Gaukroger on the Autonomy of Phenomenal Explanation

This chapter examines Stephen Gaukroger’s claim that a new form of natural philosophical explanation, phenomenal explanation, emerged in the experimental practice of Boyle and Newton and was first articulated by Locke. Phenomenal explanation was autonomous in so far as it was independent of underlying foundational theory and, as such, it was a form of horizontal rather than vertical explanation. After setting out the thesis, the chapter proceeds to illustrate the thesis through Boyle’s air-pump experiments and his appeals to the spring of the air, to show how it is placed in Gaukroger’s broader historiography of early modern philosophy and science, and to show just where the thesis appears in his writings. It concludes with an assessment of Gaukroger’s thesis in comparison with an alternative reading by Alan Chalmers that posits that the salient explanatory notion is that of intermediate cause rather than phenomenal explanation.