Young children often lack words for what they want to talk about. To fill the gaps in their lexicon, they coin new words. They rely on compounding and derivation to do this. This means identifying and analyzing parts of words – roots or stems, and affixes – and learning their meanings, as well as which combinations are possible. Some languages favor compounding and some derivation in word formation. Children are sensitive to which options are the most productive and adopt those first. Two-year-olds offer analyses of word meanings, as in running-stick (I run with it) or high-chair (it is high), and provide analyses of novel compounds where they take account of language structure (head noun first in Hebrew, second in English). They also analyze derived forms with agentive endings. They start to produce novel words from as young as age two, whether compounds in Germanic languages, or derived forms in Romance and Semitic. They begin with simple forms (minimal or no change to the root), advance to compound or derived word forms that are transparent in meaning, and opt for the most productive options in the adult language, with the goal of finding the right words to convey the child-speaker’s meaning.

How to remember your new skills, and what to do with them.

‘God is simple’, wrote Messiaen; here is an aesthetic model for this composer – sometimes called a theologian – that is present in diverse aspects of his music and that receives attention in this chapter. Simplicity is revealed in different forms and techniques, and in his ‘naïveté. It is so engraved in the composer’s works that it becomes almost a caricature. This chapter examines these ideals in Messiaen’s thought, character, and in the critical reception of his music.

Tertullian provides evidence in several writings addressed to catechumens of the ways in which Christian contestations about ritual related to knowledge of God. Against what he describes as the obfuscations of heretical and pagan ritual, Tertullian emphasizes the simplicity of Christian ritual as a fitting mode for expressing true divine power. This chapter focuses on De spectaculis, De oratione, De baptismo, and Tertullian’s appeals to the Rule of Faith.

This chapter completes our critical exploration of Popper’s key work, the Logic of Scientific Discovery and how it applies to corpus linguistics. In this chapter we address the question of how easily linguistics may be viewed as a science, in Popper’s terms. We also consider important critiques of Popper’s work and use those to both clarify and, where necessary, adapt the framework.

Although it is helpful to appreciate the general nature of explanations, we might reasonably want more than this. As this book is part of the Understanding Life series, we may expect to delve into details about kinds of explanations that are specific to the life sciences.

It is widely held that science is a (if not the) primary source of our knowledge of the world around us. Further, most accept that scientific knowledge is the best confirmed and well-supported kind of knowledge that we have of the world. But, how do scientific explanations lead to scientific knowledge? The short answer is that they do so via a method known as “inference to the best explanation” (IBE), sometimes called “abduction.” Before we get into the details of IBE, let’s take a quick look at an obvious way that scientific explanations give us scientific knowledge.

A general way of appreciating some of the main ideas of the previous chapter is to recognize that explanations aim at providing understanding. Scientists and philosophers agree that understanding is a (if not the) primary epistemic goal of scientific inquiry. Both explanation and prediction tend to be closely related to understanding. We want explanations in science because we want to understand why the world is as it is and how things happen. And, once we understand various phenomena, we can make accurate predictions about them. One simple, and widely accepted, way of assessing the quality of a given explanation is to look at the understanding it provides. Roughly, the better an explanation, the more understanding that explanation (if true) would provide. As philosopher Peter Lipton explained, the explanation that is the best is simply the explanation that, if true, would provide the deepest understanding of the phenomena being explained. That being said, some worry because it seems that we might misjudge how well we understand something.

In this chapter we’re looking at the relation between scientific explanations and predictions. It is tempting to think that the only difference between explanations and predictions is that one looks back and tells us how or why things happened as they did, and the other looks forward and tells us how or why certain things will (or are likely to) happen. This thought can seem particularly plausible when we consider that in many cases a good scientific hypothesis will both explain phenomena and allow us to make accurate predictions. Despite its initial plausibility, the idea that explanation and prediction are symmetrical is mistaken. The way to see this is to take a look at a particular theory of scientific explanation that entails this relationship between explanation and prediction. The particular theory of scientific explanation in question, the covering law model, which we discussed in Chapter 2, is false. One of the reasons that this theory of explanation fails helps illustrate the fact that explanation and prediction are not symmetrical.

Explanation is central to our lives, in general. We seem to have an innate (or nearly so) drive to explain and seek explanations. When our favorite app is not working, we want to know why, and we want to know how to fix it. When trying to understand why people engage in an odd behavior – refusing to wear masks during the COVID-19 pandemic, say – we want an explanation. What reasons do they have for doing something that seems so clearly misguided? Why are they resistant to expert advice on the issue? Ultimately, we seek explanations to help us understand and navigate the world around us.

While it isn’t necessary to do so, it’s often good to start a book by saying something that is clearly true. So, let’s do that. Science has had (and continues to have) a significant impact upon our lives. This fact is undeniable. Science has revealed to us how different species arise, the causes of our world’s changing climate, many of the microphysical particles that constitute all matter, among many other things. Science has made possible technology that has put computing power that was almost unimaginable a few decades ago literally in the palms of our hands. A common smartphone today has more computing power than the computers that NASA used to put astronauts on the Moon in 1969! There are, of course, many additional ways in which science has solved various problems and penetrated previously mysterious phenomena. A natural question to ask at this point is: why discuss this? While we all (or at least the vast majority of us!) appreciate science and what it has accomplished for modern society, there remain – especially among portions of the general public – confusions about science, how it works and what it aims to achieve. The primary goal of this book is to help address some specific confusions about one key aspect of science: how it explains the world.