On The Explanatory Power of Explanations: Why Context Matters. (original) (raw)

In contemporary popular-scientific explanations, what is to count as a powerful or 'better' explanation not seldomly is determined by its providing of 'lower-level' information. 1 This appeal to lower-level explanations seems indicative of a certain scientific tendency: it suggests that higher-level explanations ultimately are translatable to lower-level explanations. That is, the translation of higher-level explanations to lower-level explanations is considered a fruitful enterprise, since it is believed that ultimately all the currently separate scientific domains-including their respective higher-level explanations-can in principle be explained by unifying these in fewer lower-level explanations. This implicitly assumes that, by carrying out such a reduction, the explanatory power remains intact. The aim of this paper is to object to this assumption by stressing that, because of its dependence on contextual factors, explanatory power does not necessarily remain intact during the translation in question. Rather, it is the existence of contextual factors that seems determinative of explanatory power proper. In what follows, I will first provide a sketch of the hierarchical structure that the 'level' classification of scientific explanations represents. Second, I will assess an everyday scenario and consider what type of explanation seems better-suited to capture it in terms of explanatory power.