OUTLINE OF A THEORY OF SCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDING

The basic theory of scientific understanding presented in Sections 1-2 exploits three main ideas. First, that to understand a phenomenon P ( for a given agent) is to be able to fit P into the cognitive backgroun d corpus C (of the agent). Second, that to fit P into C is to connect P with parts of C (via ''arguments'' in a very broad sense) such that the unification of C increases. Third, that the cognitive changes invo lved in unification can be treated as sequences of shifts of phenomena in C. How the theory fits typical examples of understanding and how i t excludes spurious unifications is explained in detail. Section 3 giv es a formal description of the structure of cognitive corpuses which c ontain descriptive as well as inferential components. The theory of un ification is then refined in the light of so called ''puzzling phenome na'', to enable important distinctions, such as that between consonant and dissonant understanding. In Section 4, the refined theory is appl ied to several examples, among them a case study of the development of the atomic model. The final part contains a classification of kinds o f understanding and a discussion of the relation between understanding and explanation.