In a time of fake news and alternative facts, being able to separate the proverbial scientific wheat from the pseudoscientific chaff is vitally important. But seeing the wide acceptance of a lot of dubious ideas, critical thinking does not come easily. So, how, then, do you tell science from bunk? Updating his 2010 book Nonsense on Stilts, evolutionary biologist and philosopher Massimo Pigliucci once again attacks this problem from many sides. Going far beyond cheap potshots at pseudoscience, I found a book that takes an equally serious look at the more insidious phenomena of think tanks and postmodernism, with a healthy side-serving of history of science. The result is a readable introspection on what science is and how it is done.
Thomas S. Kuhn
Book review – How Scientific Progress Occurs: Incrementalism and the Life Sciences
This review is part of a double bill. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press recently published How Scientific Progress Occurs: Incrementalism and the Life Sciences. In it, Elof Axel Carlson explores the relevance to biology of the ideas Thomas S. Kuhn formulated in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Having read both books back-to-back, this review follows on the one of Kuhn’s book.
Book review – The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (50th Anniversary Edition)
This review is part of a double bill. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press recently published How Scientific Progress Occurs: Incrementalism and the Life Sciences. In it, Elof Axel Carlson explores the relevance to biology of the ideas Kuhn formulated in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. This is one of those classics already on my to-do list, so I have read both books back-to-back and will review them one after the other. Anyway, who is this Kuhn and why should you care? Virtually everyone will have heard the buzzwords “paradigm” and “paradigm shift” – and for that, you can thank Kuhn.
The Inquisitive Biologist