Product Description

What is science? Is there a real difference between science and myth? Is science objective? Can science explain everything? This Very Short Introduction provides a concise overview of the main themes of contemporary philosophy of science. Beginning with a short history of science to set the scene, Samir Okasha goes on to investigate the nature of scientific reasoning, scientific explanation, revolutions in science, and theories such as realism and anti-realism. He also looks at philosophical issues in particular sciences, including the problem of classification in biology, and the nature of space and time in physics. The final chapter touches on the conflicts between science and religion, and explores whether science is ultimately a good thing.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #187110 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780192802835
• Condition: USED - VERY GOOD
• Notes:
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Review

"Very helpful.... Okasha presents the issues and arguments with delightful clarity."--Philosophia Christi

About the Author

Samir Okasha is currently Lecturer in Philosophy, University of York. He has published numerous articles in philosophy journals, in the areas of philosophy of science, philosophy of biology, and epistemology. He has previously held a Jacobean Fellowship in Philosophy at University of London and has taught at the University of Mexico.

Customer Reviews

A great little primer to the Philosophy of Science
What this book claims to do, it does well. It is in the Oxford "Very Short Introductions" series, and so does not pretend to be anything but a cursory introduction to the field of Philosophy of Science. Given that caveat, the book is well-written, great fun to read, and is still likely to give us mere "laymen" in the field something to think about.

Okasha assumes some scientific and philosophical knowledge on the part of the reader. There is not the space to dedicate explanations of specific scientists or scientific theories. The book appears to be for scientists rather than philosophers - he clearly goes into more detail describing the philosophical aspects than the scientific ones. At the same time, he tries not to take sides in the debates of the field, such as the importance of direct observation, the ideas of Kuhn (on scientific revolutions), Popper (on the definition of science), etc. He also covers the basic scientific issues such as causality, inductive vs. deductive reasoning, and how conflict can arise between science and religion.

I'm not sure if a non-scientist will follow all Okasha's examples. However, it's probably unlikely that a non-scientist will pick up this book. This book has helped me immensely in preparing lectures for a module in "The Nature of Scientific Enquiry" for a general science course we have started this year. The clarity and conciseness with which the author presents the material makes this a nice little book, well worth the low cost.

Excellent Introduction to the Subject
In my opinion, this book is probably among the best available introductions to the philosophy of science. It is also suitable for review purposes for those who already have some familiarity with the subject.

The book manages to cover much ground in a short space because it is written very concisely, yet it is also easy to read because the writing style is very clear and straightforward.

I warmly recommend this book without hesitation.

Reasonable Overview For The Interested
What do philosophers think about science? This book provides a brief history of the philosophy of science, describes some logical assumptions in the practice of science and problems in science, and discusses Thomas Kuhn's scientific revolutions. The book concludes with a discussion on science and society.

Philosophy of science, as described in this book, seems to have become a rather esoteric subject removed the daily practice of scientists and the everyday use of science. Some questions that spring to mind but which are not covered in this book: Does the publication and independent verification of results lead to the self-correcting nature of science? Why is the simplest explanation the best? How can scientists who cannot easily perform experiments, such as astronomers and sociologists, make verifiable theories?

Chapter 6 presents three problems in science: Newton's view of absolute space, the classification (by feature or by genetics) of living creatures and the whether the mind is modular or not. It's not clear to me how the philosophy of science can help in resolving these problems. Newton's view was probably driven by his desire to prove the literal truth of the Bible. In this day and age of automated indexing systems, does it really matter which method is used to classify creatures? Finally, shouldn't scientists collect more data before deciding if the mind is modular or not?

This book covers a number of topics in the field but fortunately doesn't get bogged down in a deep technical discussion on any single topic. It is a reasonable overview of the topic for the interested reader and one of the better books in the "Very Short Introduction" series.

Kam-Hung Soh, 19 January 2006.
http://kamhungsoh.blogspot.com