deductive-nomological model

The deductive-nomological model (DN model) is a formal view of scientific explanation.

Oppenheim is co-founder of the so-called Hempel-Oppenheim schema (Deductive-nomological model) .

He is especially well known for his articulation of the Deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation, which was considered the "standard model" of scientific explanation during the 1950s and 1960s.

Carl Gustav Hempel and Paul Oppenheim (1948), in their deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation, motivated the distinction between explanans and explanandum in order to answer why-questions, rather than simply what-questions:

For example, the decline of Covering Law (CL) models of explanation, e.g., Hempel's deductive-nomological model, has stimulated interest how mechanisms might play an explanatory role in certain domains of science, especially higher-level disciplines such as biology (i.e., neurobiology, molecular biology, neuroscience, and so on).