Secular Sermons
Essays on Science and Philosophy
• Brings together work spanning three decades by New Zealand’s leading contemporary philosopher.
• An insightful introduction to the thought of Aristotle, Bacon, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Herschel, Darwin and Einstein, among others.
• Puts modern science in a broader historical perspective.
• Entertaining introduction to the philosophical paradigm of Critical Rationalism.
Read Chapter One: 'Can I decide what to believe?'
The Book
Discursive, entertaining and provocative, Secular Sermons contains fourteen essays by celebrated philosopher Professor Alan Musgrave, examining the basic assumptions of science, religion and mathematics.
Can we decide what to believe? Why do scientists do experiments and wat can their experiments show? Is evolution a scientific theory? Such apparently simple questions are brilliantly investigated by Musgrave in order to interrogate the worldviews we inhabit – and their consequences. He brings to these questions an expansive historical knowledge, provoking his readers to enter the now-discredited belief-systems of earlier ages in order to compare these with their own.
Review Quotes
"Secular Sermons is a keeper....As a science student, teacher and researcher I appreciate this book as the most accessible introduction to the history and philosophy of science I've ever read, and as a source of encouragement and inspiration in my work. But enough about me. Now, go out and get yourself a copy.' - Critic, No. 28, October 2009.
Contents
1 Can I Decide What to Believe? 2 Wandering Stars and Falling Stones 3 Is Science a Rational Enterprise? 4 On Discovery 5 Ideas and Experiments in Science 6 Why Invent Alternatives to Unrefuted Theories? 7 Philosophy of Science, History of Science and Science Education 8 Realism and Surrealism about Science 9 Diagnostic Logic
10 Sextus Empiricus, Scepticism and Psychology 11 Popper’s Critical Realism
12 Einstein’s Influence on Philosophy 13 Russell on Mathematics – A Bridgehead against the Sceptic? 14 Is Evolutionary Theory Scientific? 15 Are Theological Notions Explanatory? References Index
Alan Musgrave (b. 1940) has been Professor of Philosophy at the University of Otago since 1970. He was educated at the London School of Economics, where his PhD was supervised by Sir Karl Popper. With Imre Lakatos, he edited Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (1970), one of the most influential collections of essays in twentieth-century philosophy of science. His other publications include Common Sense, Science and Scepticism (1993) and Essays on Realism and Rationalism (1999). His views were recently the subject of a book Rationality and Reality: Conversations with Alan Musgrave (2006).
Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
Paperback, 230 x 155 mm, 208 pp
ISBN 978 1 877372 70 4, $45.00 / £19.50 approx UK
^ Top of page
|
