ABSTRACT
This chapter examines three kinds of referents of observations, and then discusses the derivation of generalizations across such observations, and the way such empirical generalizations are constructed and how they set the limits of explanations. It considers explanations and predictions, and the two principles (causation and subsumption) on which they both rest. The chapter discusses the roles of these principles in discriminating between theories and models during what Kuhn has called the "normal" and "crisis" phases of scientific development, and in extending the scope of any given explanation or prediction. The chapter closes with some procedures involved in testing predictions. It comprises the discussion of procedures associated with pure science. The discussion opened by examining observations and empirical generalizations and what it takes to construct them. The chapter discusses the general procedures for performing inter subjectively verifiable tests of predictions derived from explanations (i.e., interpretation, sampling, instrumentation, and scaling), as were problems of propositional testability.
