Introducing Philosophy of Science: A Graphic Guide

Introducing Graphic Guides

by Ziauddin Sardar, Borin Van Loon (Illustrator)

What do scientists actually do? Is science “value-free”? How has science evolved through history? Where is science leading us? Introducing Philosophy of Science is a clear and incisively illustrated map of the big questions underpinning science. It is essential reading for students, the general public, and even scientists themselves.

Genres: Philosophy, Science, Nonfiction, Comics

176 pages, Paperback

First published May 14, 1998

About the author

Ziauddin Sardar has written or edited 45 books over a period of 30 years, many with his long-time co-author Merryl Wyn Davies. Recent titles include Balti Britain: a Journey Through the British Asian Experience (Granta, 2008); and How Do You Know: Reading Ziauddin Sardar on Islam, Science and Cultural Relations (Pluto, 2006). The first volume of his memoirs is Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim (Granta, 2006). His recent television work includes a 90-minute documentary for the BBC in 2006 called 'Battle for Islam'. Sardar's online work includes a year-long blog on the Qur'an published in 2008 by The Guardian newspaper.
Sardar is a Visiting Professor of Postcolonial Studies in the Department of Arts Policy and Management at City University London and is Editor of the forecasting and planning journal, Futures. He is also a member of the UK Commission on Equality and Human Rights. His journalism appears most often in The Guardian and The Observer, as well as the UK weekly magazine, New Statesman. In the 1980s, he was among the founders of Inquiry, a magazine of ideas and policy focusing on Muslim countries. His early career includes working as a science correspondent for Nature and New Scientist magazines and as a reporter for London Weekend Television.
>>(from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziauddin... )<<
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*You can know more from his own site:
http://www.ziauddinsardar.com/Biograp...

Reviews

[St Fu · Rating 1 out of 5]

The title misuses the term "Philosophy of Science" as if it didn't already have a long standing and useful meaning. Though this book is arguably philosophy as applied to science, our language already has terms that describe what it is doing--"cultural studies," or "critical theory," and I say this as someone who is politically in accord with what this book is trying to do.

It treats science as the enemy (which I'll admit it often resembles) but without taking science's actual value seriously. For example, take the quote "In over five decades of science development, most of the Third World countries have nothing to show for it. The benefits of science just refuse to trickle down to the poor." The statement concedes that science has benefits (something that you'd be hard pressed to find in most of the book) though never quite says what they are. I grant you that the "Third World" (a phrase from the middle of last century which needs to be updated) has been left behind, often intentionally, from much we in the west take for granted, but I'd blame capitalism and power politics and plain old greed (something which long preceded Galileo) before considering science's role. Science has been developing for way more than five decades and leaving the poor behind for way more as well, so I also wonder about that choice of phrase, which coincidentally matches the age of the term "Third world." There have been several successful attempts to bring, say, medical science to developing nations, even when it can be attributed to eradicating diseases we fear will end up infecting us if we don't do so, and I know of doctors who volunteer time helping the "wretched of the earth" which could be criticized as insufficient salves to guilty consciences but that would ignore the fact that there is good being done.

The real problem with the book is that the author doesn't seem to know any actual science. He takes the second law of thermodynamics as a cultural artifact, and it does presume our culture's ideas of measurement, but I never get the feeling that he knows what it actually is trying to encompass.

It mainly targets the "soft sciences" which are low hanging fruit while never discussing the reasons why they are called "soft."

There are actual things I could learn from this book if I trusted they were being presented without distortion (which I don't).

And to add to the above, I found the graphics a weak feature, uninspiring and unattractive.

[Dana Robinson · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is utter trash. Less about the philosophy of science and more about the sociology. That is an interesting topic on its own, of course, but then maybe change the title to reflect that? At any rate, the book is riddled with postmodernist rubbish and factual errors and is difficult to take seriously.

