Please join us for a philosophy lecture, “Explanatory particularism in scientific practice,” with visiting scholar Melinda Bonnie Fagan (University of Utah) on Thursday, May 8 at 4 pm in the Lory Student Center, rm 300. 

Explanatory particularism is an approach to studying explanation that takes social aspects of scientific practice as primary. Like recent defenses of pluralism about explanation, this account rejects the traditional idea that there is one kind of explanation common to all the sciences and everyday life. Instead, multiple styles of explanation flourish in local contexts, intersecting with one another in diverse ways. More radical than other forms of explanatory pluralism, the particularist approach directs philosophers’ attention to often overlooked aspects of scientific practice: interdisciplinary collaboration and conflict, interlinked aspects of understanding, and a pro-social image of science as diverse yet unified. I’ll introduce the particularist approach and then discuss some of its main implications and results.

Melinda Bonnie Fagan is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Utah, where she holds the Sterling M. McMurrin Chair. Her research focuses on experimental practice in biology (particular stem cell and developmental biology), explanation, and philosophical conceptions of objectivity and evidence.