Scientific Understanding

What It Is and How It Is Achieved

authored by

Anna Elisabeth Höhl

Abstract

Understanding is an ability manifested by grasping relations of a phenomenon and articulating new explanations. Hence, scientific understanding is inextricably intertwined with and not possible without explanation, and understanding is not a type of propositional knowledge. Anna Elisabeth Höhl provides a novel philosophical account of scientific understanding by developing and defending necessary and sufficient conditions for the understanding that scientists achieve of the phenomena they are researching. This account of scientific understanding is based on and supported by a detailed investigation of an episode from scientific practice in biology.

Organisation(s)

Institute of Philosophy

Type

Monograph

No. of pages

259

Publication date

18.04.2024

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

General Arts and Humanities

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839472620 (Access: Open)