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Narrative Explanation Revisited

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Michael Ruse
Michael Ruse*
Affiliation:
University of Guelph
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Extract

T. A. Gouge has argued that certain explanations in evolutionary biology should be understood as conforming to the so-called ‘narrative’ model of explanation, where the chief distinguishing feature between this model and the well-known ‘covering-law’ model is that this narrative model, unlike the covering-law model, makes no appeal at all to laws. In support of his case Goudge offered an example of an evolutionary explanation which, he claimed, comes closer to the narrative model than the covering-law model. In a recent paper in this Journal I offered a critique of Goudge's model of narrative explanation, and I suggested that there were good reasons for understanding Goudge's example of an evolutionary explanation as making some kind of appeal to laws (and thus in vital respects conforming to the covering-law model).

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , March 1975 , pp. 529 - 533
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1975

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References

1 The Ascent of Life (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961 ).

2 “Narrative Explanation and the Theory of Evolution,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, I (1971-72), 59-74.

3 “Narrative Explanation and Redescription,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, III (1973-74), 419-425.

4 Man and the Vertebrates (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1941).

5 Ruse, op. cit., p. 72.Google Scholar

6 Burhenn, op. cit., p. 422.Google Scholar

7 For example, the derivation of the ideal gas law from Boyle's and Charles's laws.

8 Burhenn, op. cit., p. 422.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., p. 423.

10 Ruse, op. cit., pp. 66–67.Google Scholar

11 For example, in Hempel, C. G. Philosophy of Natural Science (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1966), p. 51.Google Scholar

12 Burhenn, op. cit., p. 424.Google Scholar

13 I discuss in some detail the sense in which the covering-law model is a ‘model’ in my book, The Philosophy of Biology (London: Hutchinson, 1973).

14 Burhenn, op. cit., p. 424.Google Scholar

15 Ibid., pp. 424–425.