 A third option is to instead offer (1) as what we will call a reductive explanation, which would be to group (1) with (4) (see the entry on  scientific reduction).  Like grounding and essence, there is some controversy over what reduction is, although somewhat more has been said about how reduction and explanation are related and how reductive explanations work than in the case of essence. We can again stay somewhat neutral in saying that reductive explanations typically work by “analyzing” or “breaking down” some phenomenon as “nothing more than” another phenomenon. Although a number of recent accounts of reduction analyze the notion in terms of grounding, or essence, or both (e.g., Correia 2017; Fine 2001, 2015; Rosen 2015), others do not (e.g., Dorr 2016, King 1998). So here too, as a provisional matter we shall treat reductive explanation as distinct from (yet perhaps related to) both grounding and essentialist explanation and leave open whether instances of the one imply instances of the other.