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Understand Philosophy of Science: Teach Yourself
A modern understanding of the world is unthinkable without science, but what exactly is it? What does it mean to say that something is 'scientific'? How are its results justified? From the genetic basis of life, to the structures of the universe and the atom, TEACH YOURSELF PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE explores how the key ideas that shape our world have been developed.- Investigate the history of science.- Examine scientific method.- Discover key philosophers and scientists.- Explore the impact of science on Western thought.
208 pages, CD-ROM
First published January 1, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 9, 2017
This is a pretty basic introduction to some of the main themes addressed by what is commonly known as ”philosophy of science”.
Some of the most notorious practitioners in the field (such as Popper, Quine and Kuhn) are briefly discussed, but contrarily to what stated in the book's blurb, this is not an “in-depth exploration”: it is a brief, pretty superficial overview that will be of real interest mostly to readers who have never previously approached this subject. Unfortunately, the list of views is highly selective and the author has a clear pro-Popperian bias, so important philosophers such as Putnam do not even get a mention in passing.
Mostly for beginners – I have given this book a 3-star rating just because I did not want to unfairly penalize this book as a result of the fact that I was not part of its target audience.
In term of interest and informative value to me personally, it would probably be a 2-star rating maximum. To beginners, however, it would be a pretty good starting point; it is not a bad book at all if used by the right audience.
The more sophisticate reader with some scientific background will however find that this book shares some of the typical shortcomings characteristic of the majority of "philosophy of science" books:
- attention is given only to the so-called "professional philosophers". No reference is made to any opinions or statements made by the individuals who actually know what they are talking about - the actual scientists/practitioners in the field! I have often found that many (not all) "philosophers of science" often do not seem to have much of an idea of what they are talking about when they pontificate from their ivory towers and they peddle an idealized and highly simplified idea of the methods of scientific investigation. Even the better informed ones, such as Putnam for example, have on more than one occasion demonstrated that they hold at best a crude approximation of theories such as relativity and quantum mechanics - and I am being generous. Some of them can't tell the difference between differential equations and differentiation. No reference in the book is made, for example, to the likes of Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Einstein and Feynman, who have in some cases even written books about, or explicitly addressed, some of the themes that "philosophy of science" is purported to address. A few minutes' lecture by Feynman about the scientific method is more informative than entire books written by quacks such as Feyerabend.
- it is fashionable, since Kuhn, to highlight the inter-dependency of theory and observation, the human and social nature of the scientific enterprise, the interaction of observational interpretation with background beliefs and assumptions, the fact that the evidence is often bound to be complicated, usually mediated by instrumentation, ambiguous and even potentially misleading, and the fact that experimental results are not transparently self-presenting, but need interpretation. Yes this is all very true, but what is also true (and what is usually conveniently forgotten by these "philosophers of science") is that:
a) scientists are generally well aware of all of these aspects and many of such aspects are in some way already incorporated into their methodological approach
b) it is completely unfounded to state that, as a result of the issues listed above, science is epistemologically on a par with other human enterprises such as philosophy: in fact, a complex network of mutually supporting and tightly interlocking mesh of theoretical results, well anchored in comprehensive experimental results, do provide science with a high degree of epistemological warranty that no philosophical speculation can even hope to approximate. So science IS epistemologically distinguished from the other modes of inquiry, and more reliable.
The large majority of scientists are perfectly aware of all these issues, dependencies and inter-relationships: scientists, for example, do not need professional philosophers to tell them that language is a potentially limiting and ambiguous tool, as each word is theory- and meaning-laden. In fact, scientists engage in linguistic innovations as a matter of fact, and they frequently need to seek new "law-cluster" concepts - concepts representing bunches of properties, the co-occurrence of which is required by the laws of nature. The definition of such clusters, or “entities”, is part and parcel of science and an important constituent of scientific theories: they are not pure conventions, but they are supported and support the corresponding scientific theory that imply and require them. In fact, one task of science is to discover categories and classifications matching law-clusters in the world.
The famous Bohr-Einstein debates, and the ongoing debate about the measurement problem and the different interpretations of quantum mechanics are just some examples that scientists are well aware of the underlying conceptual implications of their work.
What makes me smile in particular is the claim that philosophers can help science in the pursuit of a more rigorous use of language: this is coming from a discipline where obfuscatory, convoluted and turgid language frequently appear to be a professional trademark.
- some, but no enough appreciation is demonstrated towards the important methodological differences between the specific subject fields of science, especially when it comes to the peculiar relationship with mathematics demonstrated by subjects such as physics
Apart from the issues above, it is a decently good first introduction addressed to beginners. Aspects and issues such as emergence versus reductionism, complexity, chaos theory, abductive reasoning, Bayesian probability, and similar are also briefly addressed, which is commendable especially in an introductory book such as this one.
Some of the most notorious practitioners in the field (such as Popper, Quine and Kuhn) are briefly discussed, but contrarily to what stated in the book's blurb, this is not an “in-depth exploration”: it is a brief, pretty superficial overview that will be of real interest mostly to readers who have never previously approached this subject. Unfortunately, the list of views is highly selective and the author has a clear pro-Popperian bias, so important philosophers such as Putnam do not even get a mention in passing.
Mostly for beginners – I have given this book a 3-star rating just because I did not want to unfairly penalize this book as a result of the fact that I was not part of its target audience.
In term of interest and informative value to me personally, it would probably be a 2-star rating maximum. To beginners, however, it would be a pretty good starting point; it is not a bad book at all if used by the right audience.
