes to that particular place where it has actually migrated. Similarly, if there is a strike in some factory, the action of the workers can be explained by pointing to their motive of achieving better service condition and their belief that of all the alternative means, striking work in the factory will be the best one. Other examples of individual action or actions formed by a group of people may be explained by pointing out their respective motives and beliefs. As we have pointed out earlier, William Dray has been one of the very influential thinkers who have attempted to analyse the nature of rational explanation for human actions, whether historical or social. We have tried in Chapter 3 to analyse some of the general features of Dray’s construal of rational action. Let us see here some of the specific features of his conception of such an action or explanation. According to Dray, any rational explanation of an action has two important characteristics: 1 Firstly, it displays the rationale of an action by means of ‘a reconstruction of the agents’ calculation of means to be adopted towards his chosen end in the light of the circumstances in which he found himself’. This enables us to understand what considerations convinced the agent to act as he did. 2 The reasons that explain the action of the agent in the above way must be good reasons so that it may be perfectly clear that what was done was the thing to have been done for the reasons given rather than merely the thing that is done on such occasions. To show that the agents have good reasons, the rational explanation must involve what Dray calls a ‘principle of action’, which is different from Hempel’s general empirical laws. The general form of such a principle of action may be put as ‘when in a situation of type C, the thing to do is X’. Hempel tries to reconstruct the formal nature of the rational explanation of Dray’s conception in the following manner. He points out that a rational explanation of Dray’s conception answers a question of the form ‘why did agent A do X’ and the answer according to Dray may be given as follows: A was in a situation of type C. In a situation of type C, the appropriate thing to do is X. Therefore, A did X. Hempel points out that Dray’s concept of rational explanation, as put in the above form, fails to explain in an adequate manner the doing of X by A because the conclusion does not follow logically from the premises. According

Explanation in Social Sciences  73 to Hempel, the action will be explained in a proper logical manner if the explanatory argument is put in the following form: A was in a situation of type C. A was a rational agent. In a situation of type C any rational agent will do X. Therefore, A did X. Clearly this form is the deductive-nomological form which, according to Hempel, is really the form in which scientific explanations are advanced. The third premise states a universal law and the first two premises state the initial conditions. Thus Hempel, being once again under the strong influence of the view that the covering law model is the only model of scientific explanation, tries to point out that Dray’s construal of rational explanation is inadequate as a form of scientific explanation because under it the explanandum does not logically follow from the explanans. But in doing this he either unknowingly or deliberately misses the whole point that Dray wants to convey through his conception of rational explanation. An explanation in terms of reason is not a deductive-nomological form of explanation, but yet it explains the action of an agent in so far as it makes the point or meaning of the action intelligible. For such an explanation, it is not necessary that the explanandum be a logical consequence of the explanans. What, however, is objectionable in Dray’s conception of rational explanation is his mention of the second characteristic as noted above. Perhaps this characteristic which is evaluative in nature is not required in the explanation of the action of an agent if by explanation is meant making intelligible the point or the meaning lying behind his action through an analysis of his motives and beliefs. Both Hempel and Strawson point to this defect of Dray’s conception of rational explanation and in this perhaps they are right. Strawson points out that it may be accepted that understanding an action is often contingent upon our discovering the agent’s reasons for acting in a particular way. But this is very different from seeing the rationality of his action (which consists in the second characteristic of Dray as pointed out above).16 The answer to the question whether some reason is good reason or not will differ from person to person, because it will depend upon personal evaluation or appraisal and this has nothing to do with the explanation of the agent’s action. Such a reason may be given to justify the agent’s action which is definitely different from explaining it. We may go into even greater details of the above controversy whether Dray’s mention of the second characteristic in his conception of rational explanation thus reduces explanation into justification or not. But here what is more important and relevant for our purpose is that according to the naturalists, such as Mill, Hempel, Ayer etc. explanations given in term of beliefs

74  Explanation in Social Sciences and motivating reasons are basically causal explanations because what is taken as motives and beliefs of action are nothing other than its causes. We have seen Hempel’s reaction while considering the nature of teleological or purposive explanation above. Let us see a few more examples of such a view and try to assess their worth and value. That motives are nothing other than cause and consequently that motivational explanations are causal explanations has been tried to be argued in more than one way. There have been some thinkers like Newcomb who have interpreted motives not as something psychological or mental, but as a state of the physical organism itself. A motive is, according to him ‘A state of organism in which bodily energy is mobilized and selectively directed towards part of the environment’.17 By identifying motives with physiological states, Newcomb actually tries to show that there is a mechanical relation between motives and the actions done on account of them and so they are basically causal in nature. The action of a man is like the behaviour of a watch and therefore actions prompted by motives are mechanical actions. Criticising such a view, Winch argues that motives cannot be identified with physiological states because sometimes by discovering the motive behind an action we increase our understanding about it, but such an understanding has nothing to do with our knowledge of certain changes in the physiological state of the person concerned. To quote Winch’s own words, To discover the motives of a puzzling action is to increase our understanding of that action; that is what ‘understanding’ means as applied to human behaviour. But this is something we in fact discover without any significant knowledge about people’s physiological states; therefore, our accounts of their motives can have nothing to do with their physiological states.18 Mill, of course, takes motives as conscious mental events. But then he takes their relation with actions as a causal relation. Taking motives and actions causally related implies that there is a uniform relation between them of somewhat a mechanical type like one which exists between, for example, a blocked carburettor and the stoppage of a motor engine. Winch argues that such a mechanical relation can be seen to exist between a certain kind of headache and an attack of migraine also but ‘nobody would want to call my headache the motive for migraine’.19 Hence according to Winch motives can never be identified with causes. More recently Ayer has very strongly argued in his essay ‘Man as a Subject for Science’ that motives are nothing other than causes. He first points out in his essay that we ordinarily explain human action by citing the agent’s motives and intentions and the social context of his behaviour. After this he argues that all these conditions must be construed as causes of which the agent’s actions are the effects. He further argues on the basis of this that there is no reason why the reign of the law should break down here implying

Explanation in Social Sciences  75 thereby that explanation in terms of motives are basically explanations of the causal nature made in terms of the causal laws.20 Now the important point to be seen here in such arguments is not simply whether motives are causes or not. For, motives in a sense may be taken as causes because they are antecedents of actions. The point really to be seen is whether there is a causal relation between motives and actions in the sense that the same motives are invariably followed by the same actions in case of the same person or of different persons. If the answer to this question is ‘yes’, then only the relation between motives and actions may be bound under laws. But the affirmative answer itself is very doubtful in this case. So, laws of the kind of counterfactual conditionals cannot perhaps bind motives and actions together. Moreover, if we analyse properly the relation between motive and action by going into full details of the gap between them, we can very well see that motives are not mechanically related to actions in the fashion of dense cloud and rain or taking of arsenic and death. The motive for example for voting to a particular political party may be the formation of a favourable government, but the motive for a favourable government cannot be related to the voting of that particular party in such a mechanical way that whenever people will want a favourable government, they must vote for the same political party. The motive remaining the same, the cause of voting may radically change in future due to many changed external factors or even due to a radical change in the political thinking of people themselves. So, it is very doubtful to assert that motives and actions are causally related. More properly, motives are to be deemed as reasons rather than causes. Wittgenstein and Ryle have opposed in their own ways of treating of motives as causes. More particularly Ryle takes motives not as causes but as dispositions which are presented in the form of arguments of the deductive-nomological type. Ryle points out that explanations are not arguments, rather they are statements. For example, according to him, the phenomenon of the breaking of a glass when hit by a stone will be explained simply by asserting that ‘because the glass was brittle’. Brittleness, according to Ryle, is the dispositional property of a glass and therefore the breaking of a glass will properly be explained in terms of this dispositional property. Such an explanation may be known as dispositional explanation. Motive explanations, according to Ryle, are all dispositional explanations, because motives are nothing other than dispositions. To quote Ryle’s own words in this connection, To explain an act as done from certain motive is not analogous to saying that the glass broke because a stone hit it, but to the quite different type of a statement that the glass broke, when the stone hit it because the glass was brittle.21 This kind of explanation is different from the explanations based on empirical laws. The dispositional statement, ‘the glass is brittle’ is, of course, also a

76  Explanation in Social Sciences law-like statement but it is not a law because of the singular individual term used in the subject. This is why instead of calling dispositional statements as laws Ryle calls them law-like statements. Anyway, motive statements, according to him, are dispositional statements and motivational explanations are dispositional explanations. Hempel has argued that dispositional explanations like the above ones are also basically causal in nature and therefore they need not have a separate identity. Winch argues against Ryle somehow favouring Hempel’s view that dispositional statements are like causal statements but motives are neither dispositions nor causes. According to Winch, the statement about the motive of an agent is really about the agent’s reason for acting in a particular way. Thus, motive statements are to be distinguished from dispositional statement which is similar to causal one. To quote Winch’s words, A dispositional, just as much as a causal statement is based on generalisations from what has been observed to happen. But a statement about an agent’s motives is not like that, it is better understood as analogous to a setting out of the agent’s reasons for acting thus.22 Ryle calls dispositional statements as ‘inference tickets’ such that from the statement ‘the glass is brittle’ it can be inferred that when hit by a stone the glass will break. But as Winch points out, motive statements cannot be taken as such inference licenses. To illustrate his point, Winch takes the example of a university lecturer who cancels his next week’s lecture because he intends to travel to London. Now here it cannot be said that the lecturer infers his intention of cancelling his lectures from his desire to go to London, as the breaking of the glass might be inferred from the brittleness of the glass. Neither is the lecturer’s intention of going to London the evidence for cancelling his lecture. Speaking in adequate terms, it can be said that his intention to go to London is a reason for his cancelling the lectures. This shows that motive statements are not like dispositional statements. (Of course, Winch does not make here any distinction between motive and intention.) According to him, statements based on motives or intentions are statements of reason which cannot be equated with causal or dispositional statements. Explanations in terms of motive and intention, therefore, are explanations in terms of reason, which instead of pointing out the cause of the action or the disposition of the agent to act in a particular way actually point out the internal meaning of the agents acting in the way he does. From all these considerations, it may be seen that rational explanations, that is, explanations in terms of motivational reasons are not literally causal explanations, because such explanations point to the inner reasons relating to the agent’s beliefs, motives and intentions. Such explanations are claimed to make the meaning of human action really intelligible. Certain difficulties of course are raised against such explanations on various accounts. For example, it is pointed out as to how shall we know what were the beliefs or the motives or the intentions of the agent. The answer will be perhaps that we

Explanation in Social Sciences  77 will have to know them either by seeing the external behaviour of the agents involved or by talking to them. But it may be that what we are able to know as reasons through these may not be the agent’s real reasons for acting in a particular way. Again, how can such rational explanations be advanced in case of actions which are the results of unconscious motivation or of strong commitments and prejudices. These are all very important and right sort of questions which make the universal role of rational explanation in the sphere of human action really doubtful. But instead of considering all these questions here, we shall try to consider them later on in our concluding chapter. Besides the above forms of explanation, there are certain other forms also which are allegedly used in areas outside natural sciences. There are: Explanation-by-concept, as Dray calls it, and Genetic Explanations. But as these forms of explanation are mostly claimed to be used in history rather than in other social sciences, therefore we do not find it necessary to go into their elucidation here. However, we feel that we must make a brief reference here to the two kinds of explanations – holistic and individualistic – which taken together generate a very lively controversy in a specific context with regard to the nature of explanation in social sciences. This controversy may be captioned as ‘Holism vs. Individualism’. Let us see in brief what such a controversy really refers to regarding explanations in social sciences. Holistic versus Individualistic Explanations Whenever there is a question regarding the nature of explanation in social sciences, it is really a question as to how or in what ways social phenomena or social occurrences are really the results of the actions performed by the people living in the society. A question therefore naturally arises as to whose action – the action of the society as a whole or of the specific individuals living in the society – we actually explain while explaining social occurrences or social actions. In other words, the question is, whether we explain the behaviour or the action of the society taken in its wholeness or we explain the action of individual human beings taken separately. Those who take the side of the first alternative are taken as favouring the doctrine of methodological holism and those who favour the second alternative are taken as favouring what is called methodological individualism. Really speaking, there is a vast literature on the problem whether social explanations are holistic or individualistic. Therefore, it is very difficult to go into the details of all the aspects of this controversy. We shall, therefore, try here to deal only with some of the general features of the controversy with a view to highlight the real issues involved therein. Holists are mostly functionalists, that is, most of the thinkers who favour holism are those who take functional explanations to be the typical forms of explanations used in social sciences, more specifically in sociology and anthropology. These thinkers argue that the main subject matter of sociology, which distinguishes it from psychology, is the society or the

