Evolutionary explanations are not only common in the biological sciences, but also widespread outside biology. But an account of how evolutionary explanations perform their explanatory work is still lacking. This paper develops such an account. I argue that available accounts of explanations in evolutionary science miss important parts of the role of history in evolutionary explanations. I argue that the historical part of evolutionary science should be taken as having genuine explanatory force, and that it provides how-possibly explanations sensu Dray. I propose an account of evolutionary explanations as comparative-composite explanations consisting of two distinct kinds of explanations, one processual and one historical, that are connected via the explanandum's evolvability to show how the explanandum is the product of its evolutionary past. The account is both a reconstruction of how evolutionary explanations in biology work and a guideline specifying what kind of explanations evolutionary research programs should develop.

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历史在进化论解释中的正确作用

进化论的解释不仅在生物科学中很常见，而且在生物学之外也很普遍。但是仍然缺乏关于进化解释如何执行其解释工作的说明。本文开发了这样一个帐户。我认为，现有的进化科学解释说明忽略了历史在进化解释中的作用的重要部分。我认为进化科学的历史部分应该被视为具有真正的解释力，并且它提供了 Dray意义上的如何可能的解释。我建议将进化解释作为比较综合解释由两种不同的解释组成，一种是过程性的，一种是历史性的，它们通过被解释物的进化能力联系起来，以表明被解释物是如何成为其进化历史的产物。该说明既是对生物学中进化论解释如何运作的重构，也是指定进化论研究计划应该发展什么样的解释的指南。