We summarise and reflect on the symposium ‘Let me explain: Reason-giving across disciplines’, held at the University of Warwick's Institute of Advanced Study in June 2024. The event brought together scholars from four faculties to discuss the concept of explanation and its relationship to interdisciplinarity. We pick out four questions that participants found especially stimulating: Is a good explanation really more than a good description? How does agency change the structure of explanations? W…
Read moreWe summarise and reflect on the symposium ‘Let me explain: Reason-giving across disciplines’, held at the University of Warwick's Institute of Advanced Study in June 2024. The event brought together scholars from four faculties to discuss the concept of explanation and its relationship to interdisciplinarity. We pick out four questions that participants found especially stimulating: Is a good explanation really more than a good description? How does agency change the structure of explanations? Who explains to whom? And what does interdisciplinarity mean for the practice of explaining? We end by highlighting the refreshingly disruptive potential of genuinely interdisciplinary forums of knowledge-exchange.