78  Explanation in Social Sciences social phenomenon in its wholeness. Social change, social development, social behaviour etc. are the subject matters of sociology in as much as they are taken as features relating to the society as a whole. Thus, whenever we have to explain a social phenomenon or a social action, we are not really to explain the behaviour of individual human beings because that will be done in terms of individual motives, desires etc. which will be the subject matter of psychology. Society is like a living organism and therefore it must be studied in its wholeness. This is why functional explanations are the most appropriate forms of explanation so far as sociology is concerned. Even the behaviour of individuals cannot be studied apart from the behaviour of the society as a whole if it is to be studied as a part of social action. A soldier has little significance apart from army of which he is a member and an entrepreneur has little significance apart from a market. Thus, explanation of individual actions in their separateness means nothing. Maurice Mandelbaum seems to argue in favour of holism in his essay ‘Societal Facts’ when he says that One cannot understand the actions of human beings as members of society unless one assumes that there is a group of facts which I shall term ‘Societal facts’.… In speaking of ‘societal facts’ I refer to any facts concerning the forms of organization present in a society.23 He takes the example of his entering into a bank where he takes a withdrawal slip, fills it out, walks to the teller’s window and hands over the slip to the teller who gives him money. Taking the help of this example, Mandelbaum argues that if someone might be observing the whole set of actions, he could not be able to understand it unless he could fit the entire set of events into the total context of the business of banking. On the basis of it he remarks, In all cases of this sort, the actual behaviour of specific individuals towards one another is unintelligible unless one view their behaviour in terms of their status and roles and the concepts of status and role are devoid of meaning unless one interprets them in term of the organisation of the society to which the individuals belong.24 This is clearly a statement supporting methodological holism, of course in such a guarded manner that it sometimes appears that Mandelbaum is supporting what Popper calls ‘situational individualism’. But the difference is clear when we see that Popper is a staunch critic of psychologism whereas Mandelbaum does not openly speak against it. Steven Lukes rather more openly criticises methodological individualism and argues for the veracity of holism in his paper ‘Methodological Individualism Reconsidered’.25 Opposed to holism, methodological individualists argue that whenever we speak about social action, we are really talking about individual human actions. For example, when we say that India has modernised its economic

Explanation in Social Sciences  79 structure during the latter half of the present century, we are really talking about the action of individual Indians. Karl Popper is considered as one of the most influential methodological individualists who has severely criticised holism in two of his important books – The Poverty of Historicism and The Open Society and Its Enemies. His favour for methodological individualism is very clear from his following lines: All social phenomena, and specially the functioning of all social institutions should always be understood as resulting from the decisions, actions, attitudes etc. of human individuals and we should never be satisfied by an explanation in terms of the so-called ‘collectives’ (states, nations, races etc.)26 This is a clear statement of the fact that social explanation must be given in terms of individual actions. But it must be mentioned here that although Popper favours individualism, he is totally opposed to Psychologism. It is due to this that he criticises Mill. Like Popper, J.W.N. Watkins also is a strong supporter of methodological individualism. His following lines speak very clearly in this regard, According to this principle (that is, the principle of methodological individualism), the ultimate constituents of the social world are individual people who act more or less appropriately in the light of their disposition and understanding of their situation. Every complex social situation or event is the result of a particular configuration of individuals, their disposition situations, beliefs and physical resources and environment.27 Similarly, George C. Homans speaking in favour of methodological individualism asserts, ‘It is my conviction that there is no current evidence in favour of methodological socialism.’28 Defining methodological individualism, Homans says that this doctrine holds ‘that all social phenomena can be analysed without residue into the actions of individuals, that such actions are what is really fundamental in social sciences’29 However, unlike Popper, Homans favours psychologism in as much as he believes that individual human actions can be explained in terms of individual psychological traits. He enunciates a rationality principle in psychological terms and points out that all economic explanations belong to this psychological type in the sense that economic laws, such as the laws of supply and demand, can readily be shown to follow from the rationality principle.30 He states the rationality principle in the following words, Every man in choosing between alternative actions, is likely to take that one for which, as perceived by him at the time, the value (V) of the result, multiplied by the probability (P) of getting the result is the greater;

80  Explanation in Social Sciences and the larger the excess of P × V for the one action over the alternative, the more likely he is to take the former action.31 This is, more or less, the utility principle of rationality which is the guiding principle according to Homans in our economic activities. Economic explanations, therefore, are all individualistic explanations based on the above rationalistic principle. We have tried to outline above the essentials of the living controversy whether explanation in social science should be holistic or individualistic. On examination, it does not seem very wide to linger on such a controversy because basically, it centres around the problem as to what is meant by an individual and what by a society. At this point, the same old problem of the relation between individual and society comes in. We know that the most acceptable solution to the problem is that both are interdependent and no one has a reality apart from the other. If this is so, there should not be any real significance in the controversy whether explanations should be in terms of a society as a whole or in terms of the behaviour of the individuals. In fact, the society as a whole is nothing apart from the individuals who make society. So even in dealing with the behaviour or the action of a society as a whole, we have really to depend upon the behaviour or the action of the people living in the society. Similarly, an individual is nothing other than the role that he plays in a social context. So, there is no harm in saying that in explaining social phenomena we have to depend upon the explanation of the action of individuals. The point to understand is that such individuals must be what we may call typical individuals instead of actual specific individuals. If we study the behaviour of individuals as typical individuals playing typical roles in the society in which they live, there is no harm in trying to understand social phenomena in terms of the behaviour of the individuals. Similarly, there is nothing wrong in saying that in social sciences we are concerned with the explanation of the social phenomena as a whole. The point, however, to be kept in mind is that the society is not an entity within its own rights apart from the individuals who constitute it. Keeping all these things in view, the following estimate of Alan Ryan regarding the ambiguity and fruitlessness of the controversy between holism and individualism seems to be valuable. He says, ‘Unfortunately, just as the holistic argument suffered from ambiguities about what kind of individuals were being rolled out, so does methodological individualism suffer from ambiguity about what kind of individuals to rule in.’32 Popper attacks holism because he thinks it gives rise to fascism or communism. But the difficulty with Popper’s view seems to be that although it refers to the evils of holism, it does not very much elucidate the merits of individualistic explanations. His doctrine seems to be that we should explain the action of individual person in terms of what he calls ‘The logic of the situation’. This can very well be done in the case of the actions of specific individuals, such as those of Julius Caesar, Bismarck or Napoleon. But really

Explanation in Social Sciences  81 it is not the explanation of the action of such individuals which raises problems; it is the explanation of the recurrent social phenomena, whether political or economic or something like that, which raises problems. For example, we may see that there are certain recurrent phenomena in the economic realm such as those of the rise of prices and the fall of prices or inflation and deflation etc. How are these phenomena to be explained if explanations are to be individualistic? Certainly, the phenomena cannot be explained by explaining the behaviour of certain specific individuals. Economics cannot be about individual behaviour in this sense. By ‘individual behaviour’ we mean here the behaviour of what we have called typical individual in a certain kind of situation, namely the market situation. It is in this sense that J.W.N. Watkins explains his loyalty to the tenets of methodological individualism. Popper shows his favour for individualism, but very strongly shows his opposition to psychologism. But as Alan Ryan remarks, ‘It is highly implausible to suppose that we invoke no psychological assumptions when we explain how individuals or groups of individuals fulfil the requirements of the roles they occupy.’33 As we have said above, holists are generally functionalists, but can functionalism provide a guarantee for holism by treating society analogous to a bodily organism? The function of a society can only be explained by seeing the behaviour of the members of the particular group whose function we are trying to explain. Thus understood, there is no real debate between individualism and holism and explanation in social sciences may be based on anyone, provided we understand the natures and roles of both the individuals and the society in their proper perspectives. We have thus made a brief survey of the different types of explanations that are claimed to be used in social sciences. Apart from functional explanation, all other kinds of explanation are in a sense explanation in terms of reason. Thus basically, purposive explanation, explanation by redescription and explanation in terms of motive and beliefs are all explanations in the sense that instead of pointing to the antecedent conditions and the causal laws which produce such actions, they aim at decoding the meaning or the point lying behind the actions by analysing the motives, intentions, beliefs and purposes of the agent’s actions. In so doing, these forms of explanation also take into consideration the specific situations in which the agents are working. They are all therefore opposed to the covering law model of explanation, although Hempel and others have either tried to reduce all these forms of explanations into the covering law model or have declared them not to be explanations in the scientific sense of the term at all. So far as the functional explanation is concerned, it is not very clear whether it is a form of causal explanation itself or it belongs to the other group of explanations, some forms of which we have analysed above. Functional analyses or explanations are very much prevalent in biology, sociology and anthropology. We have seen that functional explanations are goal-directed, but such a goal may be either conscious or unconscious. It

82  Explanation in Social Sciences seems plausible to say that when the goal is unconsciously oriented, the functional analysis may be understood in causal terms. But if the goal is consciously oriented then it becomes a form of purposive explanation itself, and in that case therefore it goes beyond the sphere of covering law model and may be considered as a form of explanation by reason. But the way how functionalists like Malinowski, Merton etc. understand functionalism, it does not seem that functionalism is teleologism. Notes 1 B. Malinowski, Anthropology (The Encyclopaedia, Inc., London and New York, 1926) P. 139. 2 Ibid., P. 132. 3 Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (Free Press, New York, 1957) PP. 64–5. 4 B. Malinowski, Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays (Doubleday Anchor Books, Garden city New York, 1954) P. 90. 5 C.G. Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation (Free Press, New York, 1965), P. 326. 6 Ibid., P. 327. 7 A. Ryan, The Philosophy of the Social Sciences (Macmillan, 1970) P. 183. 8 Charles Taylor, ‘The Explanation of Purposive Behaviour’, included in Explanation in the Behavioural Sciences (Cambridge univ. Press 1970), ed. by Robert Borger and Frank Cioffi, P. 55. 9 C.G. Hempel, Op. cit. P. 225. 10 Ibid., P. 254. 11 Ibid., P. 255. 12 Michael Scriven, ‘Explanations, Predictions and Laws’, included in Theories of Explanation (Oxford, 1988) ed. by J.C. Pitt, P. 53. 13 C.G. Hempel, Op. cit. P. 233. 14 M. Mandelbaum, ‘The Problem of Covering Laws’, included in The Philosophy of History (Oxford univ. Press, 1974), ed. by P. Gardiner, P. 61. 15 Q. Skinner, ‘Social Meaning’ and the Explanation of Social Action’, included in The Philosophy of History (Oxford, 1974), ed. by P. Gardiner, P. 115. 16 P.F. Strawson, Review of Dray’s books Law and Explanation in History in Mind, April, 1959, P. 268. 17 Quoted by Peter Winch in The Idea of a Social Science (Routledge a Kegan Paul, 1971) P. 75. 18 Ibid., P. 78. 19 Ibid., P. 79. 20 A.J. Ayer, ‘Man as a Subject for Science’, included in Philosophy, Politics and Society, Series III (Oxford, 1969) ed. by P. Laslett and W.G. Runciman, P. 24. 21 G. Ryle, The Concept of Mind (Hutchinson, London, 1949) P. 87. 22 P. Winch, Op. cit. P. 81. 23 M. Mandelbaum, ‘Societal Facts’, included in, The Philosophy of Social Explanation (Oxford, 1973) ed. by A Ryan, P. 107. 24 Ibid., P. 108. 25 Steven Lukes. ‘Methodological Individualism Reconsidered’ included in The Philosophy of Social Explanation (Oxford, 1973) ed. by A Ryan, PP. 119–129. 26 K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies Vol. 2 (Routledge& Kegan Paul, 1977), P. 98.

