Abstract

In pursuing philosophical enquiries in the foundations of physics, I have found myself operating with a concept of explanation which has a quite different logical syntax from the concept which Hempel has explicated. I suspect that the concept of explanation I operate with is not especially idiosyncratic, is not fully captured in the existing philosophical literature, and that it may be the more appropriate concept if we are to consider explanation as the goal of physics. I therefore propose to give here a short account of the structure of this alternative concept of explanation.