Hintikka

But if each particular explanation would involve a separate quest of a covering law, these laws would likewise be multiplied without necessity and without reason.

This is similar with a sophism. Why is a law a covering law? Why such a model is subsumptionist? Not because many different initial conditions and explanandums are subsumed under a covering law? What explains different explanandum under the same covering law are different initial conditions.

In actual scientific practice, an explanation does not consist in deriving the explanandum from a covering law plus suitable initial conditions.

The actual scientific explanations from the domain of natural sciences many times are very weak or imperfect from a logical criterion of consideration. That is, they are not a model for the philosopher or the logician of scientific explanation.

Many times when we subsume a special case under a general one we can talk of deduction or derivation, but if the covering law or background theory has a causal form, if the covering law or background theory has not a pure logical structure (only with logical relations and operations etc. ), then their deduction or derivation is not a genuine one, is not a logical deduction or derivation, but the representation of a causal or physical consequence. same logical form as universal syllogistic premises, how do covering law explanations differ from syllogistic explanations?

By content and aim. The valide explanation should have a valide logical structure.

Why there can be no scientific explanations that have a syllogistic logical structure? Instead, Hertz started from something that is not typically emphasized or even mentioned in covering law accounts of explanation.

It is what we have called the background theory. In Hertz s case, it consists of Maxwell s equations.

From them Hertz deduced how wave-like electromagnetic disturbances are propagated.

You see, somebody deduced something from equations.

Equations contains equalities quantities, addings, subtractings, fractions, multiplications etc. of quantities, NOT TRUTH VALUES. The mathematical equality is a quantitative equality. A pure equation has a pure mathematical structure, not a logical one. Having a mathematical structure it cannot substantiate a deduction, cause the deduction has logical nature. Conclusion: The mathematical consequences should be distinguished from the logical ones. nu ma lasa sa. plec Scientific laws, but alone theories, are rarely of the form of a general implication.

Scientific theories are rarely in a pure logical form. That is why, together with the ad explanandum and explanandum they do not form a valide logical structure.

However, the gist of Hertz s explanation did not consist in the deduction of the explanandum from the propagation law (plus initial conditions). Philosophy of science is not history of science. Philosophers of science are not interested of the individuality of a ...