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Really Statistical Explanations and Genetic Drift

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Marc Lange
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Abstract

Really statistical (RS) explanation is a hitherto neglected form of noncausal scientific explanation. Explanations in population biology that appeal to drift are RS explanations. An RS explanation supplies a kind of understanding that a causal explanation of the same result cannot supply. Roughly speaking, an RS explanation shows the result to be mere statistical fallout.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 80 , Issue 2 , April 2013 , pp. 169 - 188
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

Thanks to Chris Haufe, Alex Rosenberg, and participants at Philosophy of Biology at Madison (2012), Andrea Woody’s seminar on scientific explanation at the University of Washington (2011), and the British Society for the Philosophy of Science Special Seminar on Choice and Explanation (Oxford, 2012).

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