UNDERSTANDING OF SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATIONS

Science is one of the ways that humans try to understand the physical world and make sense of it. Science is fundamental to determining and explaining phenomena. So, science helps us to understand about some matters like how and why do they happen? For example, ecologists may try to explain why species diversity is decreasing in an ecosystem, or astronomers may try to explain the phases of the Moon based on the relative positions of the Sun, Earth, and Moon. When scientists explain phenomena and construct new claims, they provide evidence and reasons to justify them or to convince other scientists of the validity of the claims. To be scientifically literate citizens, students need to engage in similar inquiry. Engaging students in explanation and argumentation can result in numerous benefits for students. For example, creating and supporting their claims can help students develop a stronger understanding of the content knowledge. Scientific explanation is an essential learning goal.

SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATIONS

The first step in clarifying the notion of scientific explanation is to draw a sharp distinction between explaining why a particular phenomenon occurs and giving reasons for believing that it occurs. A scientific explanation uses observations and measurements to explain something we see in the natural world. Scientific explanations should match the evidence and be logical, or they should at least match as much of the evidence as possible. We have good, scientific explanations for most of what we see in the natural world. As an example, why do objects fall to the ground? Well, there is a force called gravity that attracts every object in the universe to every other object. The scientific theory says that bigger objects produce larger forces of gravity, and that the closer two objects are together the larger the force of gravity. The earth's gravity is really easy to observe because the earth is huge, and it's nearby. This is a scientific explanation because we use all the observations and data humans have collected.

EXPLANATION VS. CONFIRMATION

Explanation involves answering questions like Why (or how) is it the case that X?, where "X" is considered to be true, while confirmation entails offering reasons to believe (or proof) that certain statements (especially, scientific theories) are correct (in the context C in which the question is asked). Context C additionally establishes explanatorily relevant/salient contrasts and background conditions. The explanandum of an explanation is the thing that is being explained, while the explanans is the thing that is explaining.

DEDUCTION AND INDUCTION

During the scientific process, deductive reasoning is used to reach a logical true conclusion. Another type of reasoning, inductive, is also used. Often, people confuse deductive reasoning with inductive reasoning, and vice versa. It is important to learn the meaning of each type of reasoning so that proper logic can be identified. Deductive reasoning works from the more general to the more specific. Sometimes this is informally called a “top-down” approach. We might begin with thinking up a theory about our topic of interest. We then narrow that down into more specific hypotheses that we can test. We narrow down even further when we collect observations to address the hypotheses. This ultimately leads us to be able to test the hypotheses with specific data – a confirmation (or not) of our original theories. 

Inductive reasoning works the other way, moving from specific observations to broader generalizations and theories. Informally, we sometimes call this a “bottom up” approach (please note that it’s “bottom up” and not “bottoms up” which is the kind of thing the bartender says to customers when he’s trying to close for the night!). In inductive reasoning, we begin with specific observations and measures, begin to detect patterns and regularities, formulate some tentative hypotheses that we can explore, and finally end up developing some general conclusions or theories.

A scientific explanation is used to explain the observations and measurements that we see in the natural world. Scientific explanations may not have the ability to explain every scenario, but it sure does help to understand things even a bit more. Many scientists' philosophers, such as scientific realists, believe that explanation plays an important epistemic role in theory formation.