Randy Westgren dropped me a line about my post on knowledge and imagination. He was kind enough to let me quote from his mail. He began by reminding me of the “distinction between understanding and explanation in the philosophy of science.” This always gets my attention because I wrote my master’s on the philosophy of explanation. I was therefore particularly attuned to this point that Randy made:

Understanding is meaningful only with respect to the audience. An explanation of solar movements or social movements to primary school students – to help them understand – must necessarily be less comprehensive and either more or less abstract than for an audience of doctoral students. An explanation of a phenomenon in science has a goal greater than understanding; one seeks to explain causes, regularities, or other parts of the phenomenon.

This reminded me of a distinction I struggled with in my thesis: the difference between explanation as a rhetorical event and as logical structure. It is true that we sometimes say we will try to “explain something” and mean by this that we will try “get someone to understand” it. Even philosophers, I discovered, have a hard time keeping this straight, but I will insist that this use of the word “explain” has nothing to do with the philosophy of explanation. It certainly makes it difficult to make a sharp distinction between explanation and understanding.

And I think we need this distinction.  “Turco and Zuckerman,” Randy suggested, “are content to say that understanding is good enough for sociology, in many cases.” I’m not sure that’s the right emphasis. On my reading, they were arguing that understanding is necessary, but not sufficient. They were not lamenting the demand for explanation, but the abandonment of understanding.

Randy also suggested that there is “there is a great deal of room for scientific inquiry between law-based explanation and Verstehen.” My view is that the classical “deductive-nomological” account of explanation provides a regulative ideal for explanation, which can only ever be approximated in practice. In real life, nothing is fully explained, no explanation is complete and “understanding” covers the remaining intellectual real estate. Or rather, let’s say that explanations construct a series of extensionless points around which our understanding operates.

I think understanding should be seen as a minimal condition of knowing. I agree with Randy that explanation sets a somewhat higher standard. Or, rather, perhaps it just sets a different standard. Does the relativistic explanation of the precession of the perihelion of Mercury hold to a “higher” standard than our historical understanding of the progress achieved by the civil rights movement?

Sometimes we have to make do with “merely” understanding something. Sometimes we have an actual explanation. Sometimes we have a partial explanation and an understanding of its partiality. Or an explanation along with an understanding of how it might be falsified. I guess I seek an understanding that always tends towards (or at least strives for) explanations. You don’t have to explain Hamlet’s actions in order to understand them. But you build your understanding as you pursue an explanation for his actions and inaction.