Explanation in Social Sciences  83 27 J.W.N. Watkins, ‘Historical Explanation in Social Sciences’, included in Theories of History (Free Press, New York, 1959) ed. by P. Gardiner, P. 505. 28 George C. Homans, ‘The Relevance of Psychology to the Explanation of Social Phenomena’, included in Explanation in the Behavioural Sciences (Cambridge univ. Press, 1970) ed. by R. Borger & F. Cioffi, P. 325. 29 Ibid., P. 325. 30 Ibid., P. 320. 31 Ibid., P. 318. 32 A. Ryan, The Philosophy of the Social Sciences (Macmillan, 1972) P. 177. 33 A. Ryan, (Ed) The Philosophy of Social Explanation (Oxford, 1973) P. 11.

5 Explanation and Prediction

Although our main subject of study is explanation, we would like to deal here briefly with the nature of scientific prediction also because the two are taken to be very closely related in science. Sometimes the two are regarded as structurally identical such that they are taken to be the two sides of the same coin. Whether this claim is really true, and if at all true, whether equally true for both the natural and the social sciences, are matters to be discussed by us here. But this much seems undoubted that explanation and prediction are somehow closely related in science. It is therefore quite natural that understanding the nature of one will help us in understanding the nature of the other. We, therefore, propose to go here into a brief discussion of the nature of relation between explanation and prediction as it really holds in the realm of natural and social sciences. We have seen that it is well accepted that explanations of natural phenomena are of covering law model, especially in the D-N model; it is implied that what is from one angle of vision – explanation – is from another angle prediction. That is, in the context of the covering law model, explanation and prediction come to be the two sides of the same coin. They are symmetrical and isomorphic in nature. This can be illustrated by a simple example. Whenever we have a case of explaining the death of a man who has taken arsenic, we do it in the following ways: All who take arsenic die. He took arsenic. Therefore, he died. But if we proceed from the side of the explanans itself, that is, if we know the law that all who take arsenic die, and somebody has taken arsenic, then we can very well predict that he will die. This shows that explanation and prediction are structurally identical. It all depends upon our interest or problem at a particular time whether a particular analysis is an explanation or a prediction. On the basis of the above kind of analysis of the nature of explanation in terms of universal laws and initial conditions, Popper concludes, DOI: 10.4324/9781003405719-6

Explanation and Prediction  85 According to this analysis, there is no great difference between explanation, prediction and testing. The difference is not one of logical structure, but rather one of emphasis; it depends on what we consider to be our problem and what we do not so consider. If it is not our problem to find a prognosis (By ‘prognosis’ Popper means a conclusion or an explanandum), while we take it to be our problem to find the initial conditions or some of the universal laws (or both) from which we may deduce a given ‘prognosis’, then we are looking for an explanation. If we consider the laws and initial conditions as given and use them merely for deducing the prognosis in order to get there by some new information, then we are trying to make a prediction…1 Hempel is very much explicit about the structural identity of explanation and prediction. In his words, Scientific explanation differs from scientific prediction not in logical structure, but in certain pragmatic respects. In one case, the event described in the conclusion is known to have occurred, and suitable statements of general law and particular fact are sought to account for it; in the other, the latter statements are given and the statement about the event in question is derived from them before the time of its presumptive occurrence.2 Hempel calls this fact of the structural identity between explanation and prediction the ‘thesis of the structural identity or of symmetry of explanation and prediction’ and points out that this thesis amounts to the conjunction of the following two sub-theses: Every adequate explanation is potentially a prediction. 1 2 Every adequate prediction is potentially an explanation. Hempel points out that these sub-theses are very much true in the D-N explanation because here the explanans logically implies the explanandum. But he points out that they apply to other types of explanation as well because according to him they constitute ‘a general condition of adequacy for any rationally acceptable explanation of a particular event’. Mentioning this condition of adequacy explicitly, Hempel points out that any rationally acceptable answer to the question ‘why did event X occur’, must offer information which shows that X was to be expected either with certainty or at least with reasonable probability. Thus, the explanatory information must provide good grounds for believing that X did in fact occur. For, otherwise we cannot call it an explanation in the true sense of the term. And an explanatory account that satisfied this condition constitutes a potential prediction in the sense that it could have served to predict the occurrence of X if the information contained in the explanans had been available at a suitable earlier time.3

86  Explanation and Prediction In spite of this symmetry between explanation and prediction as emphasised by Hempel, the thesis of structural identity has been criticised by thinkers like Scheffler,4 Scriven5 and Toulmin.6 Scriven has argued that sometimes an event X can be adequately explained by means of a proposition of the form, ‘The only cause of X is ….’, but nothing can be predicted in relation to that event on the basis of that. For example, we can explain why a certain patient has paresis by pointing out that he previously suffered from syphilis because the only cause of paresis is syphilis. But from this, we cannot predict with certainty that if somebody has syphilis, he must have paresis. Similarly, Scriven will say that there are occasions when we can predict some phenomena with success, but cannot explain them. In other words, according to him the ability to forecast an event does not necessarily constitute an understanding of the phenomenon.7 Scriven further points out that sometimes explanations are not in terms of temporarily ordered and causally related events and consequently we are not in a position to make predictions in such cases. Outside physical sciences such cases are very common according to him. For example, in explaining the rules of succession in an Egyptian dynasty we cannot make any prediction on the basis of the explanation. The symmetry of explanation and prediction seems very much unnatural, according to Scriven, in the case of universal laws. Scriven points out that we explain some laws by deriving them from some more general law. Now what predictions could be made on the basis of this explanation which would have the same logical structure? The pragmatic difference between explanation and prediction is that explanation occurs after the phenomenon, and prediction before it. But in the case of laws which are believed to hold for all times, what would it mean to take of predicting the phenomena?8 Like Scriven, Toulmin also criticises the point of structural symmetry between explanation and prediction by taking the example of Darwin’s theory. He points out that with reference to this theory, the origin of species has tried to be explained, but no scientist has ever forecast the coming into existence of creatures of a novel species with the help of it. Thus, although Darwin’s theory has a great explanatory power, it has hardly any predictive force. Similarly, Scheffler, pointing out against the symmetry between explanation and prediction, says that sometimes an event may be predicted, but cannot be explained thereby. For example, a finite set of data obtained in an extensive test of the hypothesis that the electric resistance of the metals increases with their temperature may offer us good grounds for that hypothesis and may provide us with a basis for the prediction that in the unexamined instances also a rise in the temperature in the metal conductor will be accompanied by an increase in resistance. But if this event actually occurs, the test data do not provide an explanation for it. Similarly, the list of results obtained in a long series of the tossing of a coin may provide a good basis for predicting the percentage of heads and tails to be expected

Explanation and Prediction  87 in the next 100 tossing, but the list of data provides no explanation for the subsequent results. These and several other criticisms have been advanced against the supposed symmetry between explanation and prediction. Explanations, going beyond the preview of the covering law model, are very clearly not bound by the thesis of structural symmetry. But critics have shown, as in some cases above, that sometimes within the preview of the covering law model itself, the thesis of symmetry does not hold good. Hempel had of course tried to reply to his critics, but it seems at least in the case of probabilistic explanation he has conceded that the question of the truth of the thesis of symmetry is an open question. Whatever may be the case regarding the symmetry within the preview of the covering law model, we have seen that many philosophers of science, especially those who belong to the Verstehen school do not at all accept the covering law model as a universally accepted model of explanation. We are especially concerned here with the question of the predictability of social phenomena and therefore the main question before us is how far social phenomena may be predicted or how far prediction may be the goal of social science. To answer this question, we will have to see how far the thesis of symmetry holds good in the realm of social science. But in answering this question, there is again a lively debate between naturalists and anti-naturalists. Naturalists like Hempel who want to forge a unity of science will certainly try to point out that as in the case of natural sciences, explanation and prediction are symmetrical in the context of social sciences also. But anti-naturalists on the other hand would never subscribe to this view. They would not only point out like Scriven and others that there are examples where the symmetry between the explanation and prediction seems to break down, rather they will point out in a radically different spirit that the realm of human behaviour and social phenomena is so conceptually different from the realm of natural events that the question of prediction in the former case does not at all arise. As Peter Winch remarks after considering the question of prediction in human realm, The central concepts which belong to our understanding of social life are incompatible with concepts central to the activity of scientific prediction. When we speak of the possibility of scientific prediction of social developments of this sort, we literally do not understand what we are saying. We cannot understand it, because it has no sense.9 The quotation from Winch clearly shows that according to him the very notion of prediction of the social phenomena in the scientific sense is something nonsensical or self-contradictory. Why this is so, Winch explains as follows: The main hurdle against prediction in the human sphere is man’s capacity for choice and decision. If we want to predict something about someone’s

88  Explanation and Prediction future behaviour, we will have to familiarise ourselves with the rules according to which the person concerned intends to act or in terms of which he is viewing the whole situation. But even in this case, the possibility of the person taking a different decision from what we have calculated about him cannot be ruled out. And what happens here is not due to a mistake in our calculations, rather it is due to the capacity of decision that the person concerned has. Winch points out, ‘The whole point about a decision is that a given set of “calculations” may lead to any one of a set of different outcomes.’10 In the case of natural sciences, a false prediction ‘always implies some sort of mistake on the part of the predictor: false or inadequate data, faulty calculation or defective theory’.11 But the case is very different in social sciences. The difference lies in the factor of decision that human beings possess while acting. Decisions are not determined by their antecedent conditions. To understand the nature of a person’s decision, we shall have to understand the rules by which the person is guided and the relevant features of this situation. But sometimes even if one knows these things with certainty about the person, he cannot predict with certainty that he must do this and not something else. For example, if ‘O’ knows that ‘N’ is following the rule ‘start with zero and add 2 till you reach 100’, ‘O’ can predict that having written down 104 ‘N’ will next write 106. But the possibility of ‘N’ writing something other than 106 cannot be ruled out due to a different decision that he might take. So, prediction with certainty in the human realm is completely out of question. Winch along with Popper criticises Mill, who thought that history was governed by certain scientific laws and so predictions could be made regarding the future of history. Popper criticises Mill both in his works The Poverty of Historicism and The Open Society and Its Enemies’ for confusing trends with laws. According to Popper, we may mark some definite trends or patterns in the history of some society, but that cannot be compared with any deterministic law. A trend differs from a law in the fact that the former involves a reference to a set of specific initial conditions, which if not properly fulfilled, any prediction about human society will hardly come to be true. And the fulfilment of specific initial conditions is never theoretically certain because, as Popper says, in the human realm anything may happen at any time. To quote his own words, ‘It is necessary to recognise as one of the principles of any unprejudiced view of politics that everything is possible in human affairs.’12 And if this is so, prediction in human realm on the basis of some trend is always hazardous. Winch makes a reference to this kind of criticism of Popper against Mill. But in his own turn, he wants to go even further. He says, I now want to make a further modification: even given a specific set of initial conditions, one will still not be able to predict any determinate outcome to a historical trend because the continuation or breaking of that trend involves human decision which is not determined by its

Explanation and Prediction  89 antecedent conditions in the context of which the sense of calling them ‘decisions’ lies.13 Thus, according to Winch what is important is not the lack of required initial condition, but the factor of human decision which by its very meaning is such that predictions in human realm are completely ruled out. If it is said that even decisions and choices are determined, it will be a contradiction in terms because determined choice means nothing. We have made a reference to Popper’s view regarding predictability of social events. Let us go into a somewhat detailed analysis of Popper’s view here because he has something very important to say regarding the prediction of human events. Popper distinguishes between two kinds of predictions: the one he calls short-term conditional scientific predictions and the other ‘historicist prophecy’. Because Popper believes in a unity of scientific method as applicable to both natural and social sciences, he does not seem averse to the possibility of former kinds of predictions in social sciences. What, however, he is firmly against and which he has very strongly criticised is the possibility of long-range historicist prophecy of the type which historicists like Mill, Marx etc. have made. According to Popper, there is a strong confusion among many of us regarding the method of natural science itself and this confusion or mistake is very greatly responsible for making mistaken and misdirected claims about social phenomena. It is generally believed that there is a strong determinism in the realm of natural phenomena and a rigidly scientific method is based on a kind of rigid determinism. It is due to this belief that it is thought that predictions are possible in natural sciences. And those who believe in the reality of such a determinism in the social realm also make prophecies regarding the future of society. But Popper cautions here in very unambiguous terms that No kind of determinism, whether it be expressed as the principle of the uniformity of nature or as the law of universal causation, can be considered any longer a necessary assumption of scientific method; for physics, the most advanced of all sciences, has shown not only that it can do without such assumption, but also that to some extent it contradicts them. Determinism is not a necessary prerequisite of science which can make predictions.14 Popper refers here to the bearing of quantum theory which is more or less a theory of indeterminacy of quantum particles. Thus, according to Popper, long-term prophecies as made in the realm of social phenomena are based upon two kinds of mistakes: A false belief regarding the nature and role of determinism in sciences; and 1 2 A confusion between conditional scientific predictions and large-scale historical prophecy.

