Abstract

The aim of this paper is to show the incompleteness of the exclusively logico-syntactical and logico-semantical approaches to one of the core issues of philosophy of science, namely, scientific laws and scientific explanation in C. G. Hempel’s works. I start with a brief exposition of the main characteristics of Hempel’s approach to deductive explanations based on universal scientific laws and then analyze the problems and paradoxes inherent in this approach. Next, I trace these characteristics back to Hempel’s and Carnap’s attempts to ground the concepts of scientific law and explanation exclusively on logic , which led to a highly normative approach alienated from the practice of real science