Integration and the Mechanistic Triad: Producing, Underlying and Maintaining Mechanistic Explanations

Abstract

Integration is a grand challenge for many contemporary research endeavors. Mechanistic explanations provide a multi-level approach especially suited to bring out different aspects of the causal-mechanical structure of the world. Yet, we encounter a triad of differently structured producing, underlying and maintaining mechanistic explanations. Understanding how the elements of this triad can be fruitfully and systematically linked, I suggest, may help drive scientific progress and integration. This paper discusses important conceptual ties between an explanandum and the metaphysical relations highlighted in the corresponding explanans: to explain how an end product or result is generated, scientists will usually search for the mechanism that produced it; to explain a process, they will typically search for the mechanism underlying it; and to explain how a system’s stable state or continuous behavior is maintained, they search for the mechanism maintaining it. Appreciating these different projects, and understanding the connections between them, provides an important backdrop for explanatory integration. Besides, it allows us to reconcile apparently different conceptions of mechanistic explanations without heavy metaphysical baggage.