Hobbes on Explanation and Understanding

One aspect of Hobbes's philosophy of science which has not been explored in any depth is his view of the explanatory import of science. This is possibly because of the important passages in Hobbes awarding primary, if not sole, significance to the practical dimension of scientific knowledge, i.e., to science as a means of controlling and manipulating nature, an emphasis which is in tune with the general prudential tenor of Hobbes's philosophy. In addition the Hobbesian view of explanation seems straightforward enough: one explains a phenomenon when one assigns a cause to it. On the face of it there does not seem much more to be said about the matter. Hobbesian science explains because it provides knowledge of causes and causes explain because that is what causes do by definition. A problem with the explanatory force of causes arises when one surveys the great variety of conceptions of causality which have been proposed. Do they all have explanatory value and for the same reasons? Are Aristotelian causes and Humean ones of equal explanatory import and in virtue of the same traits? The case of Hobbes is of particular interest in this respect because in his work we find discussions not only of his own notion of causality as a species of efficient cause but also of Scholastic causes, deriving from Aristotle, and of prudence which is based on Humean-type regularities. One can then ask why it is that, according to Hobbes, the type of causes he espouses explain, while the other varieties do not. In attempting to answer this question I shall suggest that one of the reasons they do so is because they afford a particular sort of understanding. This in turn will provide a link with contemporary discussions of the relations between explanation and understanding, and in particular it will provide some insight into the kind of understanding afforded by systematicity by construing understanding as the integration of what is to be explained within one's body of knowledge

Causality (physics) · Epistemology · Face (sociological concept) · Phenomenon · Philosophy of science · Physics · Prudence · Value (mathematics) · Variety (cybernetics) · Virtue · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Historical Philosophy and Science · History of Science and Medicine · Mathematics · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought

• Explanation and Scientific Understanding

  Michael Friedman•The Journal of Philosophy•1974

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• The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes

  David Boonin, Tom Sorell•The Philosophical Review•1998

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