The Arch of Knowledge: An Introductory Study of the History of the Philosophy and Methodology of Science (Hardcover)

The author justifies his historical approach in the preface of the book, holding that the usual approach treats the subject from what he calls a "quasi-historical" perspective. The texts of philosophy are treated as if they were of secondary significance he argues, with emphasis placed instead on the philosophical problems they generate. This results in a distorted view of the history of philosophy he says, and so his goal is to examine both the history of the philosophy and methodology of science.

The book takes one from the forms of Plato to the modern sociologists of knowledge. Along the way, one gains an appreciation of the attitudes taken toward scientific knowledge, with enthusiasm and skepticism each having approximately equal representation. Science is very different from philosophy, and refreshingly the author realizes this. Philosophical systems of thought do not have the constraint of experimental evidence that science does. Therefore it can engage in endless speculations and theorizing, which results in a very rapid build-up of information.

Again, this book will give one an appreciation of the philosophy of science as it took place throughout history. It can be said with confidence that readers interested in philosophy will like the book more then those interested in science. If after reading this book one concluded that science needed some sort of philosophical underpinning or foundation then this would be mistaken. Science does not need any such foundation, but it does rely sometimes on the critical thinking that characterizes philosophical argumentation. This dependence will continue, and no doubt the extraordinary advances made in science in the twenty-first century will instigate new thinking in philosophy. This thinking will both be for and against science, but of course, science will survive it, whatever its form.

The author is witty, interesting, well spoken and at points understatedly humorous. He has that professor's mind shaped by years of trying to convince students that what he finds fascinating is in fact something that ought to keep them awake in their lecture hall seats. The organizing principle is stated, restated, reshaped and appears in slightly different forms in every chapter and is an image that can be seen and reworked a million times in a learner's mind. This is the title, the arch of knowledge, up one side from the empirical via induction to general principles and down the other leg via deductive reasoning (this is just one of the incarnations of the arch), the whole thing is science, but the analysis of the arch is metascience(the author's word) and his book is meta-metascience(again his word) as it discusses the various way of constructing and understanding this analogy.

The organization is historical, starting with the "Ancient Tradition" with the Greeks, and proceeding chronologically via the careful analysis of individual's, their contribution to the architecture of the arch, and with particular attention to the problems they encountered and were desireous of solving. Contextualization, the putting into a great big picture of the march of science and of the flow of metascience in thinking about science, is always in the forefront of the author's intentions. There are times where he literally says that there is more interesting things to talk about here, that he is really interested personally in the topic, but it would interfere with the flow and learner's understanding if he were to pursue this topic. Along with this, both the individual chapter endnotes and the reference section at the book's end are treasures of 'where-to-go-from-here', but only complaint is that the book is dated 1986 and thus the references are dated and/or hard-to-find. But the book, being a historical survey could be updated by the addition of a new chapter or two, not necessarily a complete rewrite as is often needed in the sciences.

There have been many times in the recent past where i wished for such a book to be able to share the title with someone in an online discussion that just appeared to know nearly nothing about the big issues underlying the philosophy of science. Well now i have the book title to share. I am almost to the point that i would appreciate a comprehensive quiz or a required reading list in order to enter into discussion groups on technical or scientific topics. The pure bulk of garbage, of uneducated or foolish opinions, makes the noise to signal ratio so high that i contemplate leaving and sticking just to peer reviewed journals and published books. This book being read by a significant portion of those attempting to discuss issues in the creation-evolution-design CED debate, (which is the forum where i dwell of late, and what brought this book to my attention), would certainly uplift these discussions, to everyone's benefit. If you want to discuss evolutionary biology, or the relationship of science to religion as it impinges in this sphere, you simply must grasp the material presented in this book. Otherwise you are wasting time, rehashing, retracing, rebuilding the doomed, and generally not getting anywhere constructive. And that is the value of such a book: basic, learnable, systematic introduction to a rather complex twisting field that is of general interest to significant portions of the general public, who may be, and often are tempted to think that science is democratic in that even the uninformed opinion (that is their's) is of value. "Everyone has a right to their opinion, but no one has a right to demand that i take their opinion seriously UNLESS they have done their homework." In general philosophy of science 101, this is the best book i have yet encountered. Go for it.