If a child would have been told to expect the same behavior from and ant and from and elephant, he would be quite confused. How do we then expect gigantic objects to obey the same rules as microscopic ones? While unification should be striven for, we should still, according to van Fraassen, explain something when, plainly, "we have a theory, which explains". That is to say, the theory does not have to be necessarily true; it does not have to be all covering either. As long as it has the explanatory power, in short, it works, it is good enough to answer our particular question. Take Newtonian mechanics. It is now known, that in essence, that theory is wrong. This knowledge, however, does not prevent us in the least from explaining phenomena, which can be explained therewith.

             The second problem is why is explanation a virtue? Van Fraassen pragmatically rejects the view of some, that explanation is good just because it is, well, an explanation. Instead, he regards an explanation as an answer to a "why-question", and what makes that answer good (and thus is the virtue of the explanation) is its adequacy – the power of answering that question. Quite simplistic, no doubt, but according to van Fraassen, virtually any explanation can be put into the "Why-P [as opposed to X]" form, for which the answer, Q, follows. Though slightly awkward at first, this proposition, when thought about, makes a very good point. Consider the initial example with a car. A question such as "how does the car work?" can be broken down to question such as "why does the car move [and not stay]?"; "why does the car emit rumbling noise [and is not silent or emitting other types of noise]?" ; "why does the car require gas [and does not require anything else, or requires nothing at all]", and so on and so forth. Answering each of those questions fully does not require answering others in the bunch.