Customer Reviews

Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (Science and Its Conceptual Foundations series)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This outstanding introduction to the philosophy of science should not only please the undergraduates for which it was designed but also a broader audience of readers who are curious as to what this enterprise is all about. Godfrey-Smith manages to cover the subject even-handedly, even as he advocates a particular view or approach to the subject. The view that he defends is an unlikely combination of naturalism, empiricism and realism. I say "unlikely" because these three attitudes are not usually found bound into one package. The tension between empiricism and realism, in particular, has traditionally been emphasized. Though I am a skeptic about realism, I found Godfrey-Smith's defense of that view to be the best there is. I do wish he had extended this defense beyond van Fraassen's particular form of anti-realism to the form of anti-realism defended by Laudan. But that is a minor quibble.

The first seven chapters follow a broadly historical logic. The two chapters on Kuhn are particularly strong and provide a very nice summary of Kuhn's thinking for those who, though curious about the man's ideas, have never managed to read his Structure of Scientific Revolutions. I also found the chapter on logical positivism a very helpful and concise treatment of this movement. Godfrey-Smith manages to make the reader aware of the shortcomings of this program without, as is often the case, being dismissive.

Godfrey-Smith is also judicious in his treatment of feminist approaches to the philosophy of science, sociological views of science, and the endeavor known as "science studies". His discussion of the Sokal Hoax strikes the right balance and avoids the triumphalism that you might expect of someone with Godfrey-Smith's views.

It is in chapters 10-13 that Godfrey-Smith assembles the pieces of his particular perspective of the philosophy of science, which he then attempts to integrate in the final chapter. In the last chapter he adopts a brilliant strategy for framing the problem, citing an anonymous reviewer's comment that the marriage of empiricism, naturalism and realism will result in a "muddy paste". You may not be entirely convinced that the marriage of these three isms is a happy one, but you will certainly agree that Godfrey-Smith has avoided the mud; in fact he constructs a satisfying and esthetically pleasing composition out of apparently uncomplimentary colors.

This is by far the most convincing Introduction to Philosophy of Science that I've come across so far. As most previous reviewers agree, it is both deep and accessible, it makes a serious (not merely 'pro forma') attempt at being balanced and giving non-standard science studies a fair run for its money (unlike other books I have reviewed in the past). What's more, it even conveys a sense of the history of the debates that have shaped philosophy of science, while at the same time making the historical discussions relevant to the systematic interest of the philosophical argument. In this regard, it is much more of an introduction to philosophy of science than, for example, Losee's 'Historical Introduction to Philosophy of Science'. There are some minor problems, though, which means the book doesn't quite deserve five stars: first, the order of the chapters is somewhat idiosyncratic -- some crucial topics, such as scientific explanation, appear only on the last few pages of the book. Second, the discussion is sometimes too brief, especially when it comes to classic problems (e.g. D-N model of explanation); the author should have sacrificed one chapter (do we really need separate chapters on 'Feminism & Science' and 'The Challenge from SSK', and on 'Naturalistic Philosophy of Science' and 'Naturalism and the Social Structure of Science'?), thereby making room for a more complete discussion of standard material. Well, let's hope there will be second edition.

I studied a lot of philosophy of science when I was in college and graduate school, just for fun. But that was many years ago, and I needed a dispassionate overview of the field and a guide to the various philosophical problems confronting scientific explanation. This was the perfect book.

Godfrey-Smith saves his own position for the last few chapters of the book, and tries to present a variety of views in the body of the book with great tolerance for imperfections, rough edges, and infelicities. Yet, he has no qualms about proclaiming that a certain view is no longer treated seriously in the field (e.g., logical positivism, covering law theory, analytic/synthetic division).

The book covers the whole of the Twentieth Century, from logical positivism, through Quine, Goodman, and Popper, to Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, Science Studies, feminism, and post-modernism. He is more balanced than I, I must say, since I really hate post-modernism and all of its fellow-travellers, whereas the author tries to find some pearls of wisdom scattered across the dross.

Godfrey-Smith comes out for versions of empiricism, naturalism, and scientific realism. I like his mix, but I am a scientist, not a philosopher, so my opinions carry no weight.

