This volume offers a broad philosophical discussion on mechanical explanations. Coverage
ranges from historical approaches and general questions to physics and higher-level sciences .
The contributors also consider the topics of complexity emergence and reduction. Mechanistic
explanations detail how certain properties of a whole stem from the causal activities of its
parts. This kind of explanation is in particular employed in explanatory models of the behavior
of complex systems. Often used in biology and neuroscience mechanistic explanation models have
been often overlooked in the philosophy of physics. The authors correct this surprising
neglect. They trace these models back to their origins in physics. The papers present a
comprehensive historical methodological and problem-oriented investigation. The contributors
also investigate the conditions for using models of mechanistic explanations in physics. The
last papers make the bridge from physics to economics the theory of complex systems and
computer science . This book will appeal to graduate students and researchers with an interest
in the philosophy of science scientific explanation complex systems models of explanation in
physics higher level sciences and causal mechanisms in science.
