The role of typicality in statistical explanations

Mario Hubert

Typicality has been widely used in statistical mechanics in order to help explaining the approach to equilibrium of thermodynamic systems. I this paper, I aim at showing that typicality reasoning qualifies for many situations beyond statistical mechanics. In particular, I aim at developing typicality reasoning as an instance of non-causal explanations. It turns out that Marc Lange's really statistical explanations are explanations by typicality.typicality; non-causal explanations; causal explanations; really statistical explanations; statistical mechanics.