100 books like Philosophy and Scientific Realism

This book also gives a vivid and dramatic account of the way science proceeds, but one that is strikingly different from that of Popper’s account. According to Kuhn,  much of science is what he calls “normal” science: a basic theory, or “paradigm,” is taken for granted, and scientists seek to increase its experimental range and accuracy. But then “anomalies” begin to accumulate; crisis sets in until a new paradigm is proposed, a revolution occurs, the old paradigm is defeated, and a new phase of normal science begins. 

I loved the drama Kuhn finds in this procedure of normal and revolutionary science, his depiction of the tragedy of those scientists left behind who remain devoted to a paradigm that has been rejected and superseded. There is no doubt that both normal and revolutionary science are features of science as they actually exist.

I regard this book as perhaps the greatest book about the nature of science ever published. In it, Popper spells out his dramatic view that science proceeds by putting forward bold, imaginative guesses, which are then subjected to ferocious attempts at empirical refutation. When these conjectured theories are refuted, scientists are forced to think up a better conjectural theory–and that is how science makes progress.

In this book, Popper shows how this dramatic account of how science proceeds by a process of conjecture and refutation has implications for fields beyond science, such as philosophy, in that it implies that, whatever we are doing, our best hope of success in solving our problems is to consider possible solutions and subject them to ferocious criticism.

I found this book just about the most dazzling and gripping book I had ever come across about science. It kept on opening up new vistas as I read on. Full of surprises and unexpected dramas, it cast a vivid light on a wide range of issues. I finished it breathless with admiration.

It is about photosynthesis, the process whereby plants “eat” sunlight to form oxygen and sugar from carbon dioxide and water. This process is basic to almost all life on Earth. The book is about the development of photosynthesis on Earth and also about the development of our scientific knowledge about it.

I love how this book tells a dramatic story about dark corruption at the heart of modern science set after the Second World War, especially in the USA.  Physicists allowed politicians to think that the vast sums of money they gave to physics would result in weapons even more terrible than the atomic bomb. But actually, the money was spent on particle colliders, experimental devices that had nothing to do with weapons of war. 

Scientific funding was based on a quagmire of duplicity and deception, and Greenberg tells this story vividly and grippingly. I first read the book with the excitement that one might read a thrilling political thriller. A political/intellectual scandal is revealed.

Most scientists think that consciousness is constructed from the swarms of particles that make up our brains. But what if it's the other way around?

Michael Pelczar explores this heady idea: he thinks that consciousness comes first, and all of physical reality, including space and time, is constructed from it. Hang on to your cranium because this book is a real mind-bender!

This 17th-century debate remains both engaging and unresolved – testimony to the endurance of the free will problem.

Bramhall upholds a traditional view of free will, while Hobbes defends a more modern “materialist” view that is an ancestor to the views defended by List and Ismael above.

While many contemporary discussions of free will often focus on implications for moral responsibility, this debate is notable for the far broader range of considerations that the authors invoke, suggesting that the question of free will touches just about every aspect of our agency.

Ismael is one of our leading philosophers of physics, and of fundamental questions more generally.

This book is a comprehensive exploration of the intersection of physics and free will, with the surprising moral signaled by her title. Properly understood, contemporary physics, even if it is deterministic, does not threaten free will. On the contrary, it helps to explain how free beings like us are possible in the first place.

Perhaps my favourite philosophy book of all time. Humans have the unique ability to take a detached view of our lives and actions. Call this an objective perspective. Thomas Nagel argues that many of our philosophical problems – such as the attempt to understand free will, or consciousness – stem from a clash between the subjective and objective standpoints. For example, we believe (subjectively), that we are free, that we have free will, that we can raise our right arm, or choose whether or not to go to shopping. But from an objective perspective we might reflect that, like everything else in the universe, we are governed by causal laws. A beautiful writer, Nagel can make the most complex issues seem simple.  He will make you feel cleverer than you are! The View From Nowhere is my model for how philosophy books should be written.

A key claim of Buddhist philosophy is that all the facts about persons are causally determined. This claim leads people to wonder where Buddhists stand on the so-called ‘free will’ problem: can someone whose actions are determined by earlier events be held responsible for what they do? This question never arose in Indian Buddhist philosophy, but modern scholars have had much to say about whether Buddhism’s causal determinism is compatible with the practice of praising or blaming people for what they do. This book collects some of the best attempts to answer the question.

Polanyi, an eminent Hungarian Jewish chemist who spent his career at the University of Manchester, was the smarter brother of the more famous Karl Polanyi, the socialist economic historian. Michael (Mihály) shows in the book how science depends on ordinary, “personal” knowledge, as for example in riding a bicycle. He was a “liberal” in the European sense, unlike his brother, and saw the scientific community as analogous to a free market, and the free market as analogous to a scientific community.