Wesley Salmon Quotes
Wesley Charles Salmon was an American philosopher of science and one of the leading writers on scientific explanation, causation, and induction in the second half of the twentieth century. Trained at the University of Chicago and long-time professor at Indiana, Arizona, and Pittsburgh, he developed in Statistical Explanation and Statistical Relevance and Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World successive accounts of explanation as the fitting of a phenomenon into a wider causal structure. The quotes below are attributed to Wesley Salmon, organized by topic.
Wesley Salmon on Knowledge
-
Attributed to Wesley Salmon:
“To explain is to fit a phenomenon into the causal structure of the world.”
-
Attributed to Wesley Salmon:
“Statistical relevance lies at the heart of probabilistic explanation.”
-
Attributed to Wesley Salmon:
“Induction is the difficulty that makes the philosophy of science interesting.”
-
Attributed to Wesley Salmon:
“Science seeks not certainty but the best supported claims.”
Wesley Salmon on Nature
-
Attributed to Wesley Salmon:
“Causation is the propagation of structure through space and time.”