If the epistemic value of prediction requires applicability to particular outcomes, statistical descriptions of attractors fail the standard set by Hempel's covering-law model of scientific explanation.
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Statistical descriptions(as a type of explanation being evaluated)
General patterns or summaries based on data and probability, rather than descriptions of exact individual cases.
attractors(Dynamical system theory; used in Saatsi 2017's strengthened indispensability argument)
Mathematical structures in dynamical system theory toward which a system tends to evolve over time, used by Saatsi as a test case for assessing the explanatory role of mathematics.
prediction(Used to distinguish genuine future-directed claims from reports of present appearances within a critique of Protagorean relativism.)
An assertion about how things will appear or be the case at a future time, as distinct from a remark about how things presently seem.
scientific explanation
An explanation based on evidence drawn from examining the natural world, subject to modification or abandonment when conflicting observations or experiments arise.