For today's lesson, we were given a chapter of a book to read and summarize on the Explanations on Scientific Laws and Theories. As far as what I could understand and extract from the chapter that I read was, firstly, to be able to explain a phenomena that takes place in our lives is a major accomplishment in Science. A theory should also make sense as questions that arise before a theory is made are usually the 'why' questions. For instance, "why does this happen?" or "why are things this way?". When the questions are answered, that is when we get our scientific explanation. Explanations are worth working for as they enhance our understanding.
Besides, I have also understood that there is a standard model of explanation which is the Covering-Law Model of explanation. This model focuses more on the patterns rather than on the contents of the explanation. An explanation is considered to be good by how it is put rather than what it has to say. The example that I got from the book while reading was about a stop sign. For instance, someone who is not familiar with traffic crosses the road and observes that cars stop before he crosses the intersection. Why cars stop at the side of the road is explained by the stop sign that is situated at the side of the road. Naturally, it is the citizens duty to obey the law and the law says that citizens with cars must stop at the stop sign. This is considered as a good explanation because when the law is understood and the conditions are realized, the event can be predicted.
Picture 1 : Covering- Law Model of Explanation
In addition, the covering-law model is also said to be the Deductive-Nomological Model of Explanation (D-N Model). I grasped that nomological is to be applicable to the laws, and the word deductive here relates to the relationship between the law, its conditions and the conclusion. All these relationships are compulsory, this is because if the law is true when the conditions hold, the event is bound to happen.
Picture 2 : Deductive-Nomological Model of Explanation
Nevertheless, there were problems arising about the model of explanation and amendments had been done to these models. The first amendment that was done to the covering-law model is that a measure of unification was added to it, whereby an explanation reveals the unity in nature that covers a maximum number of phenomena. The second amendment to this model was to have an explanation that is related to causal laws or theories. This direct focus on the causal factors changed the emphasis of the standard covering-law model from showing that the phenomenon is expected, to bringing about why the phenomenon happened.
The one thing that i would need help in here is to understand all the new terms that i read in this chapter. Some of them are confusing and some are way too complicated to be understood. As far as we look at the Covering-Law Model of explanation, it is still a little confusing for me to understand it as a whole. To be able to do that, I might have to read this specific part of the chapter a numerous times.
As a future teacher, I am happy that I gained this opportunity to read about the explanations of Scientic Laws and Theories in more detail as I will be able to share this same knowledge with my future students later on.
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