Abstract

Here, we aim at elucidating the epistemic grounds by which scientists traverse the path from ignorance to insight to scientific understanding- within the realm of empirical sciences, specifically focusing on cases marked by the existence of recalcitrant anomalies. We contend that scientific understanding is structuralist. Furthermore, we contend that the partial overcoming of anomalies between scientific theory and observation resides in the finding of some structures that allow for reconciliation and integration of the resulting inconsistencies and explanatory gaps by providing novel inferential pathways and ways of making sense of dependency relations. Moreover, we claim that this type of understanding is gradual in that it begins with insight, understood in our view as a way of grasping what type of structure might be helpful in overcoming the above difficulties and leading eventually to a more full-blown understanding involving systematic integration and subsumption of theoretical posits and empirical observations within theoretical structures.