Mechanismic approaches to explanation in ecology

Abstract

The search for mechanisms and their description of explanatory and predictive purposes has been, and continues to be, a common practice in scientific research, even after the decline of classical mechanism. However, from the empiricist critique of causality and especially during the second third of the twentieth century, other perspectives came to the forefront of the discussion in the philosophy of scientific explanation. In particular, the deductivist approach of the covering-law model shaped the debate over the nature of explanation in science during some three or four decades, despite the insistent criticisms of authors like Michael Scriven who pointed to the importance of describing the relevant causes for understanding a given fact. The hegemony of the deductivist approach to scientific explanation diminished significantly with the admission of the existence of irreducible random facts, which elicited a wave of failed attempts to construct an inductive model of explanation. The sustained effort of authors such as Mario Bunge and Wesley Salmon contributed to restoring to the causality the respectability that had lost at the hands of the radical wing of empiricism, first due to the Humean critique and later with the general rejection of the metaphysics that professed the logical empiricists. With the decline of logical empiricism, attempts to develop a causal perspective of scientific explanation thrived, and the causal model came to share the hitherto exclusive role of the deductivist perspective in the philosophy of scientific explanation. At present, the field is paying renewed attention to the description of mechanisms, especially causal ones, as a central aspect of explanation and other research practices in several areas of science. This approach offers viable solutions to the various ontological and methodological objections that are opposed to the two traditional approaches (the purely deductive and the purely causal). In this essay we will review the basic characteristics of a bunch of philosophical proposals that highlight the description of mechanisms as a central element to explanation in science and we will briefly discuss its suitability for the field of ecology.