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Explanations . By Gwynn Nettler. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1970. Pp. 237. $7.50.)

Explanations. By Gwynn Nettler. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1970. Pp. 237. $7.50.) The sense of "explanation" used in this book is very wide, so wide in fact that it amounts only to satisfying the questioner's curiosity by telling him a story, whether the story be true, false, or incoherent. In the author's view, there are not only good and bad explanations, but good and bad types of explanation; and most of Nettler's account is devoted to discussing two reputable types—definitional and scientific —and two disreputable types—empathetic and ideological. His final chapter is concerned with the dangers of letting social scientists guide our social policy, dangers which arise, he says, from their habitual use of empathetic and ideological explanations in support of their moral or political goals. It is difficult to see the utility of Nettler's fourfold classification. The four types are obtained by employing several different principles of classification, but we are given no reason to think that to each type there corresponds a distinct principle. Ideological explanations, for instance, are characterized as "group-supported patterning of beliefs of inadequate empirical warrant, where such beliefs are energizing, in attack or defense of values, and comprehensive" (p. 177). It is obvious that such a characterization does not exclude the other three types; for persuasive definitions, inadequately supported scientific explanations, and empathetic "understanding" can be elements within an ideological explanation. The latter is simply a use to which the other three types are put. Moreover, why must an ideology have "inadequate empirical warrant"? It is the end to which the ideological explanation is put that helps to mark it out, not the truth or falsity of its content. Marxism would not be less of an ideology if all its assertions were true. Again, the "distinctive feature" of scientific knowledge is said by Nettler to be "generalization from facts according to rules." Not only does this hold equally well of empathetic and ideological explanation, it suggests (a) that singular observation statements are not part of scientific knowledge, and (b) that science grows by generalizing from such nonscientific statements. The two claims are incompatible, and in any case both are false. Nettler's difficulties are enlarged by his apparent belief that "many explanations—perhaps all—are fictions; they describe events, put them together, ay if the descriptions were complete, uniquely accurate, and the relationships the only patterns discernible" (p. 6). Yet in what sense could this possibly be true? The notion of a complete description is extremely dubious, and the fact that an explanation deals with a limited portion of what we can describe hardly makes it fictional —unless that term merely means "selective."