Book Review: What is This Thing Called Science?

Scrubs' J.D. wonders "What is This Thing Called Science?"

So my excuse for the long break, or most of it, is moving house and having a broken computer fan. I am now moved (for now) and my computer is back, so here's something to be going along with.

I'm always reading something on the History of Science, often more than one something. A few weeks ago I finished a book charmingly named What is This Thing Called Science? by Alan Chalmers. I feel the title should always been said with a finger on the chin and a quizzical look. 

It was quite a charming read and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Essentially, it's a play-by-play of (some?) of the important various philosophies of science over the 20th century. I had encountered Thomas Kuhn and the interestingly anarchic Paul Feyerabend before, but not people like Imre Lakatos. Chalmers details the ideas, decides how they are useful, helpful and flawed before moving on to the next thing. He finally settles, albeit slightly uncomfortably, on Deborah Mayo and the idea of New Experimentalism.

I'm afraid I will need to come back to New Experimentalism and Mayo, although the major key to the philosophy is there in the name-- science is something heavily connected to experiment... and that's the best I've got at the moment. One thing that Chalmers does do is try to battle his way out of the idea that Feyerabend put forth-- that science is not progressive or produces results any more accurate than reading the entrails of unfortunate goats. Throughout the book Chalmers is determined to find something about science that is, if not based on a single unified metholodogy, at least productive and progressive.

Think of the goats, Feyerabend!

I liked that about the book. Feyerabend's somewhat cheeky and anarchic ideas are fascinating and hold a kind of perverse sense (I'd better come back to him as well) but are counter-intuitive and I can understand that somebody would want to start with a bit of a proposition that science is useful, is progressive and while it might be slightly less easy to package up than we are sometimes led to believe it is, does actually have value over those poor goats.

I recommend this book. The internet informs me it's an excellent introduction to the Philsophy of Science and, for once, I agree with someone on the internet.