  More recently methods have been developed for dealing with some phase transitions that not only supplement the standard explanatory schemes of traditional statistical mechanics, but that also provide insights into the variety of forms scientific explanations can take.  The explanatory program, use of the so-called “renormalization group” gives insight into why it is that systems of quite different physical natures can show thermodynamic similarities in their transitions from phase to phase.  In some cases the nature of the transition is seen to depend on a few abstract parameters and not on the physical details of the system.  What matters are such things as the dimension of the system, the degrees of freedom of the dynamics of the constituents and general limits on the interactions of the constituents with one another such as short and very long range behavior of the relevant forces of interaction.