An explanation is a special construction made of statements that humans invented in order to pretend they understand why something happened. It usually consists of causes, context, consequences, and a confident tone intended to convince everyone present that the chaos of reality actually has logic — just a very complicated and slightly nervous one. In its simplest form, an explanation works like this: a certain fact is taken, and then a carefully arranged structure of words is built around it in order to reduce the level of existential anxiety. Sometimes explanations even formulate rules or laws — official documents of the Universe, which the Universe continues to violate only under very specific conditions.

In philosophy, explanation becomes a separate kind of intellectual sport, where people try to explain not only events but also the very fact that events exist at all. Several popular formats of explanation exist there. A causal explanation says: “this happened because of that,” as if the Universe operates like a chain reaction of extremely complicated dominoes.

A deductive-nomological explanation sounds even more serious: it takes a general rule, adds a specific case, and ceremonially arrives at a conclusion. For example: “All gases expand when heated; this gas was heated; therefore, it decided to occupy more space.” It resembles a logical magic trick in which the result was doomed from the very first sentence.

A statistical explanation is even more interesting: it essentially says that “most cases behave this way, so this one probably does too.” In other words, it explains reality through the collective behavior of a large number of other people who already had the misfortune of becoming part of a statistic.

Explaining human behavior is an entirely separate adventure. Here, it is assumed that people act more or less rationally, although the actual evidence for this assumption often sparks debate. For example, if a person takes off their coat, the explanation may sound like this: “they became too warm, wanted to cool down, and decided that without the coat it would be less warm.” This seems obvious, yet philosophy somehow manages to turn even such an event into a complex system of motivations, beliefs, and internal states.

A scientific explanation is a special kind of explanation that strives not only to sound convincing but also to survive confrontation with reality. Modern science operates on the assumption that its task is not merely to describe the world (“here is a strange thing”), but also to explain it (“here is why this strange thing behaves this way”). To achieve this, theories and models are created — specialized intellectual mechanisms that attempt to organize the Universe into an understandable system, even if the Universe itself is not always cooperative. That is why the concept of a “scientific explanation” has a special status: it implies that there are explanations that can be tested, and then there are all the other explanations that are also trying very hard but sometimes resemble beautifully organized speculation delivered with excellent diction.