Wesley Van Camp

In debates about the nature of scientific explanation, one theme repeatedly arises: that explanation is about providing understanding. However, the concept of understanding has only recently been explored in any depth, and this paper attempts to introduce a useful concept of understanding to that literature and explore it. Understanding is a higher level cognition, the recognition of connections between various pieces of knowledge. This conception can be brought to bear on the conceptual issues that have thus far been unclear in the literature. Though this notion of understanding is broad, explaining various concepts of explanation, it is robust enough to underwrite an objective and useful notion of explanation

Janssen argues that special relativity is preferable to Lorentzian dynamics due to its kinematic structure. Brown, along with others, raises an objection, arguing that a dynamical understanding of special relativity is explanatorily prior and hence more fundamental than the principle theory-based kinematic structure of Minkowski spacetime. This paper challenges this objection, arguing that both Janssen and Brown miss the essential aspect of the principles of special relativity which underwrite its interpretational success. It is not its kinematic structure, but the constitutive nature of the principles it employs, by providing a coherent conceptual framework, which does the foundational work