714 | wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/phpr Philos Phenomenol Res. 2019;99:714–719. © 2019 Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Inc DOI: 10.1111/phpr.12647 SYMPOSIUM Precis of Because Without Cause: Non‐Causal Explanations in Science and Mathematics Marc Lange UNC Chapel Hill Correspondence Marc Lange, UNC Chapel Hill. Email: mlange@email.unc.edu “Results without causes are much more impressive.” –Sherlock Holmes in “The Stock‐Broker's Clerk” (Conan Doyle 1930: 363). Many explanations in science work by virtue of describing the world's network of causal relations. For ex- ample, we explain the extinction of the dinosaurs by describing its various proximate causes, such as climate change, or also by describing its more distant causes, such as the impact of one or more celestial bodies. We explain the planets’ motions by describing the gravitational influences causing them. We explain why a cer- tain car fails to start by describing some respect in which its internal mechanism is malfunctioning and (if we know them) the causes of that malfunction. We explain why it is a law of nature that a gas's pressure climbs when it is compressed by a moveable piston under constant temperature. Our explanation works by describ- ing the causal process underlying gas pressure: the collisions of gas molecules with the container's walls. Our explanation then gives certain of the laws governing that causal process, according to which molecules must collide more frequently with the container's walls as the gas is compressed under constant temperature. Because Without Cause is about some of the explanations that do not derive their explanatory power by virtue of describing the world's network of causal relations. Some of them are scientific explanations, whereas others explain mathematical theorems and so are explanations in mathematics. Non‐causal explanations all involve “because without cause”. With regard to scientific explanation, causal explanation has received nearly all of the attention in recent decades. Some philosophers have even maintained that all scientific explanations are causal: To give scientific explanations is to show how events and statistical regularities fit into the causal structure of the world. (Salmon, 1977, p.162) …an explanation, I think, is an account of etiology: it tells us something about how an event was caused. Or it tells us something general about how some, or many, or all events of a certain kind are caused. Or it explains an existential fact by telling us something