Customer Reviews
A little book of big ideas - By: Mark Hurst, 30 Sep 2008 
A great little book that introduces the major debates with enough detail to whet the appetite but not enough to intimidate. As befits a book of this nature, the author sensibly avoids polemic & other rhetorical baggage in favour of clear writing, leaving the reader free to concentrate on the ideas. The result is straightforward, unpretentious & concise.
Great little book - By: M. J. Robinson, 31 Aug 2006 I found this book very clear, comprehensible & enjoyable.
It starts off with a brief history of modern physics & some biology. It then discusses deduction & induction & goes on look at explanation in science & outlines problems associated with these ideas. It then outlines the realist v anti-realist debate.
The philosophy of Popper & Kuhn are criticallly outlined & there is a chapter on the critics of science. There is also a chapter on specific problems in physics, biology & psychology.
Because there is obviously limited space in a book of this size, it is unable to cover some of the important philosophies of science that have been developed since Kuhn.
However, I thought this book was well written & ideal for the layman wanting an intoduction to this field, & certainly whets the appetite to find out more. Thoroughly recommended.
A fantastic introduction - By: filthmonkey, 11 Apr 2006 The "A Very Short Introduction" series doesn't always come up with good books, but this one is a gem. It reallly is. It introduces the basics first: deduction, induction, etc. & goes on to talk about the problem of induction, Hume's criticism of it, whether thinking about probability & causation can help. The discussion moves then onto realists vs. anti-realists. The highly influential philosopher Thomas Kuhn is also well covered. Finallly, the book covers some problems in biology & physics & generallly that result from science. The book is brief & you can read it in a long evening or maybe two short ones, if you're not already familiar with the subject. Most importantly, the author manages to realise that newcomers to the subject deserve a gentle ride, & he does this by writing very accessibly & using plenty of easy-to-understand examples. I would recommend this to anybody trying to find a way into the philosophy of science. Of course, being a "very short introduction" this book doesn't tend to go into very much detail or cover everything that philosophy of science entails. But a very short introduction can't have everything. For beginners I think it is ideal, & that is what it aims to be. Highly recommended.
Reasonable Overview For The Interested - By: Kam-Hung Soh, 20 Jan 2006 
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 & problems in science, & discusses Thomas Kuhn's scientific revolutions. The book concludes with a discussion on science & society.
Philosophy of science, as described in this book, seems to have become a rather esoteric subject removed the daily practice of scientists & the everyday use of science. Some questions that spring to mind but which are not covered in this book: Does the publication & 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 & 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 & 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 & age of automated indexing systems, does it reallly matter which method is used to classify creatures? Finallly, 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 & one of the better books in the "Very Short Introduction" series.
great for beginners - By: , 19 Feb 2003 As a relative newcomer to the subject, I found the book fascinating. It is full of illustrations which explain & break up the text, & it is smalll, so I didn't feel oppressed by a huge weight of knowledge that I might feel obliged to wade through. Very approachable & very readable - Five stars!
