SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATIONS & WHY-QUESTIONS
SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATIONS & WHY-QUESTIONS Thousands of years ago, our explanations about how the world worked were not very good. Things we couldn't understand were attributed to praise or vengeance from gods, or thinking the world was random. Thanks to science, we have a much better idea about why things are the way they are. Science is the study of the natural world through observation and experiment. 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. SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION Any explanation consists of two parts, the explanandum and the explanans. The explanandum is the fact that is to be explained. The explanans is that which does the explaining. It consists of whatever facts, particular or general, are summoned to explain the explanandum. An argument is simply a set of statements, Scien...