The browser you are using is not supported by this website. All versions of Internet Explorer are no longer supported, either by us or Microsoft (read more here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/windows/end-of-ie-support).

Please use a modern browser to fully experience our website, such as the newest versions of Edge, Chrome, Firefox or Safari etc.

Mechanistic explanation in social contexts: Elster and the problem of local scientific growth

På svenska

Author

Summary, in English

Jon Elster worries about the explanatory power of the social sciences. His main concern is

that they have so few well-established laws. Elster (2007) develops an interesting substitute: a

special kind of mechanism designed to fill the explanatory gap between laws and mere

description. However, his mechanisms suffer from a characteristic problem which I will

explore in this article. As our causal knowledge of a specific problem grows we might come

to know too much to make use of an Elsterian mechanism but still lack a law. We might then

find ourselves in the paradoxical position of knowing more relevant causal truths about the

phenomenon we are interested in than we did before but being able to explain less. If this

possibility is realized in social science settings, as I argue it might well be, Elster’s

mechanistic account is threatened. Moreover, even if the possibility is rarely realized in that

way, it raises, simply as a possibility, a conceptual problem with Elster’s mechanistic

framework.

Publishing year

2012

Language

English

Pages

105-114

Publication/Series

Social Epistemology

Volume

26

Issue

1

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Routledge

Topic

  • Nursing
  • Philosophy

Keywords

  • scientific growth
  • mechanism
  • explanation
  • Elster

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0269-1728