Steiner proposed his model of mathematical explanation in 1978a. In developing his own account of explanatory proof in mathematics he discusses—and rejects—a number of initially plausible criteria for explanation, e.g. the (greater degree of) abstractness or generality of a proof, its visualizability, and its genetic aspect that would give rise to the discovery of the result. In contrast, Steiner takes up the idea “that to explain the behaviour of an entity, one deduces the behavior from the ess