 For the constructive empiricist, the explanatory power of a theory amounts to nothing more than the theory’s ability to provide certain bits of information in response to contextually defined queries. Scientific explanation amounts to the highlighting of various aspects of the structure postulated by the theory, to answer, in a contextually dependent way, various questions of interest to us (van Fraassen 1980, 124). Science, then, contributes nothing to explanation over and above the descriptive and informative content of the scientific theory: “a success of explanation is a success of adequate and informative description” (van Fraassen 1980, 156–157). Explanation cannot be reduced to that content, though, since explanation cannot occur unless an appropriate question, offered in a particular context, is provided. Explanation thus goes beyond what science reveals to us. The constructive empiricist can hence avoid saddling scientists with a commitment to the unobservable entities invoked in such explanations, properly claiming that such commitments are not licensed by the activity of science. (See Kitcher &amp; Salmon 1987 for the view that even if requests for explanation are contextually delimited, what counts as a good / relevant explanation depends also on non-contextual factors.)