The more sophisticate reader with some scientific background will however find that this book shares some of the typical shortcomings characteristic of the majority of "philosophy of science" books:
- attention is given only to the so-called "professional philosophers". No reference is made to any opinions or statements made by the individuals who actually know what they are talking about - the actual scientists/practitioners in the field! I have often found that many (not all) "philosophers of science" often do not seem to have much of an idea of what they are talking about when they pontificate from their ivory towers and they peddle an idealized and highly simplified idea of the methods of scientific investigation. Even the better informed ones, such as Putnam for example, have on more than one occasion demonstrated that they hold at best a crude approximation of theories such as relativity and quantum mechanics - and I am being generous. Some of them can't tell the difference between differential equations and differentiation. No reference in the book is made, for example, to the likes of Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Einstein and Feynman, who have in some cases even written books about, or explicitly addressed, some of the themes that "philosophy of science" is purported to address. A few minutes' lecture by Feynman about the scientific method is more informative than entire books written by quacks such as Feyerabend.
- it is fashionable, since Kuhn, to highlight the inter-dependency of theory and observation, the human and social nature of the scientific enterprise, the interaction of observational interpretation with background beliefs and assumptions, the fact that the evidence is often bound to be complicated, usually mediated by instrumentation, ambiguous and even potentially misleading, and the fact that experimental results are not transparently self-presenting, but need interpretation. Yes this is all very true, but what is also true (and what is usually conveniently forgotten by these "philosophers of science") is that:
a) scientists are generally well aware of all of these aspects and many of such aspects are in some way already incorporated into their methodological approach
b) it is completely unfounded to state that, as a result of the issues listed above, science is epistemologically on a par with other human enterprises such as philosophy: in fact, a complex network of mutually supporting and tightly interlocking mesh of theoretical results, well anchored in comprehensive experimental results, do provide science with a high degree of epistemological warranty that no philosophical speculation can even hope to approximate. So science IS epistemologically distinguished from the other modes of inquiry, and more reliable.
The large majority of scientists are perfectly aware of all these issues, dependencies and inter-relationships: scientists, for example, do not need professional philosophers to tell them that language is a potentially limiting and ambiguous tool, as each word is theory- and meaning-laden. In fact, scientists engage in linguistic innovations as a matter of fact, and they frequently need to seek new "law-cluster" concepts - concepts representing bunches of properties, the co-occurrence of which is required by the laws of nature. The definition of such clusters, or “entities”, is part and parcel of science and an important constituent of scientific theories: they are not pure conventions, but they are supported and support the corresponding scientific theory that imply and require them. In fact, one task of science is to discover categories and classifications matching law-clusters in the world.
The famous Bohr-Einstein debates, and the ongoing debate about the measurement problem and the different interpretations of quantum mechanics are just some examples that scientists are well aware of the underlying conceptual implications of their work.
What makes me smile in particular is the claim that philosophers can help science in the pursuit of a more rigorous use of language: this is coming from a discipline where obfuscatory, convoluted and turgid language frequently appear to be a professional trademark.
- some, but no enough appreciation is demonstrated towards the important methodological differences between the specific subject fields of science, especially when it comes to the peculiar relationship with mathematics demonstrated by subjects such as physics
Apart from the issues above, it is a decently good first introduction addressed to beginners. Aspects and issues such as emergence versus reductionism, complexity, chaos theory, abductive reasoning, Bayesian probability, and similar are also briefly addressed, which is commendable especially in an introductory book such as this one.
August 10, 2013
Pretty decent introduction to Philosophy of Science. I'd say that the author subscribes to a modern school of philosophy of science(heavily inspired by Popper) so he is able to critique all the other schools(except for Popperian school itself) with quite decent justification.
I was just waiting for him to tell how is Popperian theory of falsifiability requirements would be falsifiable, but he never did.
I was just waiting for him to tell how is Popperian theory of falsifiability requirements would be falsifiable, but he never did.
December 16, 2021
This book is merely a collection of opinions and conventional examples about the history of science rather that a thorough analysis and discussion about philosophy of science. In particular, it really ressembles a simple list of well-known scientific facts and their finding (e.g. about the formation of the universe, newtonian mechanics, or the theory of evolution), along with opinions of one philosopher or another. To my opinion, it really lacks a discussion and structure. I really had the impression that it says "We have A, yet B. As for C, ..." but without any notion of logical linkage / synthesis or critical discussion, as if any argument or opinion had the same weight in the discussion, that of my aunt Gertrude counting as much as that of a scientific working in the domain for twenty years...
I didn't learn much by reading this book (and I am no senior researcher, only a PhD student in biomedical engineering), would it be in philosophy or in science. I put two stars though, since it may be interesting to overview this book to grasp some basic concepts, or to know which book may be interesting to read to go further.
All in all, this book may be suited for very novice readers, or non-scientific / non-philosophers that may want to get a foothold in the philosophy of science. But I would not recommend anyone with an already existing background in one or the other of these topics to read it, as it would be a waste of time...
I didn't learn much by reading this book (and I am no senior researcher, only a PhD student in biomedical engineering), would it be in philosophy or in science. I put two stars though, since it may be interesting to overview this book to grasp some basic concepts, or to know which book may be interesting to read to go further.
All in all, this book may be suited for very novice readers, or non-scientific / non-philosophers that may want to get a foothold in the philosophy of science. But I would not recommend anyone with an already existing background in one or the other of these topics to read it, as it would be a waste of time...
February 15, 2020
a very brief summary of science history and philosophy of science. the language used is too hard for someone who has never read any philosophy book like me.
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July 27, 2011It is a very informative book but I found it rather biased. It seemed to me that the writer is not an expert on the subject. Sometimes there are vague sections like those treating Freud and Marx. But overall I think it is worth your while.
January 23, 2013
excellent primer into the history of science, the ideas and method that made science the way it is today.
April 6, 2013
Good overview of Science and Philosophy - Where they converge and diverge in context of historical and current thinking.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews