Preprint of the Table of Contents for a volume published by AltaMira Press, Lanham, MD, in 2011.

CAUSAL EXPLANATION FOR SOCIAL SCIENTISTS: A READER

Edited by Andrew P. Vayda and Bradley B. Walters

Annotated Table of Contents

Introduction: Pragmatic Methods and Causal-History Explanations

Andrew P. Vayda and Bradley B. Walters

A Pragmatic View of Causal Explanation

1. Causal Explanation

David Lewis

Dos and don’ts in explaining events by imparting information on their causal histories.

2. The Notion of Witchcraft Explains Unfortunate Events

E. E. Evans-Pritchard

Explanation of a Sudanese people's attributing untoward events to witchcraft but otherwise relying
on "empirical knowledge of cause and effect."

3. Geertz and the Interpretive Approach in Anthropology

Michael Martin

Clifford Geertz’s classic study of Balinese cockfights analyzed to show failures of interpretive
anthropology with regard to causal analysis and explanation.

Causal Histories of Events

4. The Range and Power of Narrative Style in Science

Stephen J. Gould

How the stereotype of scientific method attributed to classical physics is inapplicable to history
and to paleontology and other sciences seeking not timeless generalizations but explanations of
complex historical sequences of events.

5. Famines

Amartya Sen
 Famine studies illustrating explanation of events of a given kind and indicating the advantages of
seeking the causes of famines by turning from data on population in relation to food supply to
more specific data on actual deaths from starvation as the events to be explained.

6. Analysis or Reductionism?

Ernst Mayr

Pragmatic distinction between analysis and reductionism for the purpose of explanation.

7. The Role of Fact in the Particular and the General

R. C. Lewontin

The proposition that causal claims become more and more impervious to evidence as they are
made about larger and larger domains of phenomena and greater numbers of complexly interacting
causes.

8. Explanatory Relativity

Alan Garfinkel

On explanations disputed or rejected because explanation-seekers and explanation-givers have

different understandings of what is being asked.

“How-Possibly” Explanations

9. Homage to Clio, or, Toward an Historical Philosophy for Evolutionary Biology

Robert J. O'Hara

The distinction between explaining or reasoning how something could have happened and
showing it had to happen or actually did happen that way.

Systems and Structures

10. Plague and Fertility in Early Modern Europe

Geoffrey Hawthorn

Fertility differences between early modern France and England described and analyzed without
recourse to reified concepts like structure and process.

Theories, Generalizations, and Practical Judgments

11. Thermostats, Lemons, and Other Families of Models

Thomas C. Schelling

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 Uses and limitations of models in the social sciences.

12. Rice Harvesting: A View from the Theory of Common Property

N. H. Sturgess and Hesti Wijaya

Illustration of how a causal explanation may sometimes be developed by applying a well-known
model to a case not obviously like those to which it has been previously applied.

Causal Reasoning: Forms, Results, and Caveats

13. Statistical Models and Shoe Leather

David A. Freedman

On detective work and logic vs. regression models to find causes of disease occurrence and other
events.

14. The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses

T. C. Chamberlin

Classic article on a method for circumventing “the dangers of parental affection for a favorite
theory.”

15. Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises

Raymond S. Nickerson

Analysis and illustrations of biased acquisition and use of evidence to fit preconceptions or
favored hypotheses.

16. The Last Northern Cod

Thomas R. McGuire

Case study arguing against relying on political-ecology “guiding principles” for finding causes of
such environmental changes as the collapse of the northern cod.

17. The Body of the Detective Model: Charles S. Peirce and Edgar Allan Poe

Nancy Harrowitz

The use of abductive rather than deductive causal reasoning by detectives, as exemplified in Edgar
Allan Poe’s fiction.

18. Thinking and Reasoning in Medicine

Vimla L. Patel, José F. Arocha, and Jiajie Zhang

On abductive and other forms of reasoning in medical diagnosis.

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 19. On Types of Scientific Inquiry: The Role of Qualitative Reasoning

David A. Freedman

The role of qualitative causal inference in finding causes of diseases.

20. Counterfactuals and Revisionism in Historical Explanation

Ross Hassig

On using counterfactuals for making causal judgments about historical events, with illustrations
from the Spanish conquest of Mexico.

Consequence Explanations and Their Misuse

21. The Obsessional Search for Meaning

Jon Elster

On misusing the beneficial consequences of behavior to explain it.

22. Confirmation Bias in Consequence Explanations

Andrew P. Vayda

Empirical and methodological arguments against J.S. Lansing’s acclaimed consequence-

explanation of the evolution of a Balinese agro-ecological system.

Dos and Don’ts in Interdisciplinary Research on Causes of Events

23. Dos and Don'ts in Interdisciplinary Research on Causes of Fires in Tropical Moist Forests:
Examples from Indonesia

Andrew P. Vayda

Misdirected forest-fire research analyzed to show what having the goal of causal explanation of
concrete events implies for the design and conduct of interdisciplinary research.

24. Critical Regions, Ecosystem Management, and Human Ecosystem Research

Thomas K. Rudel

Arguments against privileging broad-scale data collection in interdisciplinary projects while

neglecting more sharply focused, question-oriented approaches to account for environmental
change.