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Life of Wesley Charles Salmon
Wesley C. Salmon was an American Philosopher of Science known for his work on the nature of the scientific explanation. Salmon was a realist about causality in scientific explanation. Salmon introduced the statistical-relevance model.
References:
* William Bechtel, Discovering Cell Mechanisms: The Creation of Modern Cell Biology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006)
* James Woodward, "Book review: Wesley Salmon, Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World", Noûs, 1988 Jun -
The Foundations of Scientific Inference
In "The Foundations of Scientific Inference" Wesley Charles Salmon goes into depth about probability and confirmation of scientific hypothesis. Salmon compared the major interpretations of probability against three criteria: admissibility, ascertainability, and applicability. When discussing the confirmation of scientific hypothesis, Salmon discusses the difference between absolute confirmation and incremental/relevant confirmation. Galavotti, Maria. Wesley Salmon. Stanford Philosophy. 2018. -
The Deductive-Nomological Model of Scientific Explanation
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Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World
In "Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World" Wesley Salmon uses logic tools to explore the ideas of conjunctive forks. In it he says, "Since the statistical relations found in conjunctive forks are said to explain otherwise improbable coincidences, it follows that such coincidences are explained only in terms of common causes, never common effects." Galavotti, Maria. Wesley Salmon. Stanford Philosophy. 2018. -
Four Decades of Scientific Explanation
Salmon discusses the requirement of maximal specificity and the requirement of high inductive probability of the explanandum, are neither necessary nor sufficient to identify a tenable account of scientific explanation. Galavotti, Maria. Wesley Salmon. Stanford Philosophy. 2018. -
Causality and Explanation
In "Causality and Explanation" Wesley Salmon brings together a number of his essays to discuss causal connections. This theory identifies causal connections with physical processes that transmit causal influence from one space‐time location to another, and it incorporates probabilistic features of causality, keeping open the possibility that causality operates in indeterministic contexts. Salmon, Wesley. Causality and Explanation. University of Pittsburgh. 1998.