Abstract

Scientific understanding was a rather neglected topic in philosophy of science, despite its association with the well-known explanation subject. The classical position on explanation considered an approach on understanding to be redundant on one on explanation. Besides, the dominant view promoted by the unificationist approach on explanation conceived understanding as a “global affair”, as Friedman called it, of scientific knowledge. The recent developments in philosophy of science redirected the research to more local aspects of science and scientific inquiry. This new context calls for a reconsideration of the possibility of approaching understanding under different perspectives than the old one. I will try to identify some points of this reconsideration using as reference the frame of an influential tendency in today’s philosophy of science - the modelistic view.