Personal explanations do not cite mechanisms.1 This is relevant because personal explanations are legitimate.
• J. P. Moreland: “A personal explanation can be epistemically successful without referring to a mechanism or other means by which the hypothesized agent brought about the state of affairs in the explanandum. I can explain the existence and precise nature of a certain arrangement of objects on our dinner table by saying that my wife brought it about so we could have an Italian dinner with the Isslers. That explanation is informative (I can tell it's Italian food we’re having, that we are having the Isslers over and not the Duncans, that my wife did this and not my daughter, and that natural processes are inadequate). In addition, the adequacy of such a personal explanation is quite independent of whether or not I know exactly how my wife did it.” [Consciousness and the Existence of God: A Theistic Argument (Routledge, 2008), 105.]
Fundamental entities (e.g. quarks) behave without mechanisms.
This is relevant because features and behaviors of fundamental entities can still have an explanation.
Salmon's causal-mechanical account of scientific explanation is true. This is relevant because this account requires all explanations to be spatio-temporal.
No, the causal-mechanical account is not true;…
False positives• James Woodward: “How exactly does the causal mechanical model avoid the (disastrous) conclusion that any successful explanation of the behavior of the gas must trace the trajectories of individual molecules?” [“Scientific Explanation”, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
• James Woodward: “For example, while the detailed description of the individual causal processes involved in the operation of the market for oranges presumably will describe whether individual consumers purchase oranges by cash, check, or credit card, whether information about the freeze is communicated by telephone or email, and so on, all of this is to a first approximation irrelevant to the equilibrium price—given the supply and demand curves, the equilibrium price will be the same as long as there is a market in which consumers are able to purchase oranges by some means, information about the freeze and about prices is available to buyers and sellers in some form, and so on.” [“Scientific Explanation”, in _The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy_]