John Stuart Mill's understanding of scientific explanation

In this study, John Stuart Mill's understanding of scientific explanation is examined. Mill is the first philosopher to openly tackle with the problem regarding the nature of scientific explanation. Mill discussed scientific explanation as a problem in an exceptionally original way. The originality comes from Mill's attempt to answer the question of What is scientific explanation? in a wider framework on the grounds of Newton's view of science and modelling on Newton's scientific work. Hence, the concepts of uniformity of nature, causality, laws of nature and deduction in particular, which are formed in line with Newton's mechanistic and deterministic view of the universe turns out to be foundational constituents of Mill's understanding of scientific explanation. Mill elucidates his view of universe and scientific explanation model shaped by above mentioned concepts in the third and to some extent the second chapters of A System of Logic. Therefore, this study is based on those chapters. The aim of the study is to illustrate Mill's ideas on scientific explanation and the factors affected the development of those ideas in an analytic and critical way. Keywords: Scientific explanation, determinism, uniformity of nature, causality, laws of nature, deduction, induction.