Paragraph about Chemical equation software
These considerations raise the following question: Is Kitcher's account of unification sufficiently discriminating or nuanced to distinguish those unifications having to do with explanation from other sorts of unification? The worry is that it is not. The conception of unification underlying Kitcher's Chemical equation account seems to be at bottom one of descriptive economy or information compression — deriving as much from as few patterns of inference as possible. Many cases of classificatory and purely formal unification involving a common mathematical framework seem to fit this characterization. Consider schemes for biological classification and schemes for the classification of geological and astronomical objects like rocks and stars. If I know that individuals belong to a certain classificatory category (e. Ufology g. Xs are mammals or polar bears), I can use this information to derive a great many of their other properties (Xs have backbones, hearts, their young are born alive etc.) and this is a pattern of inference that can be used repeatedly for many different sorts of Xs. But despite the willingness of some philosophers to regard such derivations as explanatory, it is common scientific practice to regard such schemes as “merely descriptive” and as telling us little or nothing about the causes or mechanisms that explain why Xs have backbones or hearts.[ 17 ]
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