Monday, June 28, 2010

More on Nonlinearity and Mechanistic Explanation

The point is that the more localizability and decomposition fail, the harder mechanistic explanation will be, and a high degree of nonlinearity is bad news for both of these (C&S, 2008, p. 16).
Ok.  So, how is nonlinearity make localizability and decomposition harder?  I guess that if you can't decompose a system into parts, then maybe by the MDC and Bechtel definitions you can't have mechanistic explanation, so why does nonlinearity make composition harder?

(And really, decomposition could be harder with nonlinearity, but if it is still possible wouldn't that be enough to remove the block on mechanistic explanation?)

No comments:

Post a Comment