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For example, “All gases expand when heated; this gas was heated; therefore, this gas expanded". Statistical explanation, involves subsuming the explanandum under a generalization that gives it inductive support. For example, “Most people who use tobacco contract cancer; this person used tobacco; therefore, this person contracted cancer”.
For example, Newton's Law of Gravity is a mathematical equation that can be used to predict the attraction between bodies, but it is not a theory to explain how gravity works. [3] Stephen Jay Gould wrote that "...facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data.
The history of scientific method considers changes in the methodology of scientific inquiry, not the history of science itself. The development of rules for scientific reasoning has not been straightforward; scientific method has been the subject of intense and recurring debate throughout the history of science, and eminent natural philosophers and scientists have argued for the primacy of ...
For example, in the definition "An elephant is a large gray animal native to Asia and Africa", the word "elephant" is the definiendum, and everything after the word "is" is the definiens. [ 7 ] The definiens is not the meaning of the word defined, but is instead something that conveys the same meaning as that word.
In this example, "smoke" is the explanandum, and "fire" is the explanans. Carl Gustav Hempel and Paul Oppenheim (1948), [ 1 ] in their deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation, explored the distinction between explanans and explanandum in order to answer why-questions, rather than simply what-questions:
The word is not to be mistaken for the thing. For example, the word "moon" (a concept) is not the large, bright, shape-changing object up in the sky, but only represents that celestial object. Concepts are created (named) to describe, explain and capture reality as it is known and understood. [citation needed]
For example, when predicting how a person will react to a situation, inductive reasoning can be employed based on how the person reacted previously in similar circumstances. It plays an equally central role in the sciences , which often start with many particular observations and then apply the process of generalization to arrive at a universal ...
In philosophy and science, a first principle is a basic proposition or assumption that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption. First principles in philosophy are from first cause [1] attitudes and taught by Aristotelians, and nuanced versions of first principles are referred to as postulates by Kantians.