I would have liked the book to deal with creationism and intelligent design, which are burning issues in the US, though not (yet) in Europe. I would also have like the book to deal with forms of knowledge other scientific (e.g., aesthetic, street smarts, spiritual). Finally, the book doesn't deal with ethics at all. One could defend this by saying that this has nothing to do with science, but I think that is a conclusion and not a premise, and one which is in fact incorrect.

I teach philosophy of science to both undergraduates and graduate students, and this book could serve as an excellent introduction to the topic for either audience, though for certain reasons it is better suited to the undergraduate audience than the graduate audience. The principal virtue of the book is its narrative form: it is basically a history of the philosophy of science in the 20th century (with some background information regarding the 18th and 19th centuries) told in a straightforward and elementary way. It is perfect for students who are not philosophy majors or whose acquaintance with the broad outlines of the history of science is rather thin. This sort of book could possibly be of use to graduate students coming into a program with no previous experience in the area.

The first nine chapters present the fundamentals: the rise and fall of positivism, the sociology of science (including discussions of Kuhn, Lakatos, Laudan, Feyerabend, and the feminist critique of science), the demarcation problem, the problems of induction and confirmation, you name it. Chapters 10-15 begin to move away from the basics in order to present Godfrey-Smith's own peculiar version of scientific realism in the form of an extended argument for procedural naturalism. While this section of the book will be of particular interest to students in that graduate class I mentioned, the ones in the undergrad class might find it a little difficult to connect the material here to what has gone before. My own practice with undergraduates has been to ground my lectures roughly on the information presented in the text, but to take the opportunity to expand on certain topics that are only briefly mentioned (Hempel's deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation, the problem of theoretical entities, the semantic vs. syntactic view of theories, etc.).

I find that this book has certain advantages over other texts I have used, particularly anthologies. The well known Cover and Curd text (Norton) is an excellent resource and particularly useful in graduate courses, but the undergraduates where I teach find the primary sources to be inaccessible, in spite of the introductory and other explanatory materials included in that text. The same was also true for my students when I switched to the Pittsburgh text (Salmon et al.). Godfrey-Smith's text has been much more popular with the students, even though I myself would prefer to read primary materials. Well, you can't have everything.

Some have objected that the text either omits or else elides over certain issues that are popular with students. For example, there is little in here dealing with normativity in science, other than typical issues of epistemic values and the problem of objectivity (so-called "contextual values"), and one reviewer notes that there is nothing about the debate over "intelligent design" in this text. Regarding the former I think that my own strategy of supplementing the text with a variety of examples in lectures works very well; regarding the latter I can only say that I find the lack of discussion of intelligent design to be among the book's virtues. As far as I can see the whole issue of creationism vs. science is of very little interest, contributing only to the discussion of the demarcation problem, and even there contributing very little worth spending much time on. It has been remarked that this issue is of interest in the United States but not so much in Europe and other areas. Richard Dawkins was once asked about this in an interview with Terry Gross on NPR's "Fresh Air", and he explained it by saying "That's because in England we don't have quite so many, let's see, how can I put this delicately...ignoramuses trying to teach science." Well, that's not how I would have put it, but I can't say as how I disagree all that much with the sentiment.

Overall, then, I would say that this book does a very good job indeed of slicing out a domain of discourse for itself and explaining it to the student in an accessible and readable fashion. With the right sort of attitude one ought to find even the final section (chapters 10-15) extremely interesting if rather idiosyncratic. The book thus has the virtue of teaching not only by means of a concise overview of the principal topics, but also by means of example: a philosopher of science teaching the philosophy of science by actually doing some original philosophy of science.

