Unity of Science: A Mechanistic Approach

The mainbody of this dissertation consists of three chapters, each a self-contained paper that addresses a distinct issue. The two themes that unify the three chapters are: first, the nature of “laws” in non-undamental sciences, and second, the concept of mechanism and mechanistic explanation. Overall, this dissertation strives to present an overall picture of the Mechanistic Unity of Science, where the elements in different sciences are connected in interesting ways via mechanistic explanations and mechanisms.The first chapter in the mainbody is titled “Mechanistic Explanation and the Problem of Cohesion.” In it, I introduce an under-explored philosophical problem, namely, the problem of cohesion. I argue that it is a philosophically fruitful and significant problem, and I show how it can be solved by drawing on the notion of mechanism and mechanistic explanation.The second chapter is titled “The Nature of Nomic Stability.” In it, I take up the traditional problem of explaining the nature of lawhood in science, but I examine it in the new context of non-fundamental laws. I criticize some influential accounts on this matter, and then I develop my own account, which also draws on the idea of mechanism and mechanistic explanation. I point out that the main advantage of my account is that it can solve the puzzle of why some extremely local generalizations can nonetheless still be laws.The final chapter is titled “Historical Explanation and Mechanism.” My focus in this chapter is on explanation in history. In particular, I focus on a form of explanation in history (what I call structure-oriented explanations) that has received very little attention from philosophers of science. I argue that this form of explanation can be understood mechanistically, but the mainstream model of mechanistic explanation is insufficient for this task. I then develop a new model for mechanistic explanation, which I argue successfully captures the form of structure-oriented explanations in history and thereby improves our understanding of them.