90  Explanation and Prediction To quote Popper’s own words in this respect, This belief in scientific fortune-telling is not founded on determinism alone; its other foundation is the confusion between scientific prediction as we know it from physics or astronomy, and large scale historical prophecy, which foretells in broad lines the main tendencies of the future development of society.15 These two kinds of predictions are very different according to Popper and the former can never be a ground for the latter. The physicist, or for that matter any natural scientist, always makes only conditional predictions in the sense that if specific conditions are fulfilled then only a certain event will take place in accordance with certain universal laws. It is very precisely the result of any concrete situation. As Popper himself says, ‘We are very far from being able to predict, even in physics, the precise results of a concrete situation, such as a thunderstorm or a fire.’16 Those social thinkers who have little idea about the nature of the kind of predictions that a scientist can legitimately make really claim to make unconditional prophecies about the future of social evolution. The realm of human affairs can take any turn at any time. In other words, the initial conditions governing a trend may undergo a sharp change at any stage of human thinking and consequently the entire prophecy regarding the future course of events may go completely unfulfilled. Thus, according to Popper, the weakness of historicism of the historical prophecy lies in it being unimaginative about the trend of human affairs. As he very characteristically remarks, The poverty of historicism, we might say, is a poverty of imagination. The historicist continuously upbraids those who cannot imagine a change in their little worlds, yet it seems that the historicist is himself deficient in imagination, for he cannot imagine a change in the conditions of change.17 The deterministic principle to the effect that if the same conditions are repeated, the same effect will take place may be taken as perfectly true. But who will guarantee that the same conditions will literally and exactly be repeated? It is hardly the case, especially in the human realm that in course of history, literally the same circumstances recur again and again. Thus, it is simply a lack of imagination to say that long-range predictions regarding the course of social phenomena are possible. Society is not governed by laws; at most it is governed by trends and trends are not laws. Thus, short-term conditional predictions may be possible in the realm of social affairs but longterm prophecy is completely ruled out according to Popper. But perhaps the anti-naturalists would not subscribe even to this view that short-term conditional predictions are possible in the realm of social phenomena. We have seen above one such argument from the side of Peter

Explanation and Prediction  91 Winch. It is further pointed out that predictions in the social spheres are of a specific nature which is completely different from the nature of predictions made in natural sciences. This is due to the plain fact that the agents about which predictions are made in natural sciences are non-thinking beings, whereas in social sciences the agents concerned are thinking beings, having the privilege of free will and choice. Consequently, predictions in the latter realm are either self-fulfilling or self-defeating, which is not the case in the realm of natural phenomena. Self-fulfilling predictions are such predictions which even if not likely to be fulfilled as true can be made true by the active efforts of the agents involved. For example, if a well-known economist predicts that the price of a particular commodity will rise very high within a few days, it might be that the prediction could not come true. But it comes to be true by the active efforts of the buyers themselves. They think that because it is the prediction of a well-known economist, it will come true, and therefore they make a very sharp rush to purchase that particular commodity. And consequently, the price rises. Thus, the prediction comes to be true not by virtue of any deterministic law involved in the social economy but due to the active efforts of the people themselves. The prediction might very well prove to be false also by an active effort of the agents in the reverse direction. While hearing the fact of possible rise in the price of commodity, they might have decided to gradually minimise the consumption of the commodity and in that situation the price of commodity might have fallen down instead of going up. In this case, the prediction would have proved to be a self-defeating one rather than a self-fulfilling one. So, because the agents involved in the realm of social affairs are human beings, the prediction about future social events becomes very much hazardous in this sphere. Advocates of naturalism, who preach a parity between the methods of natural and social sciences in all respects, preach a parity regarding the symmetry of explanation and prediction also in both the sciences, at least in principle. We have seen that the ground of this symmetry is the covering law model of explanation. Now even if it is granted that the covering law model of explanation is somehow applicable to the social phenomena also, the question remains whether the generalisations available in social sciences are of the same nature as those found in natural sciences. The generalisations available in natural sciences imply counterfactual conditionals and subjunctive conditionals. The question is whether this is so in the case of social sciences also. The problem is not confined to the case of generalisations only, rather it extends to the case of initial conditions as well. The initial conditions in the human realm can be taken to be properly fulfilled only if they are in accordance with the beliefs and feelings of the social agents or the actors themselves. If the beliefs and the feelings of the actors regarding the conditions prevalent in the society are different from what social scientist takes them to be, their whole effort at explaining or predicting a particular event on the basis of those initial conditions will be very much mistaken. Explanation of events may be relatively easier, but prediction to be made on the basis of

92  Explanation and Prediction them are very difficult and problematic indeed. Explanation is reconstruction from hindsight, but prediction is claiming in advance the occurrence of a particular event. So naturally, the latter requires greater amount of care, precision and definiteness. Thus, as far as logic is concerned, a parity between natural and social sciences may be drawn regarding matters of explanation and prediction, but in actuality, the parity seems to be very much doubtful. It is, as we have seen above, due to the problematic nature of the generalisations available and the fulfilment of initial conditions. Unless the generalisations available are of a specific nature and the initial condition is actually realised, there is no question of even explaining events properly, what to say of predicting them. Methodological claims about what a developed science ought to aim at are very different from the real achievements that a particular science can actually make by working under the limitations, which are essential to it. Thus, we must make a distinction between the demands of logic and the possibilities allowed to us by the phenomena. The possibility allowed by the social phenomena seems on the basis of the above analysis, to be very different from those allowed by the natural phenomena. And therefore, there is a little possibility in the former case for predictions to be made and rendered true. However, all this does not imply that it is never possible to make predictions in matters of social phenomena. It also does not imply that predictions ought never to be made in the realm of social sciences. If this is so, then any sort of planning for the future on the basis of the trends available at a particular time would be utterly impossible. What, however, all this implies is that the relation between the predictions and grounds on which they are based is not one of a mechanical or causal sort. In other words, such a relationship is not governed by any universal law of causal necessity. As Winch remarks after arguing for the untenability of predictions in the realm of social sciences, ‘I am not denying that it is sometimes possible to predict decisions; only that their relation to the evidence on which they are based is unlike that characteristic of scientific predictions’.18 Notes 1 K.R. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism (Ark Paper Backs, 1986) P. 133. 2 C.G. Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation (The Free Press, New York, 1965) PP. 366–67. 3 Ibid., PP. 367–68. 4 Scheffler, ‘Explanation, Prediction and Abstraction’ included in The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 1967. 5 M. Scriven, ‘Explanation, Prediction and Law’, included in Theories of Explanation (Oxford, 1988) ed. by J.C. Pitt. 6 S. Toulmin, Foresight and Understanding (Hutchinson, London, 1961). 7 Michael Scriven, ‘Explanation, Predictions and Laws’ included in Theories of Explanation (Oxford, 1988) ed. by J.C. Pitt, P. 54. 8 Ibid., P. 54. 9 Peter Winch, The Idea of a Social Science (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971) P. 94.

Explanation and Prediction  93 0 Ibid., P. 91. 1 11 Ibid., P. 92. 12 K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. 2 (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 197) P. 197. 13 Peter Winch, Op. cit. PP. 92–3. 14 Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, P. 85. 15 Ibid., PP. 85–6. 16 K.R. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism (Ark Paper Backs, 1986) P. 139. 17 Ibid., P. 130. 18 Peter Winch, Op. cit. P. 93.

6 Assessment and Conclusion

From the account that we have presented so far in our preceding chapters, it is clear that the question of the nature of explanation in social sciences mainly revolves around the controversy between naturalists and anti-naturalists. The main thrust of the naturalists’ contention, we have seen, is that the explanation of social phenomena is as much causal in nature as is the explanation of natural phenomena. In other words, the contention is that human behaviour is as much law-governed as is the occurrence of natural events. The contention of anti-naturalists, on the other hand, has been that social action is basically human action and human action is not governed by causal laws of mechanical nature. Even if there is regularity in human behaviour, as perhaps there actually is, it is rule-governed instead of being governed by mechanical laws. The explanation of the behaviour of human beings is therefore rational rather than causal, in the sense that human actions are to be explained in terms of reasons which prompt them rather than in terms of causes which produce them with some kind of mechanical or causal necessity. All social actions whether political, economic, religious etc. are human actions which are meaningful and the explanation of these actions consists in deciphering the meaning implicit behind them. We have so far mainly dwelt on an exposition of the above two kinds of views, although we have also thrown certain critical remarks about them here and there. Let us now make a thorough critical assessment of the concerned views so as to come to a viably reasonable conclusion. Let us first take up the view that all explanations including the explanation of social phenomena are basically causal. The contention that all scientific explanations are causal is itself not always unambiguously clear because the very notion of cause is not very clear. But instead of going into the controversy of the general notion of cause, let us see here the question of the nature of causal explanation given in relation to human behaviour because this is more relevant and important for us here. We have seen that the contention that explanation of human behaviour is causal has been understood and expressed in more than one way. Sometimes, by a causal explanation of human behaviour, it is meant that a purely mechanical explanation of it can be given in purely physical or physiological terms, because according to this view, all kinds of behaviour can be fundamentally DOI: 10.4324/9781003405719-7

