What Is This Thing Called Science?

✍ Scribed by Alan F. Chalmers

• Publisher: Hackett Pub Co
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 144
• Edition: 3rd
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This new edition of Chalmers's highly regarded and widely read work-translated into fifteen languages-is extensively rewritten and reorganized, reflecting the experience of the author, his colleagues, and correspondents in twenty years of teaching from the previous edition. Significant additions are new chapters on the Bayesian approach to science, the new experimentalism, the nature of scientific laws, and the realism/anti-realism debate. An ideal introduction to scientific method, Chalmers's work is both accessible to beginners and a valuable resource for advanced students and scholars.

✦ Table of Contents

What is this thing called Science?......Page 1
Contents......Page 3
Preface to the first edition......Page 5
Preface to the second edition......Page 7
Preface to the third edition......Page 8
Introduction......Page 9
1 Science as knowledge derived from the facts of experience......Page 11
2 Observation as practical intervention......Page 20
3 Experiment......Page 24
4 Deriving theories from the facts: induction......Page 31
5 Introducing falsificationism......Page 40
6 Sophisticated falsificationism, novel predictions and the growth of science......Page 48
7 The limitations of falsificationism......Page 54
8 Theories as structures I: Kuhn's paradigms......Page 63
9 Theories as structures II: Research programs......Page 76
10 Feyerabend's anarchistic theory of science......Page 85
11 Methodical changes in method......Page 91
12 The Bayesian approach......Page 98
13 The new experimentalism......Page 107
14 Why should the world obey laws?......Page 117
15 Realism and anti-realism......Page 124
16 Epilogue......Page 134
Notes......Page 138
Bibliography......Page 139
Index of names......Page 143