For an introduction to the philosophy of science, and all its different schools of thought and its most influential thinkers, you probably can't do much better than this book. Godfrey-Smith's writing and presentation are mostly clear and accessible to the interested layperson, and he ably introduces dense concepts without the wooden and pedantic prose that ruins so many modern philosophical tracts. However, readability is still an issue here, with a very apparent pattern. Each chapter is very readable and helpful at the start, but then becomes more confusing as Godfrey-Smith delves into increasingly esoteric and tangential sub-topics related to the chapter's main topic. He also has the tendency to describe a topic by introducing it briefly then spending more time discussing counter-theories and critiques, making the reader wonder what exactly is being covered and why (e.g. "Leviathan and Latour" in Chapter Eight). And finally, Godfrey-Smith is a working philosopher of science himself, and is generally unable to avoid giving his opinions in each chapter or section, falling into the philosopher's trap of criticizing one's colleagues for not having all the answers while refusing to admit the same about one's own theories. Meanwhile, the final chapter is made up mostly of Godfrey-Smith's attempt at a unified theory. Thus, this book is not necessarily the impartial introduction that it claims to be. But aside from those variously troublesome flaws, this is still a fine foundational text for the thinking student. [~doomsdayer520~]

I've read several introductory texts for philosophy of science, and this one is the best to date. Theory and Reality is concise, well organized, and written clearly. Each chapter is accompanied by a nice set of recommendations for further reading. Godfrey-Smith opens with historical approach beginning with the logical positivist-empiricist view of science. This is followed by the failure of logical positivist-empiricist program in facing problems of induction and confirmation, and the failure of logical formulations to capture key features of science. This is followed by an interesting and critical discussion of Popper's approach and then a pair of particularly thoughtful chapters analyzing the work and legacy of Kuhn. Godfrey-Smith rejects some of Kuhn's (and his more dogmatic followers) more extreme claims while praising Kuhn's sophisticated analysis of scientific progress and Kuhn's emphasis on the history of science as a tool in the philosophy of science. The next section discusses the "program" approaches of Lakatos and Laudan, along with the somewhat extreme views of Paul Feyerabend. The emphasis on more descriptive analysis of what scientists do leads to a discussion of modern sociology of science and some of its anti-realist practicioners. At this point, Godfrey-Smith moves into a less historically oriented series of chapters connecting philosophy of science with epistemological questions involving realism, naturalism, and their relationship to empiricism. There is a very nice set of discussions of these issues and evaluation of explanations (including a chapter on Bayesianism). Godfrey-Smith concludes with a sketch of his own synthesis, which is a reasonable and attractive attempt to combine the better features of a modest realism, scientific naturalism, and key features of empiricism. Godfrey-Smith's discussion alson includes a nice precis of science as a successful institution. His account will seem familiar and sensible to most scientists.

Godfrey-Smith has put together a reasonable introduction to the philosophy of science. This is no small feat, given the vast spectrum of differing philosophical opinions and outright clan warfare that has characterized this field. To pull together so many disparate ideas, from thinkers whose backgrounds are so different, truly requires some mental agility. And Godfrey-Smith accomplishes this task acceptably. All of the necessary philosophical viewpoints, all of the main players, all of the intricate arguments -- they are all in the book. However, the overall (dis)organization of the book does little to help clarify a confusing field.

Godfrey-Smith seems unable to settle on what sort of book he is writing. Is it an introduction to the philosophy of science, a sort of "survey" of the main ideas of the field and their relation to each other? Or is it his own treatise, in which he lays out his own ideas to deal with the problems that arise as one "does" philosophy of science? Unfortunately, Godfey-Smith cannot make up his mind, and so the book is a mixture of (seemingly) objective reviews of the major ideas, along with a smattering of sometimes silly commentary (perhaps designed to keep the under-enthused undergraduate engaged?) and one-sided conversations with deceased philosophers.

Furthemore, as bewildering a field as philosophy of science is, it would have made sense to present the ideas in a logical, ordered fashion. Perhaps this could have been done chronologically, starting with Aristotle's metaphysics (despite it's anathema status to philosophers of science -- it would have given some much needed background to the book) and continuing on through the end of the 20th century. Or perhaps it could have been arranged by topic -- what do various thinkers make of the demarcation between science and pseudoscience? what about confirmation of theories? what about the induction and deduction? Either of these designs would have made sense and enhanced the book. Godfrey-Smith claims that the book is ordered chronologically, but this is just not the case. There are far too many interruptions to make it flow smoothly -- interruptions such as the chapter on feminism's influence on the philosophy of science, or the sociology of science. Those should have been worked into the chronological discussion. The author's own commentary and his advocacy of his own theories serve as further distractors.