Assessment and Conclusion  95 understood and interpreted in purely physical and physiological terms. As we have pointed out earlier also (in our Chapter 3), the views of Hobbes are well known in this regard. Hobbes believed that all behaviour whether of animate or inanimate object, was ultimately to be explained in terms of the laws governing the motions of discrete material particles of which the entire universe was composed. Psychological phenomena were to be totally reduced to physiological phenomena and the latter again to the physical phenomena. Social sciences were all rooted in psychology and psychology was ultimately reducible to physiology and physics. Therefore, the explanation of all social phenomena could be ultimately given in purely physical terms. There was thus determinism of the mechanical type involved as much in human or social realm as in the natural or physical realm. Thus, giving causal explanation of human or social affairs meant in the light of Hobbes’s view that the principles by which we were to explain human behaviour or social phenomena were the same as those by which we could explain complex physical phenomena. Such a view involving mechanical causation regarding the nature of human behaviour has been propounded by some others also besides Hobbes in more recent times under the influence of behaviouristic psychology. But the difficulties that are involved in such a behaviouristic programme of reducing all human and social phenomena ultimately to physiology or physical phenomena are numerous which have not remained a hidden fact by now. Some of the difficulties we point out here. One obvious difficulty seems to be that the terms involved in psychological description of human behaviour in terms of motives, intentions etc. do not seem to belong to the same logical category as those involved in the physiological or physical theories about psychological events. For example, we have in our everyday speech a lot of spatial metaphors about thought such as when we say that an idea is at the back of our mind or that something slipped our mind. But in spite of such phrases being there in our language, it makes no sense to ensure whether some thought was further towards the back of our mind than other or that some idea really slipped away from mind like the falling away of some physical object from somewhere. These instances show that ordinary language does not testify to the identity between psychological and physical events. Numerous instances may be taken which will prove that in spite of the same physical or physiological movements, the thinking may be different on different occasions or in spite of the same thought, different kind of physical behaviour may be there. Moreover, it has not really been worked out so far as to what exact physiological or physical changes correspond to the different thinking or emotional processes. Furthermore, it can be seen that the way in which we come to know about the psychological events is quite different in kind from the way in which we come to know about physiological events. For example, if someone thinks something about his home, is it necessary for him to know about the actual brain processes that go within him to know what he is actually thinking about home? Certainly, the answer will be negative and therefore it does not seem that

96  Assessment and Conclusion psychological human phenomena are somehow causally related to the corresponding physiological phenomena in such a manner that the explanation of the former can be literally given in the terms of the latter. In the light of the above noted and many other difficulties, it may be accepted that the reduction of all mental phenomena to the physiological ones is not worthwhile. But still the theory that all human behaviour can be causally explained may be upheld on a somewhat shifted ground. It may be pointed out, as Mill has really pointed out (Chapter 3), that there are psychological laws themselves which govern human behaviour, whether individual or social; therefore, there is no need to reduce psychological explanation to physiological explanation. What is needed is the discovery of certain basic psychological laws which govern human behaviour, and it is with reference to them that human behaviour can be causally explained. In other words, this contention amounts to the effect that there is a causal connection between specific type of mental acts and corresponding specific types of external physiological acts. If these causal connections are discovered and established, human actions can very well be causally explained. But here two very important problems arise. First, it may be said that on this account all social sciences will be reduced merely to certain branches of psychology. Second, it will raise the age-old problem of mind-body relation over again. Let us take the second difficulty first. In what sense, after all, it may be said that mental event cause physical events? When one ball strikes against the other, it may be easily said that the motion in the second ball has been caused by the first ball. But in what sense it can be said that some mental occurrence has caused some physical action? Here it may be pointed out that the relation between causes and effects must not be understood in terms of the relation that holds between one ball striking the other. It should be rather understood, as Hume understood it, as relation of regular sequence which can be expressed by the simple formula, ‘whenever an event of the kind, the event of the kind B also’. Thus, wherever there is a regular sequence, there is causation. Therefore, the problem regarding the perceptible connection between the psychological event and the actual behaviour is no real problem at all. But here in spite of this solution, problems regarding the real meaning of the term ‘cause’ or ‘causal explanation’ arise. Since Mill, it has more or less been universally recognised that the notion of cause is not that of one specific event; rather it consists of so many events known as conditions which taken together produce a particular effect. Of these some of the conditions are necessary, while some others are sufficient. Now the problem arises whether a cause consists of necessary conditions alone or of sufficient conditions alone or of two kinds of conditions taken together. Empiricists like Mill tend to take cause as sufficient condition. McIntyre also suggests that when we talk of causation, we talk about the sufficient condition of an event. For example, rubbing of the match stick against the match box is a sufficient condition of lighting fire, although it is not a necessary condition. Similarly, stabbing or taking poison may be a sufficient condition of death, although it is not a

Assessment and Conclusion  97 necessary condition. Ordinarily, however, these sufficient conditions are regarded as causes of their related effects. Sometimes, the final necessary condition is regarded as the cause of an event. Sociologists generally take certain necessary condition to be the causal event. For example, intelligent and welltrained staff may be so often regarded as the cause of administrative efficiency. But clearly the former is not the whole cause or the sufficient condition for the latter. There may be other senses also in which ‘cause’ is used in ordinary speech, and it is not clear what sense of causation is taken into consideration when we speak of the causal explanation of events. Thinkers like Popper, Hempel etc. take causal explanation as deductive explanation in which the explanans consists of causal laws and initial conditions, the latter being the actual antecedent conditions of the explanandum. Popper is very clear in this respect when he says, To give a causal explanation of a certain specific event means deducing a statement describing this event from two kinds of premises: from some universal laws, and from some singular or specific statements which we may call the specific initial conditions.1 We have already seen Hempel analysing causal explanation in terms of deductive-nomological explanation as well as statistical explanation, both of which consist of certain causal law or laws of either universal or probabilistic character along with certain initial conditions. For the time being, let us postpone our consideration of causal explanations understood in terms of laws and initial conditions and see to some extent the impact and validity of the first problem raised above. If all social phenomena are to be explained in terms of psychological laws, then there is the danger of reducing social sciences to psychology and generally speaking this will be the same type of problem as that of reducing all social sciences including psychology to physiology or physics. But it may be argued here that the problem in this case is not of that kind. In other words, it may be pointed out that explaining social phenomena in terms of psychological laws is not like reducing social sciences to psychology. What is actually meant here is that the psychological events like motives, desires, ambitions etc. are to be related to human actions in terms of certain causal laws. We believe it quite generally that human actions have their roots in human minds and therefore there is no wonder in seeing that human actions are somehow causally related to mental events like thinking, motivation, feeling etc. When we explain, for example, Caesar’s crossing the Rubicon in terms of his ambitions, we appeal to a causal generalisation linking ambition with the taking of bold and decisive actions at key moments. Thus, explaining social phenomena in terms of psychological laws does not mean formulating laws regarding mental phenomena only, rather it means laws relating mental phenomena to human actions. In formulating such laws, we also take into consideration what Popper calls ‘the logic of situation’. In other words, the laws do not depend

98  Assessment and Conclusion only on the ways how human mind functions, but they also depend upon the external situations and circumstances. In this sense causal laws may be formulated in social sciences in terms of which human actions whether individual or social may be explained. Really speaking, we are not so much concerned whether our laws are purely psychological or partially physical or something other than these. All we want are generalisations which will act as covering laws for the particular event we need to explain. In the sense in which we say that extreme cold causes water to freeze, we can also say that decisions cause actions, or mental phenomena cause external human action. It is in this sense that laws can be framed in social sciences. For example, there are laws in economics regarding rise and fall of prices or regarding marginal utility and productivity. Such laws do not rest only on what we know about human motivation but also on what we know about the conditions under which human beings have to think and work. Similarly, there are laws regarding voting pattern or labour unrest or revolutions in political science and history. Such laws may be partly taken as psychological and partly as physical or situational. So causal explanations of social behaviour may be given in terms of these laws. We have thus seen that if causal explanations are understood as explanations in terms of laws and initial conditions, as pointed out by Popper, Hempel etc. logically speaking there seems to be no problem regarding the explanation of any specific social event in terms of the relevant causal law or laws and the specific initial conditions prevailing. We can very well illustrate it by means of several examples. If we are to explain ‘why X voted for the Congress Party’, we can very well explain it causally in the following manner: All who take them to belong to the minority group vote for the Congress Party. X takes himself to belong to the minority group. Therefore, X voted for the Congress Party. Similarly, if we have to explain the price rise of a particular commodity C, we can very well explain it in the following way: Whenever the demand of any commodity increases and supply decreases in the market, its price rises. C is the commodity whose demand has increased and supply decreased. Therefore, there has been a price rise regarding the commodity C. But the important point to realise regarding these explanations is that by simply making the explanandum phenomenon deductible from certain laws and initial conditions we may not be able to explain the phenomenon in the true sense of the term because explaining the phenomenon on the basis of certain laws and initial conditions does not simply mean that it follows

Assessment and Conclusion  99 deductively out of them. It must also fulfil another condition, that is, the laws and initial conditions must be also factually true. The real question therefore is whether the laws we formulate regarding the social phenomena are really universally true. We can formulate laws relating to any social situation but the real question is whether the law is only looking like a law or it really holds good regarding all the actual and possible examples to which it relates. We can, for example, enunciate several such laws as ‘whenever there is inflation, there is price rise’, ‘whenever there is discrimination, there is labour unrest’, ‘whenever there is tyranny, there is revolution’, ‘whenever there is famine, there is migration of population’ and can explain related individual social phenomena by making them deducible from these laws with the help of appropriate initial conditions. But the real question is how far these laws are universal empirical laws in the real sense of the term? We know that laws to be really universal, that is, to be universally holding true, must imply counterfactual conditionals. The first question regarding the social laws is whether they imply such conditionals. And the answer is, perhaps they do not. But even if it is granted that they do so, there is a problem regarding the nature of counterfactual conditionals themselves. For if they are regarded as true for all possible worlds, they will be logical truths which are empirically vacuous and if they are taken as true for this actual world only, then they will not be universal in the real sense of the term. They will therefore be true for some intermediate kind of space which is neither this actual world nor all possible worlds. All laws are therefore valid for a limited space only, and this is specially the case with regard to the laws of social sciences. The domain of validity of the laws of social science is very limited because of many factors. But before we go into an account of these factors, let us take a few examples of the laws of social sciences, which will illustrate their very limited applicability. There is an economic law called ‘Phillips’s curve’ which asserts that there is a fixed relation between unemployment and inflation, namely ‘a low unemployment rate will cause a rise in the rate of inflation’. But such a law is not valid for all social systems. For example, it does not hold good in a slave economy. It holds only in a capitalist economy. For, the factors which account for the Phillips effect to hold may be understood in some such way: If unemployment is low, workers will feel bold about pressing wage demand. Moreover, low unemployment means that employers are facing competition. These factors obviously make for higher wages. This clearly shows that economic laws like the above can work only under limited circumstances. We can see a similar fate meted out to the economic law to the effect that rise in wages causes rise in prices. But we can very well see that this law can work only under the limitation that the rate of profit is kept constant. If the rate of profit is allowed to fall, a rise in wages could not produce rise in prices. We can see on analysis that similar is the case with so many political, sociological or other social scientific laws. For example, the law that the minorities vote for the congress may be a valid political law under the present circumstances of

100  Assessment and Conclusion Indian political system. But it may be proved to be invalid any time with even minor changes in the political or social or religious set-up. The laws of social sciences have very limited sphere of applicability and are extremely shaky due to several factors. One of the factors which is so often pointed out regarding them is that there is a lack of controlled experiments in social sciences which might give exact results. Mere observation of the behaviour of man from a distance cannot give laws which come to be really universally true. There may be other factors also but the most important factor is that the social laws are the laws about human behaviour and not about the behaviour of inanimate physical objects. Inanimate objects have got no ‘insights’ about their behaviour. So, what is observed about them from outside may be a valid ground for formulating laws about them. But this is hardly proper in case of human behaviour because it has got an inside about it. Human beings have got the capacity of thinking. They have got free will and they can take decisions. It is in this sense that it is said that human behaviour is meaningful. So, we cannot make appropriate laws about them unless we have some means to go into this inner aspect of their behaviour. Merely observing their external behaviour cannot be taken as a sound basis for giving us clue for knowing the inner meaning of their behaviour. For this the scientist will have to identify himself with the beliefs and ideas of the persons whose behaviour he is studying in order to establish laws. It is in this sense that Winch has pointed out that whereas a natural scientist has to undergo only one socialisation process by being a member of his scientific community, the social scientist has to undergo two socialisation processes – the one like the natural scientist and the other unlike him to the effect that he has to be a member of the group of the people whose behaviour he is studying. Moreover, there are factors which cause laws about social phenomena to be much less than objective and really universal. These factors are sociology of knowledge and the beliefs, commitments of prejudices by which the social scientist himself might be suffering. We shall see below in the light of Kuhn’s analysis of the role of a scientist and scientific theory how all scientific laws, especially the laws of social sciences, are value-laden. It is this feature of scientific laws which thinkers like Quine, Putnam, Hanson, Toulmin and Rudner have emphasised in their own ways. Their thinking can be held true to a greater degree in case of the laws of social sciences. Furthermore, we have to see that the trouble is not with regard to the laws only, rather it is with regard to the initial conditions also. In case of natural phenomena, it is easy to ascertain whether specific antecedent conditions actually hold or not. This can be done by simple observation as well as, if necessary, by experiments carried out under controlled conditions. The advantage here is that the objects and events are non-thinking beings, so that a duality in their thinking and acting cannot be conceived. But in human situation the case is radically different. The social scientist on the basis of his observation may mark a particular set of initial or antecedent conditions prevailing in a society at a particular time, but the social scientist’s impression

