Mechanistic Explanations in Physics and Beyond

This volume offers a broad, philosophical discussion on mechanical explanations. Coverage ranges from historical approaches and general questions to physics and higher-level sciences . The contributors also consider the topics of complexity, emergence, and reduction.


Mechanistic explanations detail how certain properties of a whole stem from the causal activities of its parts. This kind of explanation is in particular employed in explanatory models of the behavior of complex systems. Often used in biology and neuroscience, mechanistic explanation models have been often overlooked in the philosophy of physics.

The authors correct this surprising neglect. They trace these models back to their origins in physics. The papers present a comprehensive historical, methodological, and problem-oriented investigation. The contributors also investigate the conditions for using models of mechanistic explanations in physics. The last papers make the bridge from physics to economics,the theory of complex systems and computer science .

This book will appeal to graduate students and researchers with an interest in the philosophy of science, scientific explanation, complex systems, models of explanation in physics higher level sciences, and  causal mechanisms in science.