Discovering Explanations

At the outset, I will accept, without discussion or debate, the view commonly held by scientists and philosophers alike that the goal of science is to discover, by observation and experiment, and to describe real-world phenomena, and then to provide explanations (i.e., theories) of these phenomena. It does not matter whether the phenomena or the explanation come first. As a matter of historical fact, phenomena most often precede explanation in the early phases of a science, whereas explanations often lead to predictions, later verified by experiment or observation, in later phases.