Overview
Range and Depth
Philosophy of Science covers more topics than other anthologies. Selections are organized around nine chapters, each covering a different topic. With such a range and depth of readings, students are able to explore important and interesting questions which are either ignored or receive only cursory attention in other anthologies: What distinguishes science from pseudoscience?; Is scientific change a rational process?; In what sense is science objective?; What are natural laws, and what do they describe?; Are scientific theories to be understood as offering a true account of the world? In each chapter, the editors have emphasized core issues that are relevant to all of the natural sciences, and in an effort to make the anthology accessible to undergraduates, the editors have selected readings that use only minimal amounts of formal logic and probability theory.
Superb Readings . . . Helpful Apparatus
The dense, sometimes technical nature of articles in this field can prove extremely challenging for students. Mindful of this, Curd and Cover assist the reader by providing the most thorough apparatus ever developed for an undergraduate anthology.
Brief introductions at the beginning of each chapter sketch out the major issues addressed in the readings that follow. At the end of each chapter, extensive commentaries—generally running twenty or more pages in length—discuss the selections in depth and draw connections to other pieces in the anthology. These fair-minded and thorough guides develop salient arguments, explain unfamiliar terms and theories, and place the readings in a wider philosophical context. The editors have also provided a bibliography, comprehensive glossary, and two separate indexes—author and subject—to help the reader encountering the material for the first time.
Copyright © 2005, W. W. Norton & Company. All rights reserved.
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