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Explanatory Unification

Kitcher, Philip·1981·Philosophy of Science

Abstract

The official model of explanation proposed by the logical empiricists, the covering law model, is subject to familiar objections. The goal of the present paper is to explore an unofficial view of explanation which logical empiricists have sometimes suggested, the view of explanation as unification. I try to show that this view can be developed so as to provide insight into major episodes in the history of science, and that it can overcome some of the most serious difficulties besetting the covering law model.

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Metadata

Authors
Kitcher, P.
Venue
Philosophy of Science
Published
1981-12
Volume
48
Issue
4
Pages
507-531
ISSN
  • 0031-8248 (ISSN-L)
  • 1539-767X
OpenAlex
W4244761346
Cited by
1,129
References
1
FWCI
8.87
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Explanatory Unification. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1086/289019
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Kitcher, P. (1981). Explanatory Unification. Philosophy of Science. https://doi.org/10.1086/289019

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.