ABSTRACT
Modern men of science appear to be fairly unanimous in maintaining that the object of science is not to explain the phenomena of nature, but to describe them. Sometimes, indeed, men of science not only admit that science does explain, but even maintain that the scientific explanation is the only true explanation of facts. They are usually careful, however, to add at once that in science the word “explanation” means something different from what it means elsewhere. The aim of science is to discover order in the world, and all the scientific methods are methods of tracing order among various natural phenomena. Hallucinations, and illusions, and fallacies are common enough to warn any sensible person against excessive confidence in his views. Hence various methods of scientific explanation, corresponding more or less to the principal scientific methods of discovering order in nature.
