Defending Science - Within Reason by Susan Haack
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Textbook (Hardcover)
- 411pp
Textbook Information
- ISBN-13: 9781591021179
- Edition Number: 1
- Pub. Date: September 2003
- Publisher: Prometheus Books
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Product Details
- Pub. Date: September 2003
- Publisher: Prometheus Books
- Format: Textbook Hardcover, 411pp
- ISBN-13: 9781591021179
- ISBN: 1591021170
- Edition Number: 1
Synopsis
Haack (arts and sciences, philosophy, and law, U. of Miami) defends science to explain the nature of the world, but in only quite a modest, qualified way, and from the perspective of a more general understanding of human cognitive capacities and limitations. Annotation ©2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Publishers Weekly
Science has come under attack in recent years from philosophers and cultural critics who have described it as, among other sins, culturally determined, too often dependent on the biases of scientists. Haack, professor of philosophy and law at the University of Miami (Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate), takes a searching look at how science interacts with and is influenced by other areas of human endeavor. This year being the 50th anniversary of Watson and Crick's discovery of the structure of DNA, Haack discusses how their writing style and in particular their use of the pronoun "we" made their now famous papers stand out. Science often interacts with the law in courts' use of expert testimony on defendants' mental state or physical evidence. Haack reviews the fascinating history of this tentative dance between law and science, and how in recent years the legal system has struggled to determine what scientific ideas can be considered as accepted beyond dispute. Religion and the concept of "intelligent design" also come under scrutiny. This chapter doesn't quite give advocates of guided evolution a fair hearing; the author overlooks some of their more subtle arguments. Haack does thoroughly demolish many of the sillier attacks on science as an expression of male domination and Western oppression and the like. With one thought-provoking discussion after another, the book is not an easy read, but those interested in the history of science and science buffs will find it to their liking. (Sept.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
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Defending Science - Within Reasonby Anonymous
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January 15, 2004: In a series of essays that combine clarity with humor, careful argument with accessible examples, and philosophical acumen with broad literary and scientific knowledge, Susan Haack disentangles a vast 'bramble-bush' (to borrow the term she borrows from Carl Llewellyn) of issues surrounding the role of science in society and the role of society in science. I cannot think of another book in philosophy of science that manages so successfully to address the complexities of actual scientific practice, nor one that connects both theory and practice so engagingly with those questions of deepest concern to most of us: the way science relates to the law, to religion, to literature, even to corporate interests. Haack argues that scientific inquiry is continuous with empirical inquiry more generally, though remarkable in its success for important reasons. Moving effortlessly from abstract theoretical and metaphysical questions to particular scientific investigations, Haack carves a middle path between extreme scientism and radical cynicism that should be welcome to anyone who possesses some of that Common Sense of which Haack has long been an eloquent and convincing advocate. By the end of this book you'll know much more than when you began--about philosophy, scientific instrumentation, the discovery of DNA, legal battles over expert testimony, sociology and rhetoric of science, etc.--and you'll have enjoyed every minute of it.
Defending Science - Within Reasonby Anonymous
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December 24, 2003: This very engaging and clearly written book by Susan Haack may at first appear to be merely a contribution to the ?science wars? debate. But although the book significantly contributes to this debate, I believe that its primary goal is to present a new and better understanding of science. There is hardly a central problem in contemporary philosophy of science that Haack does not tackle, and she presents in her discussion of each of these issues a carefully argued middle position that avoids the pitfalls that beset more extreme views. Thus, for example, when examining the much debated relationship between the natural and social sciences (chapter 6), Haack carefully analyzes both their many similarities and their differences, showing the irreducibility of social to natural sciences. In her discussion of the question of the scientific method (chapter 4), she convincingly argues that although there is no ?scientific method? as this term has been frequently understood, the sciences are epistemologically distinguished. Scientific inquiry is continuous with other kinds of inquiry, including everyday, commonsensical inquiry, but is more rigorous and exact than non-scientific ones. In these and other discussions, Haack shows an impressively wide-ranging familiarity both with science itself and with theoretical works on it in a variety of fields, including sociology, literature, law, history of science, and of course philosophy. Many sociological discussions of science, for example, present it as a merely consensual or political institution, thus devaluing its status as a truth-seeking enterprise. Haack analyzes these theories (chapter 7), and shows that science is indeed partly a social institution, but that understanding it in these terms only, thus ignoring its truth seeking function, is self-defeating. She argues that Neutralism (i.e., adopting a neutral stance about the bona fides of science) leads to self-undermining relativism, and explains why The Strong Programme (the efforts of some sociologists of the Edinburgh School to rescue their social analysis of science from these self-referential problems) cannot work. Similar problems arise in The Radical Programme of the Bath School. As an alternative to these, as well as to Latour?s and Woolgar?s programs, Haack suggests what she calls (with tongue in cheek) ?The Sensible Program,? which acknowledges the influence of social factors on science and calls for managing them in a way that would enhance science as a truth seeking enterprise. In much the same way as some sociologists treat science as a purely social phenomenon, some literary scholars analyze scientific texts as if they were simply literary works, thus treating science as if it were no different from myth, fable, or works of fiction (chapter 8). In Haack?s analysis of these theories, she shows that while there are similarities, there are also important points of difference between scientific texts and literary ones, and that consequently it is unhelpful to regard a scientific work as a literary text. Chapter 10 discusses the relation of science to what is perhaps its oldest competitor, religion. Haack takes science and religion to be largely incompatible. The differences, she argues, lie not only in issues of factual claims (e.g., evolution vs. creation), but also in the type of inquiry and its standards. One important difference, she explains, is that in many religious contexts, faith?i.e. acceptance of...
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