Customer Reviews

World Hypotheses: A Study in Evidence

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At the core of most any deep inquiry, one finds epistemology, questions about how one knows and what one can know. Pepper deeply penetrates the mysteries of epistemology. Having taken an undergraduate degree in philosophy, I can certify that he has successfully distilled the essence of such a degree in 348 very readable pages. If you don't have time to read Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hegel, and William James (all of whom I highly recommend), read World Hypotheses. Pepper lucidly communicates the basic world view of these and many other important philosophers.

It was actually interesting, and helped me organize the major world (or at least Western) philosophies into four categories. Certainly helped my scattered mind make sense of the world.

I think this book is useful for a university student studying the history of science, or Western Philosophy. It's not the kind of content that will keep you turning pages, but the ideas were so well-presented that I didn't feel the need to keep turning back and saying "huh?" Coherent

I first read Pepper's most excellent "World Hypotheses" as a philosophy student many years ago. I lost it, checked it out from libraries, and am now purchasing it for my brother and father. And myself. I confess that part of this is quite selfish - my neice is quite philosophically bent, and while two years away from university, she might nevertheless get her hands on this book and get "a leg up" on her colleagues.

So much one can say about a book that segments the different "world pictures" into discriminable types. What a gift Pepper has given us. Finished D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover last month and was amazed how much more intelligible reading Pepper's book made Lawrence's. And not just the literati will have augmented understanding, but scientists as well. What physicist can fail to glean Pepper's wisdom in attempting to unify discrete with consolidated mechanism? Or mechanism with organicism? Don't know if it will improve their home lives, but what a jewel this work is!

This book should be required reading in every High School ... or at least at the college freshman level to enable students to learn how to think and evaluate information presented to them. That is, learn to apply the stringent "Scope, Depth and Internal Consistency " key to their analysis and thus weed out what Professor Pepper calls "dubidanda" -- dubious data that so infect thinking today.