Description: a statement, picture in words, or account that describes; descriptive representation.

Explanation: something that explains; a statement made to clarify something and make it understandable; exposition: an explanation of a poem.

Description is simply that, a statement of facts, of what precisely happens. An explanation is a farther reaching attempt that ultimately must revert back to our core fascination with “Why?” We wish to know more about the reason behind what is happening.

For a very basic example let’s take the Washington DC area sniper. The description would be: “Two men began to snipe people secretively and at random, and the details are as follows…” The explanation would be an in depth psychoanalysis of their motivations and what led to them.

But what is especially interesting about the dichotomy I think and as Wittgenstein put it is that all explanation becomes description if we merely know the physicality… that is, religion and “magic” are explanations because they are rationalizations we use when we don’t have a full description. Ultimately, explaining the psychology behind the snipers is actually just another description, it’s just that because of the position we are in, that is, not having the ability to measure precisely which chemical-mental processes led to their actions, we must rely on an “explanation.”

I hope I’m fairly clear.

Einstein described the energy mass equivalency theory. What he could not do was tell us at the very core what the ramifications are. It is inherent in us to ask “Why?” and even “How? What is doing this?” Clearly, Einstein hit upon a truth inherent in the universe: when atoms are split this will cause a chain reaction. What more could he tell us? All he could do is describe the physical truth of the situation.

You might be on the right track. Certainly, I would agree with “the idea is that description can show us where our rules and logical conceptions fail to match the phenomena”–at the very least, what that means is consistent with the position I tried to explain (no pun intended).

Wittgenstein frequently makes references to philosophy as a sort of therapy, so the sense of description has to be more or less akin to that: the sort of talk that goes on during therapy sessions is not rule-bound in the same way that a rule-bound logical or empirical explanation may be. I think in distinguishing between explanation and description–the latter being a sort of therapy–Wittgenstein was attempting to make an analogy between rationalization/justification and coming to terms with your (our) philosophical doubt about logical and/or semantic necessity.

I’m going to write more on this later, because I think it deserves more attention than I’ve given it (or perhaps deserves a new way of attending to it)

And please accept my apologies for failing to respond in a reasonable amount of time, I’ve been in Boston trying to find an apartment–I found one, so I won’t be homeless next semester for the start of graduate school–but I should be more active again within the next few weeks when I get settled in.

Thanks for your input though, I really really do appreciate it.

Explaination is logic
description is practicality

Description is tomorrow
Explaination is yesterday