[Jasmine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seriously misguiding at the start, several elements of prejudice found, illustrations are delightful, nevertheless covers an impressively substantial ground of 'sociology' of science for a book of 173 pages so .. 3 stars

[Mr RUSSELL SUGDEN · Rating 1 out of 5]

Utter garbage. Sociological attack on science as "white western male" nothing about the actual philosophy of science

[Dragana · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read the Introducing/graphic guide books as a relaxation and as a starting point to find out about a field, to discover literature if I want to delve deeper into a topic. And they fully serve these purposes! However, they are filled with illustrations which are sexist (not only this book). Yes, history is dominated by men, but nevertheless, the 60s-like illustrations and the over-sexualized, already scarce presence of women in the illustrations is not cool. The 98/99 pg depiction of Mother nature as a semi-undressed woman tied up in bed with a man holding a knife over her, well what the heck were the author, illustrator, editors, publishers thinking?

[Daniel · Rating 1 out of 5]

Introducing Philosophy of Science: A Graphic Guide (1998) by Ziauddin Sardar is an awe-inspiringly terrible book. I found myself wondering if I were reading a Poe's law parody of the sort churned out by the Postmodernism generator. Even when Sardar reluctantly mentions the Sokal hoax, as he must since even the modestly-informed science reader will be well aware of it, he makes no attempt to seriously engage with it.

It's hard to believe this book was published by the same company (Icon Books) that published Introducing Evolutionary Psychology: A Graphic Guide (1999) by Dylan Evans. That book is well-written and debunks some of the shopworn potshots that Sardar takes at the scientific study of human nature. (For even better and more detailed debunking, see The Triumph of Sociobiology (2001) by John Alcock.) This lack of series-wide editorial oversight stands in contrast to another book series I've read some way into, OUP's Very Short Introductions series. The VSI writers do not all agree with each other, but they at least seem to all be orbiting the same star.

To detail everything I did not like about this book, I would have to write a much longer book. In that sense, this book resembles a Gish gallop. As the English Wikipedia defines it:

"The Gish gallop is a rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm an opponent by presenting an excessive number of arguments, without regard for their accuracy or strength, with a rapidity that makes it impossible for the opponent to address them in the time available. Gish galloping prioritizes the quantity of the galloper's arguments at the expense of their quality."

I'll illustrate what this book is like with an example, which a scientifically competent reader will find either laughable or perplexing:

What is Assumed “Efficient”?

These metaphysical assumptions of Western science are reflected in its contents. Certain laws of science, as Indian physicists have begun to demonstrate, are formulated in an ethnocentric and racist way. The Second Law of Thermodynamics, so central to classical physics, is a case in point.

Due to its industrial origins, the Second Law presents a definition of efficiency that favours high temperatures and the allocation of resources to big industry.

Work done at ordinary temperatures is by definition inefficient. Both nature and the non-Western world become losers in this new definition. For example, the monsoon – transporting millions of tons of water across a subcontinent – is “inefficient” since it does its work at ordinary temperatures. Similarly, traditional crafts and technologies are designated as inefficient and marginalized.

Anyone who has read some classical thermodynmics will recognize that Sardar is garbling the Second Law with Carnot's theorem (developed by Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot in 1824), which gives the maximum possible "efficiency" of a heat engine: the fraction of input heat energy which can be converted into useful work. Carnot's theorem certainly relates to the Second Law, in something like the way that horses relate to mammals. And Sardar is correct that the Second Law was first studied by the early thermodynamicists who were interested in increasing the efficiency of steam engines. But quite a bit has happened since the early 1800s. From Wikipedia:

The initial application of thermodynamics to mechanical heat engines was quickly extended to the study of chemical compounds and chemical reactions. Chemical thermodynamics studies the nature of the role of entropy in the process of chemical reactions and has provided the bulk of expansion and knowledge of the field. Other formulations of thermodynamics emerged. Statistical thermodynamics, or statistical mechanics, concerns itself with statistical predictions of the collective motion of particles from their microscopic behavior. In 1909, Constantin Carathéodory presented a purely mathematical approach in an axiomatic formulation, a description often referred to as geometrical thermodynamics.

In particular, Sardar's bizarre critique suggests he is unaware of Chemical thermodynamics, a massive field of study that applies to all chemical systems including living systems, which operate at "ordinary" temperatures and pressures. Everything that happens in a living system, including in Sardar's own cells, happens according to the laws of thermodynamics, including the Second Law. There is nothing in the Second law that "favours" high temperatures, as the Second law applies just as well to living cells as it does to a blast furnace.

