Scientific Explanation Of Königsberg Bridges

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The Königsberg Bridges have posed a philosophical problem in scientific explanation whether explanations should be causal and non-causal. The goal scientific explanation is to explain why events in the physical world have occurred. Specifically, scientific explanations are concerned with causes. Causes are an important part of scientific explanation because it helps to understand why a phenomenon has occurred. Causes of a phenomenon help to understand how explanations work, or why a phenomenon occurs.
Woodward already presents a successful theory of causal explanations. Specifically, Woodward is concerned with causal explanation in the broad sense of the term. I mean that an explanation is proceeded by showing the dependence of an outcome …show more content…

The dilemma with the bridges was to determine if there was a way to cross each once and end up on the mainland when starting with the rules of only using the bridge to cross. Euler proved with his graph theory that there is no solution to the Königsberg Bridge Problem. The graph theory is a graph in which the nodes (a point on the graph) have an even number of edges (a line that connects different nodes) or an odd number of edges which have starting and ending line. The graph that represents Königsberg is not Eulerian because it has an odd number of edges and is impossible to connect all the nodes with a continuous line therefore the problem of walking over each of the bridges only once is …show more content…

Specifically, it shows a visual representation all the possible pathways someone could walk on the actual bridges. Specifically, the graph theory states since each node has an odd number of edges then the bridges cannot be crossed with a continuous line. The graph theory representation of this real-world phenomena is an everyday explanation of the bridges has to do with the specific layout and the number of bridges. In addition, this theory is able to be applied to many different scenarios of bridges to explain whether or not different combinations of bridges could hypothetically be crossed. The goal of science is to be able to explain phenomena with generalized observations.
One may argue that the explanation for the Königsberg bridges is in fact causal, as with all successful scientific explanations. Woodward’s argument for the seven bridges being causal is that the explanandum in this case is a real-world event with the bridges are actual bridges in a real town. This means that the Königsberg bridges are not abstract mathematical ideas like the graph theory would present. There are specific, historical reasons as to why and how many of the bridges were built in these specific locations. There was a need for a bridge to connect these two

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