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Humanity reaps the many advantages of science while bemoaning the frequent misapplications and abuses of modern technology. Yet far too many of us admit to possessing little if any real knowledge of what scientists actually do, why they do it, or whether they should be otherwise occupied in more productive pursuits. Nonscientists need to appreciate the nature, purpose, and goals of science. Conversely, the narrow focus of many science enthusiasts fails to recognize that science cannot help but interact with sources of knowledge beyond its realm, placing scientific endeavors within a swirling caldron of competing knowledge claims. In Understanding Science noted author and researcher Arthur N. Strahler, whose career in science spans more than half a century, fills this double void by offering insights into both the philosophy and the sociology of science.
Part One presents a basic outline of the concepts and issues that have occupied scientists for years: the Nature of Science: Laws, Explanations, Theories, and Hypotheses; Prediction, Testing, Corroboration, and Falsification; the Complex/Historical Sciences; Determinism, Randomness, Chaos, and Quantum Mechanics; the New Philosophy of Science; and Pseudoscience, both specific cases and the phenomenon in general.
Part Two concentrates on science as it interacts with and is distinguished from other knowledge fields. Here readers begin to see the religious, political, cultural, and social forces within which science developed and out of which it carved its special identity: the Major Classes of Knowledge; the Nature and Place of Logic and Mathematics; Religion and the God Concept; Ethics, Aesthetics, and Ideologies; How Science Impacts the Religious/Ethical Systems; and Is Creationism Religion or Pseudoscience?
Unless each of us is willing to set aside our respective fears to gain a better understanding of what science is and how it can be carefully distinguished from other types of beliefs and claims, the ignorance, confusion, and distortion that has tainted society's view of science will remain a fundamental obstacle to gaining the knowledge that will help us solve pressing problems of daily life. Understanding Science offers new hope that this goal is within reach.
