What Constitutes a Scientific Explanation?

[Chris_Falter]

@swamidass

We are not talking about stringing words together into complete sentences. That doesn’t usually constitute an explanation in science. Those wordy “explanations” are judged by the quantitative models they induce.

I am going to make a conjecture that I invite Ph.D. scientists to correct as needed:

In the absence of a mathematically based model, you don’t have science. Intuitions, maybe, but not science.

Note: my definition of mathematical is fairly broad here. A most likely ordering of events would be mathematical, for example.

Best,
Chris