Realist Methodology and the Articulation of Modes of Production (ص 40)
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- Realist Methodology and the Articulation of Modes of Production (ص 40)
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commonly referred to as the "covering-law model", the
"hypothetico-deductive" or the "deductive-nomological" model
of explanation. (58) I shall refer to this model. following
Mary Hesse, as deductivism. (59) According to this model of
science, an explanation of an event which does not conform to
the prescribed rules of deductivism is not a veracious
scientific explanation but a pseudo-explanation. For
deductivism, a constitutive scientific explanation is a
function of the formal properties of empirical statements and
the coherence of their posited mutual relations. (60) In this
model, statements of a particular content may be said to be
entailed or subsumed in statements of a general form which
"cover" a given field of phenomena or branch of a discipline.
This model of explanation is best shown ostensively: Imagine
the traditional picture of Descartes sitting by his cosy
well-stacked fire, insulated from the trepidations of the
Winter chill, when suddenly his fire begins to go out. If one
were asked to explain this phenomenon we might reply that a
blocked chimney flue and lack of oxygen in the unventilated
room caused the fire to die. Now, the deductivist would
inform us that this explanation entails the formulation of a
general empirical law, viz. all fires go out when starved of
oxygen. The deductivist would further argue that this
statement can be structured in the form of a deductive
argument, such that:
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- المنشئ
- Alex Pollock
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