Explication (German: Explikation) is the process of drawing out the meaning of something which is not clearly defined, so as to make explicit what is currently left implicit.
Rudolf Carnap was the first to coin the term in an analytic philosophical approach in his book Logical Foundations of Probability, while the term is supplanted with Gustave Lanson’s idea of Explication de Texte when referring to the analysis and criticism of different forms of literature.
Carnap's argument provides a helpful foundation in understanding and clarifying the nature and value of explication in defining and describing "new" knowledge.
These explications are made up of a very limited set of words called semantic primes which are considered to have universal meaning across all languages.
For example:[2]Explications in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage are neither exact dictionary definitions, nor encyclopedic explanations of a concept.
"[2] Explications of abstract concepts, such as color, do not list any scientific facts about the object or concrete definitions.
As argued by Carnap (1950), in science and philosophy, "explication consists in transforming a given more or less inexact concept into an exact one or, rather, in replacing the first by the second.
The explicatum must be given by explicit rules for its use, for example, by a definition which incorporates it into a well-constructed system of scientific either logicomathematical or empirical concepts."