Indeed, as The Laws of Thermodynamics: A Very Short Introduction (1990) by Peter Atkins points out, the laws of thermodynamics are why anything happens at all.

Sardar seems to be confusing himself about the way that the Industrial revolution happened to play out, by inverting causes and effects (something he does in other contexts throughout the book, such as by miscasting conclusions as assumptions). Where he writes: "traditional crafts and technologies are designated as inefficient and marginalized", he ignores consumer choice (which drives everything when it comes to crafts) and appeals to some imaginary top-down conspiracy instead. Where traditional crafts fell to mass production it was because mass production lowered the direct costs to the consumer (and often by externalizing some costs, which Sardar blames on "science", in a "Look what you made me do" sort of way). It wasn't because some cabal of scientists designated traditional crafts as "inefficient" - consumers did. And we're talking about a different definition of "efficiency" here. Industrial-scale production doesn't convert chemical energy into useful work much more efficiently than human laborers do. Rather, industry found ways to tap vastly larger energy resources mainly in the form of fossil fuels. "Efficiency" refers to the amount of output you get from a given input, whereas industry found ways to (at least temporarily) vastly increase the (energy) input. The result is that an individual modern human in the First World consumes, directly and indirectly, a power output equivalent to having several hundred human slaves laboring nonstop on his or her behalf. It's not that traditional crafts were "marginalized" but that they simply aren't capable of churning out the volume of goods and services that a modern human consumes, at anything like an affordable cost. If we were to go back to traditional crafts, where human and animal muscles supply the power, the average First Worlder would have to make a massive (greater than one hundredfold) reduction in what they consume.

We can certainly have a conversation about the consequences of individual consumers consuming so much energy from fossil fuels. And Sardar does, to his credit, mention climate change elsewhere in the book. And given that Sardar complains that science hasn't benefited the Third World much (yet), presumably he wants everybody on the planet to consume like a First Worlder. For that be even remotely sustainable, we'll need to decarbonize the global economy. And for that to happen, lots of people will need to understand thernodynamics, a whole lot better than Sardar does.

I could go on and on about things that Sardar doesn't know, or misunderstands. Such as how scientific discovery happens (in the "adjacent possible", a term I assume he hasn't heard of). Sardar seems to think discovery is some sort of a top-down conspiracy, such that knowledge and ignorance are constructed in a scientific command economy. In reality, surprise, serendipity, and cross-fertilization are rife in science. And the fairly common phenomenon of simultaneous discovery suggests that anything which becomes discoverable (due to other enabling discoveries) will be discovered, sooner or later.

And so when Sardar blames science for not prioritizing the health problems of the urban poor, his criticism is only fair if those problems are currently amenable to scientific investigation (and solution). There's a pretty good chance that they aren't, given the large degree to which the health problems of the urban poor are behavioral. The science of human behavior is still in its infancy, or perhaps its toddlerhood.

Perhaps the most glaring deficiency of this book is its failure to mention denialism, and the contribution that STS made to it. To be fair, the book is fairly old, so it pre-dates the recent explosion in denialism. Thus while Sardar mentions Bruno Latour, he doesn't mention Latour's later life regret at the way his arguments were repurposed by the denial crowd.

The result is that today the problem of science denial, and particularly science denial by the political right, dwarfs any problems that the STS folks blamed on "science".

[Earl · Rating 4 out of 5]

On-the-spot review:

For a philosophy graduate student, this might seem to be a simplified textbook of sorts on the philosophy of science; however, that is not a bad thing, and in fact, it is the strongest point of this book as an "introductory text," in a very loose sense of the word. It was able to compress into 300 or so pages the whole history and philosophy of science, seducing the reader through its catchy and creative art. Compared to other "Introducing" and "For Beginners" books, this one was able to let the viewer see the horizon of the topic without compromising content and depth of information presented both in the artworks and in the short paragraphs.

This is a must-see for the serious researcher, I should say.

[Icon Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

What do scientists actually do? Is science "value-free"? How has science evolved through history? Where is science leading us? "Introducing Philosophy of Science" is a clear and incisively illustrated map of the big questions underpinning science. It is essential reading for students, the general public, and even scientists themselves

[Alexandru · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you want to read about gender and racial bias in science, this is the book for you. Although short and using a bad format. The title of the book should be changed to science ethics. Useless reading for my taste.

