Scientific Explanation Problems Have you ever thought about the way your car works? The internal workings of the engine, how does the fuel make it work, how does the combustion cause motion and then transmit to the wheels? If so, what would you answer to an 8 year old when he asks you, "Why is the car moving?"; Will you start explaining high school physics, mechanics, the chemistry of combustion, and the concept of friction? Or you'll just say, 'Well, the car uses gas and that makes the engine move the wheels.'; Of course, the latter doesn't explain much about what a car is. But he answers the question based on the boy's understanding, doesn't he? The question is answered, the child is happy, and you didn't have to spend a few weeks presenting what you just said. Some may argue that this is misleading, but despite the fact that, when viewed in general, the simple answer may seem false or incomplete, in the context of the situation it is quite adequate. This is what van Fraassen is trying to say about scientific explanation. According to him there are two problems with scientific explanation. Both are easily visible in our example. The first is: when is something explained? Some argue that we should not explain a phenomenon unless we have the complete, unifying explanation, faithful to the last detail, which will also cover all cases that correspond to our case, cases similar to our case, or distant variants of our case . In short, what they want is a theory of everything, which in itself is a noble goal, but hardly achievable. Let's face it, everything in our universe is connected in one way or another, or through another, to everything else in it. A man has a definite connection, for example, with the "gas giant"; type of planets. One reason could be, for example, that they both share some common chemical elements. Does this mean that the same theory should apply to predicting the movement of man as the movement of a gas giant? As ridiculous as it may seem, this kind of propositions often arise in science, albeit not grotesquely, but still so distantly, for example in the Theory of Relativity and Quantum Theory. If a child were told to expect the same behavior from an ant and an elephant, he or she would be quite confused. How then can we expect gigantic objects to obey the same rules as microscopic ones? W…half of paper…anyone would go into the chemical components that cause the green color of apple skin unless asked about it. Demonstrations, however, are proofs and, at the same time, they also answer the "why"; questions, relate the causes to the essence of the phenomena, otherwise the demonstration is incomplete. A good example of this distinction would be the application of a simple logical rule (also known as De Morgan's law), according to which (~A and ~B) is ~(A or B) and vice versa. We can say that ~(P and ~Q) is (~P or Q) because of De Morgan's law, and this is enough for an explanation. However, if we were to prove this rigorously without any initial assumptions, we would have to prove De Morgan's law while we are at it, otherwise our proof would be incomplete. science, since it rejects the truth of theories as well as their appeal to essence. The scope of an explanation, according to him, must be adapted to the context chosen by pragmatic factors, which derive from the "why"; question to which the explanation is called upon to answer. Surely van Fraassen would not have doubts for a second about what to answer to the boy who asked him what is the reason why his car moves.