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Sir Peter Medawar was not only a Nobel prize-winning immunologist but also a wonderful writer about science and scientists. Described by the Washington Post as a 'genuinely brilliant popularizer' of science, his essays are remarkable for their clarity and wit. This entertaining selection presents the very best of his writing with a new Foreword by Stephen Jay Gould, one of his greatest admirers. The wide range of subjects include Howard Florey and penicillin, J. B. S. Haldane, whom he describes as a 'with-knobs-on variant of us all', and, in the title essay, scientific fraud involving laboratory mice. There is Medawar's defence of James Watson against the storm of criticism that greeted the publication of The Double Helix. A merciless debunker of myths, he reveals the nonsense to be discovered in psychoanalytic interpretations of Darwin's illness and launches devastating attacks on Arthur Koestler, IQ psychologists, and, most notably, Teilhard de Chardin. He raises questions about the nature of scientific endeavour - he famously defined science as the art of the soluble - and a common theme is his desire to communicate the importance of science to the widest possible audience.
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• Part I Laws of nature. Part II Probabilistic explanation. Part III Inference to the best explanation. Part IV Observation. Part V Prediction and accommodation. Part VI Underdetermination of theory by evidence. Part VII Incommensurability.
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This work on the philosophy of science shows how it cuts across the core areas of philosophy. Topics covered include the nature of natural laws; aleatory explanations; epistemology ("The Dogma that Didn't Bark" by Fodor); logic versus historical theories of confirmation; and much more.
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• Intro
• Contents
• 1. Philosophy and Science
• 2. Logic and Mathematics
• 3. Probability
• 4. Induction
• 5. Observation and Error
• 6. Measurement
• 7. Choosing Among Conventions
• 8. Laws and Theories
• 9. Relativity and Revolution
• 10. Idealization
• 11. Causality
• 12. Statistical Causality
• 13. Dispositions and Modalities
• 14. Decision Theory
• 15. Levels of Corpora
• 16. Speculation
• 17. The Limits of Science
• Name Index
• A
• B
• C
• D
• E
• F
• G
• H
• J
• K
• L
• M
• N
• P
• Q
• R
• S
• T
• U
• V
• W
• Z
• Subject Index
• A
• B
• C
• D
• E
• F
• G
• H
• I
• J
• L
• M
• N
• O
• P
• Q
• R
• S
• T
• U
• V
• W.

The author sets forth his views on a wide range of philosophical problems associated with the study and practice of science and mathematics, and gives a general overview of the philosophy of science. The text is aimed primarily at cognitive scientists and those working in artificial intelligence.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

The major contention of this book is that psychologists - as well as philosophers and sociologists - can contribute significantly to the debate on the nature of science. In particular, its author demonstrates the relevance of certain topics in cognitive psychology and perception studies to the analysis of argument and inference in science, and he discusses the existence and role of confirmatory biases in the conduct and interpretation of scientific research, the nature and function of memory schemata in the work of the scientist and the influence of presuppositions on the perception and presentation of scientific findings. He argues that the work of individual scientists can be best understood as a joint product of intellectual background and willingness to adopt and defend a position with respect to important elements of that context. Lovie illustrates his argument by a number of psychological examples (taken from the history of behaviourism and factor theories of intelligence), but he also discusses Gerald Holton's analysis of the work of Robert Millikan and Albert Einstein, and Michael Faraday's studies of electromagnetic induction as dissected by Ryan Tweney. His own analysis of the American astronomer Percival Lowell's controversial views on the canals of Mars forms the centrepiece of the book. "Context and Commitment" should be of interest to all psychologists, as well as philosophers and sociologists of science.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Introduction, Paul Horwich
• Thomas Kuhn, colleague and friend, C.G. Hempel
• Carnap, Kuhn, and the philosophy of scientific methodology, John Earman
• remarks on the history of science and the history of philosophy, Michael Friedman
• rationality and paradigm change in science, Ernan McMullin
• a mathematician's mutiny with morals, J.L. Heilbron
• science and humanism in the Renaissance - Regiomontanu's oration on the dignity and utility of the mathematical sciences, N.M. Swerdlow
• design for experimenting, Jed Z. Buchwald
• mediations - enlightenment balancing acts, or the technologies of rationalism, M. Norton Wise
• how we relate theory to observation, Nancy Cartwright
• working in a new world - the taxonomic solution, Ian Hacking
• afterwords, Thomas Kuhn.
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Thomas Kuhn's book "The Structure of Scientific Revolution" called into question such central notions of good science as the concept of absolute truth, the observation/theory distinction, the determinacy of rational choice and the normative function of philosophy of science, and replaced these with a more historically accurate model of scientific change. Kuhn's critique turned several fields upside down and continues to be read and debated not only by philosophers and historians of science but also by great numbers of practicing scientists. Inspired by his contributions, each of these 12 original essays addresses a central aspect of Kuhn's thought. Several of the essays are mainly philosophical, four are primarily historical, and one, by Kuhn himself, responds to issues raised in the other essays.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)