The whole book in one definition of science (page 15) and I quote: "Science is a sexist and chauvinist enterprise that promotes the values of white, middle-class males."

[Kevin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Today’s review is for the graphic introductory book: “Introducing Science” (2001©) written by Ziauddin Sardar and Borin Van Loon. This book is apparently a recovered (as in published with a new cover) book which was previously titled: “Introducing Science Studies”. The original title is FAR more accurate and the title I purchased is misleading, if not completely false. This is not a book about “Science”. It starts off as a history of science and jumps into being a criticism of the philosophy of science and an overview of the history of the social epistemology of science during the later half of the 20th century.

What’s the difference? Well, to me, science is the study of what we can measure and quantify with the goal of better understanding the universe as we experience it. Basically, you observe; you propose an explanation; you come up with a test of your proposal; you execute the test and accurately record the results; you evaluate the results for significance; and, then you publish your results and conclusions for peer review. If the review shows the test flawed or the data is not significant or not repeatable, then your results — and specifically your conclusions are unproven “scientifically”. You then have to go back to the drawing board to come up with a new test or a better theory. Ultimately, the final goal of “understanding” is to have a theory with predictive value.

This book deals with none of these issues.

What this book DOES do is make claims about science being “Western” and “male” dominated as well as offering statements about the value of science(s) from other cultures without providing any support for the statements. I don’t doubt that some “medicine man” (person) in some non-Western country may have observed the medicinal value of some root or herb and used it in their healings. That doesn’t make it scientific pharmacology. And the authors keep making these types of statements as if simply making them makes them valid criticisms of “Western”.

So, if I didn’t think much of this book as an “introduction” to science, is it of any value?

Interestingly, yes. I found the book to be a pretty good introduction / overview of the sociological criticisms of science. The main criticism of the book is really about how “normal” science has become “BIG science” and is funded by business and government without apparent ethical review by society. The book doesn’t say why this is so. Simply that it is. And, I mostly agree with the authors even without supporting evidence. Private profit drives most scientific development these days. That’s just the way it is. The authors do say that since the end of the Cold War, big science as shifted from government funding of physics to corporate funding of biology / pharmacology. And I agree with that, too.

Final recommendation: poor to moderate. If you are looking for an introduction to “science” or the history of science – forget it. This book is “almost” worthless. The only value I see is in the “Further Reading” notes at the end of the book. If you are looking for an overview of the politics of science, the philosophy of science, the sociology of science, feminist criticism, colonial criticism, and post-“normal” criticism – then this is the book for you (and I’d say the recommendation becomes “strong to highly”).

One final comment: I recently read and reviewed “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” by Thomas Kuhn. Kuhn’s book is the work that “created” the conceptual split between “revolutionary” science and “normal” science. In the past, science was thought to progress like a river. Kuhn’s book proposes that it more like a river with a random occurrence of waterfalls. “Normal” science is what most scientists do every day. The “waterfalls” are Newton, Einstein, etc. who come along with brilliant insights. I found it amusing to see a work I’d so recently read reported as a “classic” work from the last century. It made me appreciate Kuhn’s work even more…

[Craine · Rating 1 out of 5]

While I do consider some of the material covered in the book as helpful the title is willfully misleading as the book tackles science studies with a heavy dose of sociology and not philosophy of science in any meaningful way. While philosophers like Popper and Kuhn are covered in the briefest way possible (Lakatos is unfortunately not even discussed!) , the vast majority of the book deals with sociological critiques of science and relates very little to the domain of the philosophy of science. Therefore, topics such as the demarcation problem, epistemic realism vs epistemic antirealism, the nature of scientific knowledge, how does science generate and test hypothesis,.... are all virtually absent which is a shame since the book obviously targets the novice student of the field or the general reader with its book title.

Furthermore, the author seems to have a poor working foundations in science as we witness from his treatment of the second law of thermodynamics in terms of a cultural artifact and he gives epistemic relativity in general front center attention in the book while not bothering to discuss other views or critiques. Even within antirealism views the author could have tackled more diverse positions such as subjectivism and constructivism as an example as well as pointing out that there are a great variety of views even being held in terms of relativism towards science.

