Modes of Explanation: Complex Phenomena

Contemporary scientific studies of complexity in biology, social science, and elsewhere have generated new domains for philosophical thinking about explanation. The complexities and contingencies of the structures that biologists, psychologists, neuroscientists, and social scientists explore have major implications for the epistemology of explanation and have consequently generated new modes of explanation. In large part, this is a result of the complexity of the structures themselves. The structures I have in mind have multilevel organization and multicomponent causal interactions—think of social insect colonies, the brain, social institutions. Thus, different causes collaborate, if you like, to generate features of these complex structures, and they display plasticity in relation to variation in context, either internal or external. These responsive dynamic structures change in response to other changes, both internal and external. This responsiveness is a very useful adaptive mechanism for living in a world that itself is changing.