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Wesley Salmon

Wesley Salmon was an American philosopher of science who taught at Brown, Indiana, Arizona and, for many years, the University of Pittsburgh. Criticising Hempel's…

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Also known as Wesley C. Salmon

1925 – 2001 · Detroit; Brown, Indiana, Arizona, Pittsburgh

Traditions: Analytic

Wesley Salmon was an American philosopher of science who taught at Brown, Indiana, Arizona and, for many years, the University of Pittsburgh. Criticising Hempel's covering-law model, he first proposed a statistical-relevance account and then a causal-mechanical account of scientific explanation: to explain an event is to show how it fits into the causal structure of the world, by tracing the causal processes and interactions that produce it. He also wrote influential work on probability, induction and Zeno's paradoxes.

Key ideas

  • To explain an event is to show its place in the causal structure of the world.
  • Causal processes transmit marks or conserved quantities; pseudo-processes do not.
  • Statistical relevance, not high probability, is what matters for explanation.
  • Explanation by derivation from laws can fail when the laws are causally irrelevant.

Major works

  • The Foundations of Scientific Inference (1967)
  • Statistical Explanation and Statistical Relevance (1971)
  • Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World (1984)
  • Four Decades of Scientific Explanation (1989)

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