I will give the author some credit for presenting a case for contextual values such as biases for popping up in science and giving relevant weight to how this effects the enterprise of science. Unfortunately, the author gives an unfair treatment or should I say negatively biased view of science where chauvinism, harmful implementations such as atomic and biological weapons are blatantly presented without giving a proper discussion how these critiques have been met or how one could develop science in the future to better tackle contextual issues such as gender biases which of course persists as a problem.

In total the book would have done well to change its title to "An introduction to Science Studies" as common themes, relevant people as well as philosophical arguments pro/against various positions are almost gone from the book while a sociological critique of science is in ample supply throughout the book. Some of these are well treated such as biases in science although unfortunately even here what is tackled is mostly the "soft" sciences. I would also have liked a discussion as to the development in science moving away from a unity approach where various disciplines are described in terms of others with physics at the top of the pyramid so to speak. As this was a held position for a long time in history it certainly warrants a discussion, but like a said the author seems uninterested in the philosophy of science while at the same time being very keen to discuss the related, but not equivalent field of science studies.

(Note: I don't like the star rating and as such I only rate books based upon one star or five stars corresponding to the in my opinion preferable rating system of thumbs up/down. This later rating system increases in my humble opinion the degree to which the reader is likely to engage with a review instead of merely glancing at the number of stars of a given book.)

[Stefan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Needs a better title

As other reviewers have noted, this book is not primarily concerned with philosophical aspects of science. It mostly covers sociopolitical issues in the implementation of scientific research specifically the dangers of bias introduced by private funding. The format of this series is inadequate to cover the topics presented in any meaningful detail. It just reads as a series of disjointed factoids. The illustrations are not helpful and are just distractions. The other entries in this series have a similar problem but it is particularly noticeable when the speech bubbles are important to the flow of the argument. There are important issues considered here but it is way too brief. This could have been 4 or 5 good books if the historical, sociopolitical, methodological, and philosophical issues were explored in their own volumes. As is, it reads as a disjointed screed against a somewhat cartoonish version of "the scientific establishment." The suggestions for an alternative model for the advancement of science are underdeveloped and some kernels of good ideas like citizen science are obscured by what appears to be an advocacy "alternative facts" that could easily lead to harmful movements like anti-vaccination or climate change denial. Again, the book is far too brief for a detailed analysis. It's essential to follow it up by examining the reference d sources to better understand the ideas presented in their original contexts.
This is the fourth book that I have read in this series and unsurprisingly the overall quality of the books is uneven. They could use another round of editing and fact checking but that is probably cost prohibitive. I would recommend reading this book and others in the series with the strong caveat that you will have to read other sources to get an accurate picture.

[Evgeny Kandybko · Rating 1 out of 5]

"Don't judge a book by its cover" comes to mind, and not in the good sense.

There are several redeeming parts in it, like the very, very brief history of science, the section on Logical Positivism, Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper, as well as the section near the end it where it describes how current scientific research is controlled by corporate interests. Unfortunately, given the biased nature of the rest of the book, I cannot trust the information presented there.

The bulk of the book is written from a sociology perspective about how Western civilizations have been exploiting other cultures and how women have been absent from scientific inquiry for most of history (which is not untrue, but if I wanted to read about that I would have bought a different book).

[Anton · Rating 1 out of 5]

a piece of crap, really. not so much an explanation of the major philosophical issues in science as a sociological critique of science itself and its role within society and civilization. definitely not an attempt to be 'neutral' (an impossible goal to achieve but a worthy goal to shoot for nevertheless). mostly 'straw man' arguments. if you want an actual survey of issues in the philosophy of science, you'll get a few leads from this on issues in the study of science as a social practice, but not much in the way of issues in epistemology, truth, proofs, prediction, statistics vs. determinism, etc.

[Joe Griffith · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don’t recognize these scientist...

I labored in the vineyards of science all of my adult life and I don’t recognize the scientists the author is describing. Anyone who says that scientists believe a certain way or all act a certain way has never met a scientist! (Confession, I couldn’t finish the essay. Maybe it got better?)
I have a pretty simple definition of science. It is a creative activity much like writing or composing or dancing or painting... it just has really tough rules. I think that makes some folks bitter.

