ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the problems connected with covering law theory starts from some views expressed by Sir Karl Popper in his books The Open Society and Its Enemies and The Poverty of Historicism. Popper's standpoint is that his theory of explanation in science can be generalized to include historical explanation. Popper thinks that historical explanation is of a general scientific pattern. For a more rigorous and explicit statement of the covering law view people must go to Hempel, who is generally taken as the main protagonist in covering law theory. Covering law writers have yielded to pressure enough to state a distinction between the logical or scientific framework of the explanation and the type of framework that can be viewed as internal to particular disciplines. The chapter presents some of the important issues in discussion of the covering law position, and to show how the original statement has been under pressure of objections.
