Introduction
Earth science has received relatively little attention from philosophers of science. To be sure, plate tectonics and the dinosaur extinction event are frequently cited in the literature, but most of earth science is terra incognita to philosophers.
One reason for this lack of interest may be found in the widespread idea that earth science is not an autonomous science, but is easily reducible to allegedly more fundamental sciences such as physics and chemistry. While in the past decades serious doubts have been raised about the reductionist program, and disciplines such as biology and psychology have thereby achieved the status of autonomous “special sciences”[111] (Fodor 1974, Dupre 1993), earth science has barely been mentioned in these debates, probably because the phenomena and processes in its domain are assumed to be purely physical and chemical and therefore easily reducible to lower levels.This essay will make it clear that earth science deserves the attention of philosophers of science. The geosciences have typical features that distinguish them from other natural sciences. These features will be highlighted in the course of an investigation of the nature of earth-scientific explanations. §2 briefly reviews the disciplinary aims of earth science. §3 aims to answer the question of whether reductionism applies to earth science. First, the nature of earth-scientific theories and laws is discussed. Subsequently, we investigate whether emergent earth-scientific phenomena exist that are irreducible to phenomena at the chemical and physical level. §4 investigates what kind(s) of explanation can be found in earth science. We discuss whether narrative explanation is employed and whether narrative explanation is reducible to causal explanation.[112] The notion of underdetermination plays a central role in our argument: earth-scientific theories and hypotheses are usually underdetermined by the available evidence, and therefore complete causal explanations are out of reach. Earth science typically employs combinations of causal and narrative explanations. Finally, we will highlight a methodological strategy that is typical of the geosciences: abduction or inference to the best explanation.
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