However, Godfrey-Smith does have the respectable quality of being down-to-earth in a field whose chief thinkers have thought so hard that they end up in ridiculous places, with their arguments so twisted that they end up arguing against themselves! Godfrey-Smith's ideas serve to ground the book to earth, at times when the big minds of philosophy of science get too abstract, too sublime, or honestly just devoid of common sense. He cuts through the Gordian knot tied by many of his predecessors.

Overall, this is a solid introduction to the philosophy of science. It is easy to read, entertaining, and interesting. It would serve its reader even better if a little more attention had been paid to organizing it in a sensible manner.

This book is excellent. Smith has not only presented lucid syntheses of the entire history of philosophy of science, but he has also included at the end of each chapter suggestions for further readings.

The book is very easy to understand -- which is a feat considering some of the material that he's presenting is quite technical and inaccessible.

For the student looking to go to graduate school in the philosophy of science, this is a great start. For the student just looking to get a solid understand of where the philosophy of science stands today, this is all you need.

My only problem is that sometimes Smith presents things TOO clearly. That is, it feels like what he's saying couldn't possibly be so simple. But I think this is more of a reason to praise him than to fault him. And, again, if you wish for elaborations (some of the passages can be tantalizingly short), just sift through the suggested reading.

Bottom line: there's almost no fat whatsoever on this book. It is a lean, mean, philosophy-of-science-teaching machine.

This book has a lot of great qualities. It is a very good introduction to the concepts and the history of philosophy of science. I bought it because I wanted to know more about the essentials of philosophy of science, and it served the purpose splendidly. Logical positivism, Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos etc. are all covered and discussed in a clear and concise way.

Another good thing about the book is the fact that it is very well written, and has a style that I happened to enjoy very much. It's somewhat personal, and reading the book sort of feels like having a private talk with the author - a person that knows a lot about what he's talking about. A part of this feeling comes from the fact that Godfrey-Smith constantly tells us what he feels about the themes discussed, and while some would prefer a more "pure" presentation of the facts without judgements, I think the author has managed to present his opinion in a very valuable way in this book. He is very clear about when he actually presents his own ideas, and he also lets us know that there are other views than his out there. This honesty makes sure the presentation is not plagued with bias, and Godfrey-Smith certainly seems qualified to give his opinions.

The title of this review will make it clear that the review so far has mostly been about the first 2/3 or so of the book. I personally think it all falls somewhat apart when he goes from presenting the essential ideas and persons in philosophy of science to presenting his "new" philosophy of science. Naturalism is what Godfrey-Smith prefers, and the chapters describing it feels far less strong than the previous ones. While I enjoy his input when discussing the other themes, I don't think the chapters consisting mostly of his opinions alone are as good. Others will probably disagree, though, as they may see more value in what I feel is basically a collection and re-branding of obvious strong-points from other theories covered earlier in the book. Me feeling this way can surely be caused by me not understanding what Godfrey-Smith is trying to say, but I still feel like I understand most of it, and it still feels like an act of product differentiation in order to make his contribution seem more novel than it really is.

Anyway, I still recommend the book wholeheartedly, as I truly enjoyed reading it, while learning a lot about philosophy of science.

On a closing note: I find the book more suited for self-study for anyone interested than as a text-book for class adaption, as the style and presentation in my opinion does not work as great for a text-book.

One of the most refreshing qualities of this succinct, digestible, and comprehensive account of major currents in the philosophy of science since the early 20th century is that it does not treat each school's position as equally plausible. Godfrey-Smith does not hesitate to argue, respectfully but directly, that some have been effectively refuted (logical positivism) while others appear to be especially promising. He explicitly informs the reader whenever he defends his own outlook. At the end of every chapter he gives a compact selection of references along with a brief description of each, making it easy to delve deeper into primary sources.

The latter parts of this book are concerned with contemporary currents in the philosophy of science. In light of my own experience of scientific practice, many of them come across as naive. Nevertheless, Godfery-Smith has managed to convince me that at least some of the people pursuing them are thinking critically.