Add to ORKGThe predominant view in the contemporary philosophies of the life sciences is that the most fundamental and viable kinds of explanations are mechanistic. In fact, some philosophers of the life science have claimed that the only genuine explanations in the life sciences are mechanistic. We believe this to be an unnecessarily restrictive position, both descriptively and normatively. Descriptively, much actual scientific research in the life sciences is not readily cast as mechanistic. There are many natural phenomena that benefit from the application of multiple explanatory strategies, even at the same scale of investigation. Thus, normatively speaking, research in the life sciences ought to begin from a pluralistic position concerning explan...