Abstract

This work is an attack on the standard neo-Humean conception of science in philosophy of science. The following pillars of this conception are targets of the critique: the claim that the role of causality in scientific explanation has been, or can be, superceded by scientific laws; the belief that a causal process can only be a disconnected, perhaps contiguous, series of events. ;In addition to attacking these explicit views, the work challenges the background assumption that causal explanations for basic phenomena of physics have proved permanently impossible, leaving, henceforth and forever, laws and only laws as material for theoretical knowledge in a fundamental domain of science. ;Examination of other contemporary causal realist philosophers shows that their contributions to an understanding of unobservable causes in physic have severe limitations, due to their retention of key Empiricist conclusions