[A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

No single and simple description of science can reveal its basic nature. No romantic ideal can describe its real character. No sweeping generalization can uncover its real dimensions. I agree with a lot of the reviews that this book isn't properly titled: rather than just a meditation on the philosophy of science, it spends a lot of time dissecting the culture of science, the economics of what gets funded and who benefits, the interplay between science and policy, the nature of Truth vs Quality. There are interesting sections on Popper's falsifiability, Kuhn's paradigms, scientific feminism and post-colonialism, etc. As a primer on the hidden biases and systems that underpin the ~objective~ human endeavor of scientific inquiry, it's really helpful in reminding us that none of this happens in a vacuum, that there is in fact politics and history behind something as objective as the theory of evolution or the second law of Thermodynamics. The sections on Indian and Islamic medicine are fascinating, and the later sections on the reluctance of science to address root causes (curing cancer vs. eliminating it) are valuable for me from a public health perspective. Science isn't just the shield of Empire, it's the sword too; it can't be neutral, it can't be objective, and it always reveals its values and motivations. Lately, of course, that motivation is profit, as this book wisely points out. I like its suggestion that giving all the stakeholders, from scientists to policymakers to the public, be included in its pursuit. There are missteps for sure--it wears its biases on its sleeve, it mixes up Type I and Type II error, and the heinous inclusion of the ~vaccines-cause-autism~ theory. But it does its main job, which is to complicate my traditional straightforward understanding of science, really well. And the illustrations are woven into the text in a fun and useful way.

[Artemis · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️
My first graphic guide but definitely not the last.

Really enjoyed how easily digestible but not overly simplistic this introduction was. The illustrations were really fun and the different styles incorporated guaranteed an engaging experience.

My only complaint: I would’ve wished for a bit more structure. I could follow the train of thought of the author but referring back to certain excerpts may be difficult even with the glossary-like unit at the end. I would have preferred a table of contents at the beginning including the broader thematic units the book addresses.

[Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title is misleading. It tackles more about science and society instead of its philosophy. The book also shows a simplistic approach of science and religion—the absence of scientific development in the Middle Ages and religious men of science are quite telling. However, the book provides arguments against scientism by showing that science does not have all the answers and the scientific enterprise itself is not detached of motives and presuppositions.

[Aivija · Rating 2 out of 5]

While raising good points about the racism, sexism and the west-centricity in science, it was quite dry and barely talked about the philosophy, mainly focusing on the ethics of science. Which is cool and all, but it's not what the cover of the book says. The illustrations didn't really add anything either.

[Andrew Huang · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a novice qualitative researcher, I found this book enlightening. It helped me to understand the underpinnings/history of science from a different perspective to the one that we are spoon-fed in medical school.

It is simple to read and understand, and it made me question the underlying paradigms of science.

Highly recommend it.

[Owen M. McKinney · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one has a story line!

This short volume actually had a story line that was much easier to grasp than other books in this series. It was a delight to read. It was more connected than others in this series. Good read.

[Ramon Mirabal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recomendable!

A must read for any reader specially those who read Scientific American, like myself: it opened my eyes, about big science, big data , big pharma: you must see: Dopesick in Disney’s Channel where they talk about Purdue
Pharma and Oxycodine.

[Michael · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not good. I think I wanted a book about ethics.

[John Zobolas · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that every scientist should read.

[Abhishek Mitra · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book title is totally misleading!

[Paññādhammika Bhikkhu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very useful for everyone who believes in science, or not.

[Jonathan McLeod · Rating 1 out of 5]

Awful.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit extreme in some claims, and also not that focused on the Philosophy of Science (but rather on some aspects of Science Studies), but overall an interesting read.

[Marco · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is much more about Sociology of Science than it's about Philosophy of Science, and it's strongly partisan towards the radical/post-colonial/feminist side of the field. Nonetheless, it's clear and carefully conceived, and quite a pleasurable reading if one's not entirely new to the topics discussed.

[pb · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oversimplified account of Philosophy and History of Science. The author brings up serious sociological and moral issues of Science, but they are always very poorly motivated.

Overall, it reads like an angry woke kid in their first Philosophy semester wrote this book, and as such, it can't do justice to the History of Science.