Your guide to becoming an explanation specialist. You've done the hard work. Your product or service works beautifully - but something is missing. People just don't see the big idea - and it's keeping you from being successful. Your idea has an explanation problem. The Art of Explanation is for business people, educators and influencers who want to improve their explanation skills and start solving explanation problems. Author Lee LeFever is the founder of Common Craft, a company known around the world for making complex ideas easy to understand through short animated videos. He is your guide to helping audiences fall in love with your ideas, products or services through better explanations in any medium. You will learn to: Plan: Learn explanation basics, what causes them to fail and how to diagnose explanation problems. Package: Using simple elements, create an explanation strategy that builds confidence and motivates your audience. Present: Produce remarkable explanations with visuals and media. The Art of Explanation is your invitation to become an explanation specialist and see why explanation is now a fundamental skill for professionals.

In exploring the nature of psychological explanation, this book looks at how psychologists theorize about the human ability to calculate, to speak a language and the like. It shows how good theorizing explains or tries to explain such abilities as perception and cognition. It recasts the familiar explanations of "intelligence" and "cognitive capacity" as put forward by philosophers such as Fodor, Dennett, and others in terms of a theory of explanation that makes established doctrine more intelligible to professionals and their students.In particular, the book shows that vestigial adherence to the positivists' D-N model has distorted the view of philosophers of science about what psychologists (and biologists) do and has masked the real nature of explanation. Major sections in the book cover Analysis and Subsumption; Functional Analysis; Understanding Cognitive Capacities; and Historical Reflections.Robert Cummins is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle. A Bradford Book.

The first comprehensive exploration of the nature and value of understanding, addressing burgeoning debates in epistemology and philosophy of science.

Explanation Points is a curated collection of disciplinary knowledge and advice for publishing in rhetoric and composition. Covering a variety of topics in an approachable, conversational tone, the book demonstrates how writing faculty from diverse career trajectories and institutions produce, prepare, edit, revise, and publish scholarship. Rhetoric and composition is a uniquely democratic field, made of a group of scholars who, rather than competing with one another, lift each other up and work together to move the field forward. This lively, engaging, story-anchored book offers advice from a range of authors—including emeritus faculty, prolific authors, and early career researchers. Organized by various stages in the writing and publishing process, Explanation Points presents the advice shared between colleagues, passed along from professor to student, or offered online in abbreviated tweets and updates. The best advice book on writing and publishing in the field, Explanation Points is a useful resource for rhetoric and composition scholars including faculty, graduate students, and advanced undergraduate students; writing center administrators, staff, and consultants; graduate pratica and seminars; writing workshop classes; and editors, associate editors, assistant editors, and other academic journal staff. Contributors: Tim Amidon, Chris Anson, Nancy G. Barron, Ellen Barton, Michael Baumann, Steve Bernhardt, Kristine L. Blair, David Blakesley, Lynn Z. Bloom, Marcia Bost, James Brown, Amber Buck, Rebecca Burnett, Joyce Carter, Kate Comer, Janice Cools, Marilyn Cooper, Craig Cotich, Ellen Cushman, Gabriel Cutrufello, Courtney Danforth, Sid Dobrin, William Duffy, Norbert Elliot, Jessica Enoch, Doug Eyman, Michael Faris, Jenn Fishman, Linda Flower, Brenda Glasscot, Laura Gonzales, Jeffrey T. Grabill, Laurie Gries, Bump Halbritter, Joseph Harris, Byron Hawk, Douglas Hesse, Troy Hicks, Bruce Horner, Asao Inoue, Darin L. Jensen, Erin Jensen, Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Gesa E. Kirsch, Sarah Kornfield, Ashanka Kumari, Christina M. LaVecchia, Donna LeCourt, Barbara L’Eplattenier, Heather Lettner-Rust, Justin Lewis, Julie Lindquist, Tara Lockhart, Andrea Abernethy Lunsford, Katie Manthey, Lisa Mastrangelo, Ben McCorkle, Heidi McKee, Cruz Medina, Laura R. Micciche, Holly Middleton, Lilian Mina, Janine Morris, Joan Mullin, Kim Hensley Owens, Jason Palmeri, Mike Palmquist, Steve Parks, Juli Parrish, Staci Perryman-Clark, Mya Poe, Jacqueline Rhodes, Jeff Rice, Jim Ridolfo, Shirley K Rose, Stuart A. Selber, Jody Shipka, Naomi Silver, Ryan Skinnell, Trixie Long Smith, Kyle Stedman, Patrick Sullivan, Carrie Strand Tebeau, Christie Toth, John Trimbur, Chris Warnick, Kathleen Blake Yancey

When scientist investigate why things happen, they aim at giving an explanation. But what does a scientific explanation look like? In the first chapter (Theories of Scientific Explanation) of this book, the milestones in the debate on how to characterize scientific explanations are exposed. The second chapter (How to Study Scientific Explanation?) scrutinizes the working-method of three important philosophers of explanation, Carl Hempel, Philip Kitcher and Wesley Salmon and shows what went wrong. Next, it is the responsibility of current philosophers of explanation to go on where Hempel, Kitcher and Salmon failed. However, we should go on in a clever way. We call this clever way the pragmatic approach to scientific explanation and clarify briefly what this approach consists in. The third chapter (A Toolbox for Describing and Evaluating Explanatory Practices) elaborates the pragmatic approach by presenting a toolbox for analysing scientific explanation. In the last chapter (Examples of Descriptions and Evaluations of Explanatory Practices) the approach is illustrated with real-life examples of scientists aiming at explaining. This book can be used as a textbook for intermediate philosophy of science courses and is also valuable as “suggested reading” for introductory courses in philosophy of science. The way the book is set up makes it an excellent study and research guide for advanced (MA and PhD) students that work on the topic of scientific explanation. Finally, it is a handy source and reference book for senior researchers in the field of scientific explanations and – more generally – for all philosophers of science. ​

A "superb debut"* novel--based on the story of the author's grandmother--following an aristocratic woman who abandons her family and her money in search of a life she can claim as her own. (*The Guardian)

This second edition of David-Hillel Ruben's influential and highly acclaimed book on the philosophy of explanation has been revised and expanded, and the author has made substantial changes in light of the extensive reviews the first edition received. Ruben's views on the place of laws in explanation has been refined and clarified. What is perhaps the central thesis of the book, his realist view of explanation, describing the way in which explanation depends on metaphysics, has been updated and extended and engages with some of the work in this area published since the book's first edition.