Assessment and Conclusion  101 of the conditions prevailing may not coincide with the impression of those people who are actually involved in a particular social situation. For example, a social scientist may have the impression on the basis of all the circumstances prevailing in a society that there is famine and he may explain the phenomenon of the rebellion in that society on the basis of that initial condition by saying that there is rebellion because there is famine. But it is possible that the impression of the persons involved in rebellion may be totally different and consequently the cause of their rebellion may be something like bad administration or high taxes rather than the famine-like situation. So, while explaining a social phenomenon, it is not a very easy job to form a real impression about the actual initial conditions prevailing. Thus, a causal explanation of social phenomena does not seem meaningfully possible on account of difficulties both regarding the laws and initial conditions which we have outlined above. While explaining the nature of causal explanation in natural sciences, we have seen that not only laws but theories are also employed to explain individual phenomena as well as the laws of lower generality. Therefore, we should try to see at some length the question of explanation in social sciences with reference to theories. We have seen in our Chapter 2 what a theory is and how it differs from a law. A theory, we have found, is broader in scope and generality than the laws, such that the laws may be deduced out of it. Again, a theory employs certain terms and processes which are non-empirical in nature and are therefore called theoretical terms and processes. Now the very first question that is raised with regard to social sciences in this context is whether theories are available in them. If the answer to this question is affirmative, then it is asked whether these theories contain theoretical terms and theoretical processes. And again, if at all there are theories in social sciences, what role do they actually play there? Do they help in advancing causal explanation in the realm of social sciences in the same manner in which they do it in natural sciences? Thinkers are very much sceptical regarding the answer to the first two questions, and if at all it is accepted that there are theories in social sciences, doubt is still raised whether they play or may play any explanatory role in the realm of social sciences. Let us see to some extent the answers to the above questions because they will be helpful in our understanding of the role of causal explanation in social sciences. As we have pointed out, there are many thinkers who are sceptical about the presence of theories in social sciences, because they think that the presence of theoretical terms and theoretical processes (which are necessary for theory) is impossible therein. For example, Brown in his book Explanation in Social Science2 takes three examples of alleged theories of social sciences and after examination comes to a conclusion that there are no theories in social sciences because none of the three theories contains theoretical terms and theoretical processes nor are they able to explain generalisations of social sciences. Of course, Brown seems to draw such a conclusion on the assumption that there can really be no theoretical terms in social sciences because

102  Assessment and Conclusion according to him social scientific explanations would have to be humanly intelligible while theoretical terms are by their very nature not so intelligible. In having this conclusion, Brown perhaps is influenced by the view that the aim of social sciences is not explanation in the Hempelian sense, but understanding. And if understanding is the goal of social sciences, then purely theoretical terms can have no place in them. This shows in its own way that theories cannot play any role in social sciences so far as explanation of social phenomena is concerned. Let us however see for ourselves to some extent whether theories are there or not in social sciences and whether these theories can play only explanatory role therein in the same sense in which they do it in the natural sciences. At least apparently considered, there are theories in social sciences, as it is evident from such titles as Social Contract Theory or The Theory of the Unconscious or ‘The Quantity Theory of Money’. There are also seemingly theoretical terms such as ‘Conscience collective’ (Durkheim), ‘Collective unconscious’ (Jung), ‘Unconscious projection’ (Freud), ‘Oedipus complex’ (Freud), ‘Alienation’ (Marx) etc. But the main complaint against these is that the so-called theories are not theories in the real sense of the term, because they are neither testable, nor are they such that empirical laws may be derived out of them. Again, the so-called theoretical terms and processes enumerated above are really no such terms because they do not give rise to such hypotheses which may be testable. Moreover, these concepts are so loosely specified that it is nearly impossible to understand them in clear terms. It is also not possible to derive further testable conclusions out of them. These claims against the presence of theories in social sciences may be countered on various grounds such as that there are untested theories in natural sciences also. Counter criticism may again be brought about and the controversy whether there are theories or theoretical concepts in social sciences will go on. What is important for us however to see here is whether the alleged theories present in social sciences, if at all they are treated as theories, play a role similar to those in the natural sciences so that broader and deeper causal explanations of phenomena may be based on them. To answer this question, we will have to remember here the nature of theoretical explanation that we have elucidated in Chapter 2. We have seen there that because theories contain theoretical terms and theoretical processes, therefore by their very nature, they are such that they cannot directly explain empirical phenomena unless they are linked with the latter by some intermediate kind of statements called ‘Bridge statements’ or ‘Bridge principles’ by Hempel. It is more or less agreed that social sciences lack in such link statements and therefore theories in social sciences, if at all they are taken to be there, can hardly play any explanatory role as they do in natural sciences. The so-called theories therefore have to play a totally different kind of role in social sciences. What this different kind of role may be can be made clearer if we enter here to some extent into an exposition of Kuhn’s views of scientific theories which he has presented in his book Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Assessment and Conclusion  103 According to Kuhn, scientific theories are like ‘paradigms’ or ‘models’, which present definite world view in the light of which the scientists of a particular time look to the world and understand it. Such paradigms provide us with avenues for further research experiments, which would otherwise be unavailable. They also provide in their own ways an understanding of many phenomena, which could not be intelligible without such paradigms. Whenever scientific thinking marks a major change, it is really a change in the existing paradigm. It is really in this way that scientific revolution takes place. As Kuhn himself says, The historian of science may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them. Led by a new paradigm, scientists adopt new instruments and look in new places. Even more important, during revolutions scientists see new and different things when looking with familiar instruments in places they have looked before.3 The job of a paradigm is further to set puzzles before us so that we may proceed to find their solution by making new discoveries. Now if on this picture of theories, we may try to assess the value of social scientific theories such as that of the social contract theory, then we can see that theories have a role of play in social sciences, but that is very different from presenting grounds for causal explanation. The social contract theory may be false, but it certainly presents before us a model in the light of which we may see the question of the origin of the society or the state. Similarly, it suggests various puzzles before us the need for solutions of which motivates us to go into further researches. For example, in light of the theory the first puzzle that we face is whether it explains only the origin of the political organisation or also of the society. It also raises the problem whether the notion of the social contract was to be understood in the sense of historical origin of the society or state, or it was to be understood that there was a continuously made and implemented contract implicit in all forms of every day social and political behaviour. In any case, however, it is clear from the above that theories in social sciences can hardly play the role of serving as the ground for deeper causal explanations as they do in natural sciences. We have thus seen that causal explanations, at least in the Hempelian sense, hardly seem to be adequate in social sciences and to a great extent it is so due to the very nature of the subject matter which social sciences deal with. Winch therefore seems correct to a very great extent when he remarks that the difference between the subject matter of social and natural science is not one of degree, but that of kind and so the former is really different from the latter not only factually but conceptually. Explanation in social sciences therefore can in principle have no similarity with the explanations given in natural sciences. But before coming to our final conclusion in this regard, let us see to some more length the validity of the claims of the anti-naturalists also.

104  Assessment and Conclusion According to the anti-naturalist approach what is required for an adequate explanation of any human action is the interpretation of its meaning in terms of its reasons so that a proper understanding about the performance of the action may be achieved. Reasons of the action, generally speaking, mean here the beliefs, motives or purposes by which the agent or agents are made to perform the action. Hempel, Ayer and others have tried to argue that the so-called reasons in terms of motives, beliefs etc. are also as a matter of fact nothing but the causes of actions because they really form the antecedents of these actions. What is called motive or purpose is not really the goal which may be achieved in future because such a goal may never be achieved. So, it is not the goal which prompts the action of the agent, rather it is the desire of the agent to achieve that goal which is the real force behind the action. And the desire is nothing but an antecedent condition of the action. Similarly, beliefs also form the antecedent conditions of actions because the means etc. leading to the action are determined prior to the performance of the action. Thus, properly analysed and understood, what is called motive and beliefs are basically nothing but causes. Without going into the complicated discussion regarding the question whether motives and purposes form the antecedent conditions of an action or they refer to some future purpose which really regulates the actions, we may admit that in some or other sense of the term cause, motives and beliefs may be taken as causes of actions, as insisted by Ayer, Hempel etc. But the real difficulty in taking motives and beliefs as forming grounds for causal explanation lies somewhere else. We have seen that according to the Hempelian formulation, causal explanations are basically explanations based on causal laws. So, the main question here is whether universal causal laws can be formed by way of relating motives and the corresponding actions in such a manner that it may be said without doubt that the same motives and same beliefs will invariably lead to the same decisions and will cause the same actions. Advocates of determinism in human realm on the lines of natural realm will certainly answer the question into affirmative. But it is really this point which is very much doubtful on account of various factors working in human realm, a sufficient indication about which we have made in course of our earlier discussions. Therefore, in human realm, even that which ordinarily looks as cause could properly be regarded as reason of some action. There is no wrong in saying that human actions are also caused but the word ‘cause’ must be understood here in a somewhat special sense and not in the same sense in which it is used in the context of natural events. Even in cases where some social action is seen as explained by means of some causal laws and initial conditions, it can be seen on a proper analysis that it is really a host of reasons that are working there and not simply certain causes in the mechanical or deterministic sense of the term. To take a simple example, we may see that the phenomenon of voting by a particular member of a minority community for the congress party may be apparently explained, as we have seen earlier also, on the basis of the causal law that ‘members of minority community vote for congress’ and the initial

Assessment and Conclusion  105 conditions that ‘the concerned voter was a member of minority community’. But if we go into the details of the phenomenon of voting here, we may see that instead of some causal law leading the voter to vote for congress, there are several reasons which were working behind his doing so. The concerned voter might have in his mind before voting that one should vote for only that party which may serve the interest of his community best. He then thought that he belonged to the minority community and his experiences so far indicated that the interests of the minority community could be best served by the congress party. He also must have an idea of the plans and policies of the congress party and it is after a due deliberation on these policies that he might have taken a decision to vote for the congress party. It is true that in all acts of voting, such conscious deliberations are not taken up. But this is also true that the act of voting is never the result of some mechanically oriented causal laws. Even if the voter votes by following suit with his fellowmen, he cannot be taken even then as acting mechanically without any reason. Voting on the lines of his fellowmen may itself be taken as a reason for his action. Moreover, as Winch has pointed out, he must be understanding the meaning of the act of voting. Thus, the causes of human action are really reasons. Those who try to force an identity between reasons and causes should realise that there are some important differences between the two. One very important difference may be seen in the fact that whereas reasons of actions may be called good or bad, causes cannot be so called. A case either is or is not the cause of something or some event – that is all about it. It cannot be a good cause or a bad cause. But reasons can be so. For example, if by way of explaining why a particular man voted for a particular party, the man says that he voted for the party because he thought that the party could best serve the interests of his community, then this reason that he gives for his voting may be regarded as a good reason for his action. Similarly, certain reasons may be regarded as bad also. But one cannot say the same about the causes. The second difference between cause and reason may be marked when we ask a person why he took a specific decision. Here the person will certainly not enter into a causal enquiry of the antecedents involved in his motives. He will rather lay out the reasons that led him to such a decision. It is here that we can mark the difference between a first-person account of some human action and the third-person or the observer’s account of the same. The account of the latter may be a causal account which is based on external observation of the behaviour of the person concerned. But the former will be a rational account, that is, an account based on reasons for which the action was done. Thus, reasons are very different from causes and human actions are adequately explained in terms of the former rather than the latter. We may thus see that there is merit in the anti-naturalist account of the explanation of human action. But if we pay attention to some details of the views of some specific thinkers like Winch and Gadamer, we may mark some extreme type of subjectivism and relativism in their views which does not

