The official model of explanation proposed by the logical empiricists, the covering law model, is subject to familiar objections. The goal of the present paper is to explore an unofficial view of explanation which logical empiricists have sometimes suggested, the view of explanation as unification. I try to show that this view can be developed so as to provide insight into major episodes in the history of science, and that it can overcome some of the most serious difficulties besetting the covering law model.

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What should be the goal of science in a democratic society? Some say, to attain the truth; others deny the possibility (or even the intelligibility) of truth‐seeking. Science, Truth, and Democracy attempts to provide a different answer. It is possible to make sense of the notion of truth, and to understand truth as correspondence to a mind‐independent world. Yet science could not hope to find the whole truth about that world. Scientific inquiry must necessarily be selective, focusing on the aspects of nature that are deemed most important. Yet how should that judgement be made? The book's answer is that the search for truth should be combined with a respect for democracy. The scientific research that should strike us as significant would address the questions singled out as most important in an informed deliberation among parties committed to each others’ well‐being. The book develops this perspective as an ideal of ‘well‐ordered science’, relating this ideal both to past efforts at science policy and to the possibility that finding the truth may not always be what we want. It concludes with a chapter on the responsibilities of scientists.

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I defend a view of the species category, pluralistic realism, which is designed to do justice to the insights of many different groups of systematists. After arguing that species are sets and not individuals, I proceed to outline briefly some defects of the biological species concept. I draw the general moral that similar shortcomings arise for other popular views of the nature of species. These shortcomings arise because the legitimate interests of biology are diverse, and these diverse interests are reflected in different legitimate approaches to the classification of organisms. In the final section, I show briefly how the pluralistic approach can help to illuminate some areas of biological and philosophical dispute.