The Nature of Scientific Explanation

Challenges contemporary empiricisms and other accounts of science that reduce it to description and prediction. Dougherty argues that a philosophy of science is but a part of one's overarching metaphysical outlook, itself painstakingly derived from considerations of nature, law, intelligibility, causality, and inference. This book critically examines several well-known philosophical positions from a time-transcending Aristotelian point of view. It defends an Aristotelian or "realist" interpretation of science, employing the textual Aristotle as commented upon and amplified through the centuries.