Explanatory Generalizations, Part II: Plumbing Explanatory Depth

Abstract

[Introduction] Some explanations are deep and powerful: Newton’s explanation of the \ntides, Maxwell’s explanation of the propagation of light, Einstein’s explanation \nof the advance of the perihelion of Mercury. Other explanations, while \ndeserving of the name, are superficial and shallow: Bob lashed out at Tom \nbecause he was angry, the car accelerated because Mary depressed the gas \npedal with her foot, the salt dissolved because it was placed in water. We \ntake this intuition to be very natural and widely shared. Yet in the vast \nphilosophical literature on explanation, there have been precious few \nattempts to give any systematic account of this notion of explanatory \ndepth. In this paper, we will provide such an account from within the \nframework of the manipulationist account of explanation presented in a \ncompanion paper (Woodward and Hitchcock 2003, hereafter referred to \nas EG1; see also Woodward 1997a, 2000).