Scientific explanation[edit]
Main article: Scientific explanation
A closely related question is what counts as a good scientific explanation. In addition to providing predictions about future events, society often takes scientific theories to provide explanations for events that occur regularly or have already occurred. Philosophers have investigated the criteria by which a scientific theory can be said to have successfully explained a phenomenon, as well as what it means to say a scientific theory has explanatory power.
One early and influential theory of scientific explanation is the Deductive-Nomological model. It says that a successful scientific explanation must deduce the occurrence of the phenomena in question from a scientific law.[7] This view has been subjected to substantial criticism, resulting in several widely acknowledged counterexamples to the theory.[8] It is especially challenging to characterize what is meant by an explanation when the thing to be explained cannot be deduced from any law because it is a matter of chance, or otherwise cannot be perfectly predicted from what is known. Wesley Salmon developed a model in which a good scientific explanation must be statistically relevant to the outcome-to-be-explained.[9][10] Others have argued that the key to a good explanation is unifying disparate phenomena or providing a causal mechanism.[10]