Revisiting Accounts of Narrative Explanation in the Sciences: Some Clarifications from Contemporary Argumentation Theory
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Revisiting Accounts of Narrative Explanation in the Sciences: Some Clarifications from Contemporary Argumentation Theory Paula Olmos1
© Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract The topic of the presence, legitimacy and epistemic worth of narrative explanations in different kinds of scientific discourse has already enjoyed several revivals within related discussions in contemporary philosophy of science. In fact, we have recently witnessed a more extensive, more unprejudiced and ambitious attention to narrative modes of making science. I think we need a systematic theoretical framework in order to categorize these different functions of narratives and understand their role in scientific explanatory and justificatory practice. My claim is that some distinctions and analytic tools developed within the field of contemporary Argumentation Theory might be of help. Keywords Argument · Argumentation theory · Explanation · Historical sciences · Narrative · Natural sciences
1 Introduction The topic of the presence, legitimacy and epistemic worth of narrative explanations in different kinds of scientific discourse-and the role of narratives, narrative reasoning or narrative rationality in scientific explanatory practice-has already enjoyed several revivals within related discussions in contemporary philosophy of science. Among the relatively early contributions we may mention D. Hull’s “Central Subjects and Historical Narratives” (1975) in which the author tried to justify the presence of narrative modes of explaining within a wide range of historical sciences: “cosmogony, geology, paleontology, and human history” (Hull 1975, p. 264). These sciences would be focused on accounting for the characteristics of the kind of individual historical entities (including biological species) that * Paula Olmos [email protected] 1
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
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Hull claims may function as “central subjects” in historical narratives: “the main strand around which the historical narrative is woven” (Hull 1975, p. 255). His positive conclusion about the explanatory nature (pp. 273–274) of scientific narratives in this kind of historical sciences is based on the strategy of widening our concept of comprehension and explanation, dismissing the exclusiveness of the logic of subsumption under a law (or generalization) to allow for other modes of understanding based on integrative or configurational schemes. Narratives are presented by Hull as an appropriate way to account for unique subjects whose (either relatively stationary or evolutionary) continuity in time is precisely the focus of scientific research. Of course, there can be no laws as such about unique subjects but nothing prevents their being subsumed under some (more or less strict) generality and thus explained according to traditional Hempelian accounts. Hull claims, though, that in the kind of sciences and scientific discourse he is interested in, laws, general theories and even practical rulesof-thumb (used as methodological hint
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