106  Assessment and Conclusion seem very proper. Understanding is, of course, interpretation, and interpretation is subjective to a great extent, but it does not mean, as Winch seems to insist in his book The Idea of Social Science as well as in one of his essays ‘Understanding a Primitive Society’4 that it is not possible in any way for a man belonging to a particular tradition and culture to understand the meanings and actions of the persons belonging to another culture and tradition. It is on such arguments of extreme nature that Winch takes the very idea of social science to be a misnomer. But such extreme kind of relativism is unwarranted. Jarvie seems to be very correct when he remarks that There is something like a community of rationality shared by all men, recognized or fostered by different societies in varying degrees. This rationality consists at the very least in learning from experience, especially from mistakes.5 Jarvie while criticising Winch tries to make out the point that there are some common grounds amongst human beings which enable us to understand the phenomena of other societies. Winch seems to be correct when he insists that for understanding the actions of a particular society, one has to share the beliefs and ideas of the members of that society. But this does not imply that for a member of an alien culture, it is not possible to understand the actions of the members of some other culture. Winch however seems to allow the role of intersubjective verification to remove the evil results of subjectivism and relativism from social sciences. But Gadamer does not seem to allow even this. As we have seen, he speaks of prejudices and prior commitments to play such overwhelming roles in the understanding of social phenomena that there will be no room for objectivity in the interpretative understanding of them. This is really an extreme view which cannot be accepted at all. It is no doubt a fact that any social scientist or any observer of social phenomena suffers from some kind of commitment and ideology. But that does not mean that by an intersubjective test of the results arrived at by different social scientists, an objectivity even of somewhat a loose nature cannot be arrived at. Moreover, Jarvie rightly points out that there are many problems related to social science which are intersocial in character. For example, he enumerates such problems as those of depression, suicide, democracy, disintegration etc. which are intersocial in nature and therefore they can be understood and studied when social scientists are engaged in tackling them on an intersubjective basis by getting rid of their prejudices and commitments to the greatest extent possible.6 Kuhn’s and Feyerabend’s account of science also cannot be totally accepted because of being extremely one-sided in reducing science to more or less an ideology. Taking scientific theories as mere paradigms, Kuhn goes on to argue that these paradigms are to a great extent the products of the cultural commitments of scientists. Similarly, Feyerabend in his essay ‘Realism, Rationalism and Scientific Method’ argues that reality in some sense depends on our

Assessment and Conclusion  107 choice. In his own words, ‘We decide to regard those things as real which play an important role in the kind of life we prefer.’7 Such remarks really make scientific truths as matters merely of how we look upon the world. Moreover, such remarks reduce even natural sciences to mere ideologies, what to speak of social sciences. In some general sense, Kuhn’s and Feyerabend’s remarks certainly apply to the case of social sciences because of the very nature of the subject matter of these sciences, but the situation is not as hopeless as these two thinkers take it to be. The remarks of these two thinkers seem more to be the results of a-priori philosophical considerations rather than of the considerations of the ways in which scientists actually carry out their work. It is a fact that the world cannot be understood and described quite independently of all assumptions. But this does not mean that we cannot describe the world independently of our particular assumptions and commitments. So far as the question of social science is concerned, even if there is the danger of the social scientist being committed to certain specific beliefs and ideologies, there may still be some room for objectivity here. Moreover, in some sense or other, there may be room for enquiries of a causal nature also. And it is to this point that we will like to divert our attention now. We have found that a point that thinkers like Winch have very often emphasised is that while explaining social phenomena, we have to participate in the beliefs and ideas of the social agents whose actions we are studying. That is, we have to employ the criteria which the agents themselves employ. This requirement hardly leaves any scope for the type of enquiry that is known as causal enquiry. A causal enquiry into human affairs is generally supposed to be a third person’s enquiry of the actions of human beings based on observing their behaviour from a distance. Even if such an observer bases his conclusions on talk that he has with the agents, the result of the enquiry may be very much doubtful, because the agents might deceive him by not speaking the truth. Therefore, what is adequate for an enquiry into a social phenomenon is that such an enquiry must be into the reasons why the phenomenon has occurred. It is on these grounds that Winch has argued for a conceptual difference between natural and social sciences. But we can see that there is still a role for causal enquiry in social sciences such that causal explanations of social phenomena may also have some significance therein. We can very often mark causal sequences in human behaviour although they are not to be characterised as mere causal regularities. Let us for example take the case of a criminal who commits a crime, is caught, tried, sentenced and then punished. Here we have a definite causal sequence existing between the events in as much as the earlier event explains the latter. If it is asked why the person is being arrested, it will be told that he has committed a crime. Again, if it is asked why he was sent to jail, it will be said that because he has committed a crime and the judge has sentenced him to imprisonment. Here, as the earlier vent leads to the latter event, the entire sequence of events forms a causal chain. But still, this causal sequence is different from the same kind

108  Assessment and Conclusion of sequence that is found amongst natural events. The difference lies in the fact that the events here besides being causally linked are also conceptually linked. For example, the concept of punishment implies the concept of crime. Similarly, the behaviour of a criminal in relation to a judge is conceptually related. In these cases, for a man to play his own role, it is necessary that others should play logically related roles. Consequently, to explain what one person has done requires the bringing in of a host of conceptually related activities of other people. So, in social sciences even a causal enquiry becomes a conceptual enquiry. It does not follow, however, from this that social scientific enquiry is purely a conceptual enquiry like the philosophical one. On the contrary, social scientific enquiry is a factual enquiry also. For example, the function of social science is not only to analyse the concept of criminality, punishment etc. but also to go into factual enquiries of how many people who commit crime are sentenced and punished and what laws can be formulated in this regard. The role of causation, however, in social sciences can be more clearly seen and realised in cases of such human actions which lead to unintended results. Such actions may be actions related to ideological self-deception or to various pathological behaviours and unconscious motivations. In cases of such acts, it is impossible to find out the real reasons behind them on the basis of the agent’s own account of them because the whole point of such action is that the agents deny the account which seems to advance the real reasons behind their actions. It is important to see here that the agent concerned is not hiding the real reason by telling a lie, rather he is unable to discover them due to pathological reasons. Winch has rather little to say about such actions. Such actions on his account cannot be taken as actions done for a reason. The whole host of actions for which Freud has advanced psychoanalytic explanations comes under this category. Similar is the case with the acts performed due to political ideologies like Marxism etc. Any argument which tries to rule out the irrationality of these actions will plainly be wrong, and therefore such actions will hardly admit of rational explanations in the sense of, for example, Winch. It is these actions in cases of which we reject the reasons given by the agents as unreal reasons that bring back into social sciences the role and importance of causal explanations. It is this which makes it worthwhile to defend Weber’s account of ‘significance’ against Winch’s criticism of it. Weber argues that we must back up our account of the meaning of actions with causal analysis. Winch objects to this on the ground that meanings cannot be causally analysed. But Weber seems to be correct here on two grounds. Firstly, if people perform their actions with certain significance and thus follow certain social rules, they will necessarily display regularity in their activities and these regularities may call for a causal account. Secondly, if we claim that people do things which have a certain significance or meaning that they can disclose when asked for, we can also claim that there are causes and effects of

Assessment and Conclusion  109 their behaving in particular manner. Thus, only this is not desirable that for understanding the meaning of the actions we should interpret their internal logic; rather, it is also desirable that we ask for the causes and effects of such actions. For example, we might interpret some social action of particular people in terms of their motives, purposes etc. but it will not be out of place if we also ask for the economic or the technical causes behind those actions. Such causal enquiries become especially necessary in the case of actions, the reasons for which cannot be adequately known by analysing the conscious motives, beliefs and ideas of the person or persons concerned. In such cases, only causal explanation of behaviour will be proper and desirable. KarlOtto-Apel, therefore, seems to be very right when he emphasises in his book Understanding and Explanation that social sciences may have two distinct and valid ‘interests of knowledge’ while they proceed on to explain human actions. An interest in explaining events in causal terms, and 1 2 An interest in understanding the meaning of actions in terms of cultural norms and subjective intentions. He further asserts that the possibility of explaining actions in terms of understanding their meaning does not exclude the possibility of explaining actions as events with causes. What, however, it does exclude is the claim of unified science that all scientific pursuits may be reduced to the criteria laid down by the physical sciences. In spite of having a leaning towards the Verstehen school of social science, Apel honestly realises that the problem with a purely interpretative social science is that it cannot deal with unintended consequences of human actions and the causal connections that go beyond an agent’s or society’s understanding of actions. In particular, it cannot deal with self-misunderstanding and systematic distortion that affect the entire framework of action and interpretation. Hence, Apel pleads that understanding must be combined with explanation, that is interpretation of the meaning of actions must be combined with their causal explanation. The two pursuits are complementary to each other according to Apel because self-understanding of social actions may be subjected to pathological or ideological distortions. Hermeneutic studies of human actions must be supplemented by their explanations with reference to causal factors. But Apel is very assertive about the point that the introduction of causal enquiry into social sciences does not at all serve the purpose of deductive-nomological explanation. For, the point of uncovering the causal elements of human behaviour is only to promote a better understanding of the agents of society’s action, it does not in any case help in making a possible prediction about such behaviour. In his own words, ‘The point here is to deepen the self-understanding of human actions from the inside, so to speak, by understanding their irrational and alien determinations, determinations that at first can only

110  Assessment and Conclusion be explained.’8 Skinner also seems to hold a view similar to that of Hempel when he remarks, … to provide such non-causal explanations is in no way incompatible with the subsequent provision of further and arguably causal explanations of the same action. One such further stage might be to provide an explanation in terms of the agent’s motives. A yet further stage might be to provide an explanation in terms of the grounds for the agent’s possession of just those motives. It will normally be indispensable to go on to both these further stages in order to be able to provide anything like a complete explanation of any social action.9 A Ryan also seems to possess such a reconciliatory view regarding explanation in social sciences in his book The Philosophy of Social Sciences to a great extent. He appreciates the value of Winch’s views regarding the nature of social sciences, but he strongly opposes Winch on the point where the latter finds no role for causal explanations in social sciences. At this point he favours Weber rather than Winch.10 The above may be viewed as our attempt to reconcile the notion of interpretive understanding or rational explanation with that of causal explanation. In a sense, it is really so, but we must point out that our attempt at reconciliation is not like the one brought about by Toulmin in his essay ‘Reasons and Causes’. In this essay, the main thrust of Toulmin’s argument is that there is no incompatibility between causes and reasons of actions because whereas the former explains actions, the latter justifies them. As he says ‘… The giving of reasons in justification of our actions is distinct from, yet compatible with, the discovery of causes in explanation of those actions.’11 But we do not agree with this view of Toulmin in as much as he says that reasons are advanced only for justifying actions. Perhaps he forgets here the distinctions between reason and rationalisation. Only reasons (actual or imaginary) which are fabricated by somebody for rationalising some of his actions that he has done without conscious thought may be taken as justifying reasons. But understanding action in terms of the motives, beliefs and purposes etc. is not advancing a rationalisation for them. It is therefore not justifying them, rather it is decoding or redescribing the reasons behind them. So, the term ‘reason’ if properly understood in the sense in which it has been employed by most of the thinkers of the Verstehen school cannot be taken as a rationalising or justifying principle of actions. When we have said that interpretative understanding must be supplemented by causal explanation, we do not mean to say that the former constitutes the justifying principles while the latter constitutes the explanatory principle. It is only for the explanation of some actions that the latter is necessary, in case of most of the actions they are only desirable but not necessary. We can see one more point before we conclude. This point in a way supports our point made out above that in spite of the fact that in explaining

