Explanation in Archaeology: An Update

Citation: Salmon, W (1992) Explanation in Archaeology: An Update. Metaarchaeology. L. Embree, Springer Netherlands. 147: 243-253 (RSS)
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Summary

After Hempel and Oppenheim’s publication of “Studies in the Logic of Explanation” in 1948, archaeologists started to apply the notion of scientific explanation such as DN-IS and law model into their research. In 60s and 70s, discussion of scientific explanation as well as philosophical argument was lively animated. Among various kinds of scientific explanations, the author introduces two main approaches, causal explanation and explanation by unification and compares those two explanations.

Causal explanation is to explain some phenomenon with finding and mentioning its cause. Its application into archaeological case needs to be taken in conjunction with recognition of the basic statistical character explanations. For instance, hunting strategy can be explained as a kind of ratio of yielding success (behavior science). More direct approach of causal explanation is to develop a theory of probabilistic causality. But it is not simple, to make the theory valid, both contributory causes and counteracting causes should correspond to each other.

Explanation by unification is the approach to explain by providing unified accounts of wide rages of phenomena. For example, a number of gas laws such as Boyle’s law, Charles’s law, Graham’s law, etc can be explained by Newtonian physics. The explanation of unification uses the notion of covering law, which new archaeology arisen from, based on the concept that every bona fide explanation makes essential reference to at least one law of nature. But it also has some limitation that the method of unification often contains the reduction of one domain of science and the reduction in the behaviour science is more problematic. For instance, the law cannot cover some specialities of each cases of archaeology such as functional explanation in evolutionary theory.

To compare and contrast, causal explanation needs more details and causal process, appeals to entities, and consists of exposing hidden mechanism. On the other hand, unifying explanation contains reference to broad range of the world, deals with fundamental and universal law of nature and avoids thinking and talking about the unique phenomenon.

As an alternative model, the author mentions about Kicher’s approaches to explanation of “top-down” (entire structure of science knowledge, from highest level theories to phenomenon) and “bottom-up” (fundamental attentions to the details of the causal mechanisms, from there to highest level theories) as complementary model.