Telltale Signs:  What Attention to Representation Reveals about Scientific Explanation

Andrea I. Woody
University of Washington

This essay explores the connection between representation and explanation in the sciences. I suggest that scientific representation schemes be viewed as pragmatic tools for acquiring the sort of articulated awareness that is the hallmark of non-trivial knowledge.  Crystal field theory in chemistry illustrates this perspective.  Certain representations achieve the status of being paradigmatically explanatory, thereby shaping models of intelligibility.  In turn, these explanatory preferences serve largely to define and differentiate disciplinary communities by implicitly
endorsing particular epistemic aims, values, and methods.  In this way, the pragmatic nature of explanatory discourse effectively grants its intellectual utility.  Explanations provide the scaffolding required for cohesive intellectual communities.