In my paper “Beyond Hempel: Reframing the debate about Scientific Explanation” I discuss two problems rarely addressed in philosophical debates about scientific explanation: how to motivate one’s position on the aims of scientific knowledge and how to decide which examples count as expressions of those aims.
In the lecture below, inspired by Carl Hempel's struggles with the work of Carnap and Reichenbach, I advance the position that the aim of science is a decision about science and not a description of science. At the end of the lecture, Professor Bas van Fraassen - whose work was an important inspiration for my paper - gives his commentary.