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Lauren N. Ross examines what it means to explain something in biology, distinguishing an explanation from a description, classification, or prediction. The book introduces philosophical debates about scientific understanding and organizes them around two broad families of explanation: accounts that identify causes and accounts that use mathematical relations without describing a causal process.
The treatment of causal explanation begins with questions about causation, the selection of relevant causes, and reduction. It then distinguishes mechanisms, pathways, and cascades as different ways of making biological processes intelligible. The discussion of mathematical explanation considers topology and constraints, optimality and efficiency, and deliberately simplified models. Examples from the life sciences provide a common thread through these approaches, allowing readers to compare their purposes and the kinds of understanding they offer.
Lauren N. Ross. Explanation in Biology. Cambridge University Press, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009300940. CC BY-NC 4.0. Original edition unchanged.