Assessment and Conclusion  111 social phenomena we have to go into decoding the reasons of the agents behind them, causal explanations based on empirical laws have also their relevance in this context. But it does one thing more closely allied to the above. Because social phenomena are to be explained by entering into the reasons of the agents who act, it is not necessary that we should stop at this level of understanding only. Besides doing it, we can also make efforts for establishing general empirical laws in social sciences like political science, economics etc. and try to understand social phenomena in the light of them. We may realise the value of this kind of effort by means of an example relating to the economic activities of men and the corresponding act of the economist. People are engaged in selling and buying goods in the market. The trader and the buyer have their own experience of the market and they have their own vocabulary to describe and understand the trend of the market. But they are unable to employ such technical economic terms as ‘liquidity preference’, ‘diminishing marginal utility’ etc. in connection with the transactions that they make amongst themselves. It is the economist who coins these concepts and spends his time thinking about them. It is of course a fact that by employing these concepts and by formulating various economic laws, the economist does not become a better trader than the ordinary market trader. But still his effort has its own value. The people who are engaged in day-today economic activity do not analyse and explain their own behaviour. It is the economist who by having a look over the activities of the ordinary people, tries to bind them under certain laws and theories and these laws and theories help planners of economic activity in controlling and predicting the future trend of the market of the general economic activities. In doing so, the economist of course makes abstractions on the basis of his findings from the everyday life of economic activities and in this he may sometimes make mistakes also. But still his effort is valuable in its own right. Not only these laws and theories which are based on the empirical observation of the activities going on in the society, but also some of the ‘ideal type’ theories, in the construction of which both the economists and political scientists have been engaged for quite some time now, have their own value in as much as they present models in terms of which the social scientist tries to understand the political and economic activities of the society. There have been some clearcut practical advantages of such efforts whose value can neither be denied nor ignored. So, the philosophical point that the adequate method of explaining social phenomena cannot lie merely in subsuming them under causal laws does not in the least minimise the importance and value of the causal enquiries in social affairs. By way of concluding, we would like to make one admission. In spite of our knowledge about the fact that there are individual methodological differences between the different social sciences such as economics, political s­ cience etc. we have ignored them and have tried to bring to only those features relating to the nature of explanation in these sciences which are general in nature and which are applicable to all of them in their broad outlines. This is

112  Assessment and Conclusion however not to ignore the importance of the methodological differences that the different social sciences may have in their special contexts. This is rather only to acknowledge the limitation of the scope of our present work. Notes 1 Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism (Ark Paperbacks, London, 1986) P. 122. 2 R. Brown, Explanation in Social Sciences (Routledge, 1963). 3 T.S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago univ. Press, Chicago, 197) P. 110. 4 Peter Winch, ‘Understanding a Primitive Society’, American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 1, Number 4, October 1964. 5 I.C. Jarvie, ‘Understanding an Explanation in Sociology and Social Anthropology’, included in Explanation in Behavioural Sciences (Cambridge univ. Press, 1970) ed. by Robert Borger and Frank Cioffi, P. 238. 6 Ibid. 7 P. Feyerabend, ‘Realism, Rationalism and Scientific Method’, included in Philosophical Papers (Cambridge univ. Press, 1981) P. XIII. 8 Quoted by Georgia Warnke in his/English translation of Karl-Otto Apel’s book Understanding and Explanation (The MIT Press, Cambridge, 1979), P. XX of ‘Translator’s Introduction’. 9 Quentin Skinner, ‘Social Meaning and the Explanation of Social Action’, included in The Philosophy of History (Oxford univ. Press, 1974) ed. by P. Gardiner, P. 118. 10 A. Ryan, The Philosophy of Social Sciences (Macmillan Press 1972) P. 165. 11 S. Toulmin, ‘Reasons and Causes’, included in Explanation in Behavioural Sciences (Cambridge univ. Press, 1970) ed. by R. Borger and F. Cioffi, P. 21.

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Index

accidental generalisation 30, 31 Achinstein, Peter 18, 24 anomic nexus 17 anti-naturalistic approach 4, 48, 53 Ayer, A.J. 53, 68–9, 73–4, 82, 104, 113 Boyle’s law 32, 43–4 Braithwaite, R.B. 14, 23, 60, 114 bridge principles 44, 102 bridge statements 102 Brown, R. 101–02,112, 114 Charles’ law 32 collectives 79 Collingwood, R.G. 55, 58, 113 Comte 16, 46, 48, 52 contrast spaces 21 controlled experiments 100 Corpuscular theory 43 counterfactual conditionals 30–1, 75, 91, 99 covering laws 2, 3, 26, 30,52, 70, 82, 98, 114 Dilthey 16, 46, 55, 58 dispositional property 75 dispositional statement 75, 76 doctrine of interpretive explanation 61 doctrine of interpretive understanding 60 Dray, William 4, 16, 19, 30, 41, 46–8, 53–5, 61–3, 71–3, 77, 82, 113–14 Erklaren 16, 47 explanation 1–6, 8–36, 39–49, 51–5, 57–87, 91–2, 94–8, 101–05, 107–14; causal 15, 23, 31–2, 33, 46, 52–3, 58, 68–9, 74, 76, 81, 94–8, 101–04, 107–11; of covering law model 3, 4,

15–7, 26, 40–2, 46, 51–4, 64, 66, 73, 81–2, 84, 87, 91; of D-N model 28–9, 30, 32–3, 40, 84; deductivenomological 3, 4, 26–8, 30, 31–3, 35–6, 39, 40–1, 43, 45, 73, 75, 97, 109; deductive-statistical 34; dispositional 41, 75,76; functional 4, 41, 64–7, 77–8, 81; holistic 67; inductive-statistical 34–6, 40; motivational 52, 68–9, 74, 76; popular 13, 23; probabilistic 4, 33–4, 36, 39, 87; psychoanalytic 108; rational 54, 68–9, 71–3, 76–7, 108, 110; by reason 82; as redescription 69; teleological 4, 41, 66–8; theoretical 44–5, 102 explanandum phenomena 25, 28–9, 32, 98 explanandum statement 25–9 explanandum 15–7, 19, 22, 25–9, 32–6, 39, 40, 44, 60, 73, 85, 97 explanans 15, 17, 19, 22, 26, 28, 33–6, 39, 40, 42, 44, 73, 84, 85, 97 explanans statement 26–7, 29 explanation sketches 47, 48 explicanda 19 explicandum 19 Feyeraband, P. 106–07, 112–13 first-order activity 2, 7, 8 Friedman, Michael 16, 17, 19, 24, 113 functional analysis 65, 66, 81, 82 Gadamer 16, 61–2, 105–06 Garfinkel, Alen 21, 24, 113 genetic explanations 77 Goodman, Nelson 30 Graham’s law of diffusion 44

116 Index Hanson 100 Hempel, C.G. 13–7, 19, 22–6, 28–9, 30, 32–5, 37, 39, 40–2, 44–9, 51–5, 62, 66, 68–9, 72–4, 76, 81–2, 85–7, 92, 97–8, 102, 104, 110, 113 historicist prophecy 89 Hobbes 46, 48, 95 Homans, George C. 53, 79, 83, 113 ideal type theories 111 inductive support 22, 35, 36, 40 inductive-statistical 34–6 inference tickets 76 initial conditions 26–9, 31–6, 60, 73, 84–5, 88–9, 90–2, 97–9, 100–01, 104 internal principles 44 intersubjective verification 61, 106 inverse deductive method 50 Jarvie, I.C. 17, 24, 53, 63, 112–13 Karl-Otto-Apel 109, 112–13 Kinetic theory of gases 39, 43–4 Kuhn, T.S. 100, 102–03, 106–07, 112–13 large scale historical prophecy 90 law or laws 1, 2, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15, 17, 23, 26–9, 30–4, 36–7, 39, 40, 42–5, 47, 49, 50–2, 55, 58, 60, 70, 75–6, 79, 85–6, 88, 90, 92, 95, 97–9, 100–01, 108, 111, 113; causal 15, 23, 31–2, 42, 46, 48, 50, 53, 55–6, 64, 69, 70, 75, 81–2, 94, 97–8, 104–05, 111; deterministic 3; empirical 17, 27–8, 31, 42, 44, 47, 50, 72, 75, 99, 102, 111; general 1, 2, 3, 26, 28, 29, 30, 32, 50, 70; mechanical 48–9, 94; scientific 10, 31, 39, 88, 99, 100; statistical 33–5, 47, 60; universal 3, 15, 26–9, 30–1, 33–4, 39, 40, 73, 84–6, 90, 92, 97 laws of co-existence 32 laws of mind 50, 51 laws of succession 32 liquidity preference 58, 111 logic of situation 97 Lukes, Steven 78, 82, 113 Malinowski, B. 64–6, 82, 113–14 Mandelbaum, M. 70, 78, 82, 114 mathematical theory of statistical probability 36, 38 McIntyre 96 Menger C. 52

Merton, R.K. 65–6, 82, 114 meta-science 8 methodological individualism 67, 77–9, 80–2, 113 methodological socialism- 79 methodological unity 46, 49, 52 methodology of science 8 Mill, J.S. 16, 46, 48–9, 50–2, 55, 59, 62, 73–4, 79, 88–9, 96, 114 Nagel, E. 16–7, 46 naturalistic approach 48, 53 necessary condition 96, 97 Newcomb 48, 74 Ohm’s law 32 Oppenheim 33 Phillips’s curve 99 Popper, K.R. 49, 52–3, 78–9, 80–1, 84–5, 88–9, 90, 97 pragmatic character 16 principle of action 72, 110 probability 9, 33–9, 47, 79, 85; classical theory 36; relative frequency theory 36 probabilistic hypothesis 38 probabilistic laws 3, 30, 33–7, 39, 40, 44 prognosis 84 psychological laws 51, 96, 97 Ptolemic or the Copernican theory- 43 Putnam 100 Quine 100 relative frequency 37, 38 Rudner 100 rule of simplification 28 Ryan, A. 66, 80–3, 110,112–14 Scheffler, I. 86, 92, 114 scientific prediction 84–5, 87, 89, 90, 92 Scriven, M. 14, 16–9, 20, 24, 41, 69, 82, 86–7, 92, 114 second-order activity 2, 7, 8 self-defeating prediction 91 self-fulfilling predictions 91 self-regulating laws 66 self-regulatory phenomena 66 short-term conditional 89, 90 situational individualism 78 Skinner, Q. 70–1, 82, 110, 112, 114 socialisation process 59, 100 societal facts 78, 82, 114

Index  117 spaces of alternatives 21 Strawson, P. F. 73, 82, 114 subjunctive Conditional 31, 39,40, 91 sufficient conditions 66, 96, 97 Taylor, Charles 12, 19, 23–4, 60, 63, 67, 82 teleological or motivational explanation 69 teleological or purposive explanation 65, 68,74 theoretical entities 42–4 theoretical processes 42–3, 101–02 theoretical terms 42–4, 101–02 theories of probability 36 Toulmin, S. 19, 23, 86, 92, 100, 110, 112, 114

unconscious motivations 77, 108 unified science 46, 48, 60, 109 unity of science 46, 48, 49 Verstehen 16, 25, 47, 68, 87, 109, 110 Watkins, J.W.N. 79, 81, 83, 114 wave theory 43 Weber 58, 63, 108, 110, 114 Whitehead, L. 5 Winch, Peter 4, 16, 25, 46, 48, 55–9, 60–1, 63, 71, 74, 76, 82, 87–9, 91–3, 100, 103, 105–08, 110, 112, 114 Wisdom, J. O. 11, 23, 114 Wittgenstein 53, 59, 60, 75 zero method 53