The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science

by Michael Strevens

Shallow explanation does not require the explainer to grasp the implementation of the principles. More important still, it does not require the principles to pass any philosophical test or to conform to the explanatory prescriptions of a Kuhnian paradigm. Gravity might turn out to be transmitted by impact, but equally it might turn out to be authentic action at a distance. Either way, Newton maintains, we have a “sufficient explanation” for the purposes of empirical inquiry, or as Newton calls it, “experimental philosophy.” Newtonian explainers, like Popperian falsifiers, prove their worth by conforming closely not to intellectual precepts but to observed phenomena. The shallow conception of explanation thereby frees scientific theory builders to try just about anything, however ideologically abhorrent, in their attempts to explain the phenomena.