100 books like The End Of Science

I like that this book dares to touch a raw nerve that is usually avoided in politically correct environments. This book is certainly polemical.

Basically, the claim is that North American pragmatic values have substituted classical intellectual European ones, contributing to the present-day degeneracy of science and culture and society in general, with special emphasis on the history of physics of the last century.

I think there are some truths among the ideas presented in this book. However, Unzicker’s hope is to “Make Physics Great Again,” mimicking the discourse of Donald Trump (replacing the word “America” with “Physics”), and I cannot see a future in which America or physics will be the same as they were in the past. 

I find useful some of the advice for researchers given in this book by José Luis Pérez Velázquez, a Spanish biologist and researcher based in the United States.

As the title indicates, it is a pessimistic view on the business of research nowadays, a pessimistic panorama where science is converted into a business of how to get funds from States, and the highest status scientists dedicate most of their time to administration and management rather than doing science.

I appreciate his honest advice for those who love true science to be apart from high-rank positions and enjoy science from a position away from the responsibility and bureaucracy.

There is a criticism of science in the discourses of philosophers of science, but it is usually detached from contact with the real problems that scientists worry about. There are some valuable rare exceptions, such as this work by Gillies.

I like this text because it enters into the real sociological problems of science nowadays beyond abstract epistemological theories. For instance, it enters into detail on the reasons why academics move into administration and management as a way to increase their professional status and in order to hide their lack of new ideas and boring research work. 

I think its force resides in its attempt to understand the engines of history without falling into the metaphysical idealist speculations of other previous philosophers, like Hegel.

I do not agree with all of Spengler’s statements, but I consider his book to be a masterpiece in many ways, a very recommendable book, with plenty of lucid ideas and an admirable global vision.

He is a a giant, a brave thinker with a strong character and something interesting to tell, rather than a boring treatise of trivialities and diplomatic sentences of the kind so common among our dwarf philosophers.

This is a collection of essays by Kuhn, written later in his life, as he tried to clarify and develop the view he initially presented in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Kuhn reflects on developments in the sociology of science that were influenced by his work, as the Strong Programme sociologists of science identified as Kuhnians and relativists.  Kuhn tries to clarify what he meant by “paradigm change”, motivated by a concern to address his critics and to distance his own view from certain types of relativist views.

The autobiographical interview is very engaging, as Kuhn takes this opportunity to reflect on the impact of his book, as well as on the effects the book has had on his life and career. I think much of what Kuhn had to say in these later papers provides important insight into understanding science, especially his remarks on scientific specialization.

This book is a collection of essays, letters, and lectures about the intrinsic value, importance, and beauty of science by one of its most talented and passionate communicators. Dawkins’s clear and often witty treatment of complex scientific issues is a breath of fresh air in this time of misinformation and ‘fake news.’ He writes primarily about biology, his own specialty, but ranges widely from ecology to evolution to genetics and even life beyond planet earth. Throughout, his incisive prose conveys the thrill and wonder of scientific discovery.

If you’ve ever wondered where all this talk of “paradigms” and “paradigm shifts” comes from, this book is the answer. A paradigm, according to Kuhn, is a set of theories and beliefs that guide scientific research by telling us what there is to know and how we can come to know it.

When a paradigm changes, a paradigm shift occurs. Some purveyors of the paranormal claim that their view represents a paradigm shift in our thinking. Kuhn’s book will help you assess whether that is indeed the case.

I spend a lot of my time trying to clarify the bilge poured out by the merchants of fake science: the flat-earthers, creationists, and climate deniers mainly, but also medical quacks and other fruitloops who throw out alternative science, stuff which is like normal science, with one small exception. I was already fighting these fights when Wolpert came to Sydney, and I chaired a lecture he gave. He showed us where the problem lay in combatting idiocy: the idiots depend on naïve and naked intuition.

Invariably, these unhinged pseudo-realities rely on a simple misreading of scientific lore, and Lewis explained that this is because a great deal of science is counter-intuitive. We can’t see evolution happening, the world looks flat, the sun appears to go around us, and common sense says that kinetic energy must be proportional to velocity, not it's square. Enter the simpleton who slept through a key… show more.

I first encountered the philosophy of physicist Bohm in another book by the philosopher Renée Weber (Dialogues with Scientists and Sages) in which she, the Dalai Lama, and Bohm (among others) explore, well, everything. But Bohm’s own exploration blends Buddhist concepts with physics. One of the many reasons I am Buddhist myself is its architecture and allowance for new concepts including physics theory and the reality of light itself. His implicate order for the universe explains more about its reality than accepted current theory. I’m no physicist nor towering intellectual, but I am following the Buddha’s advice to figure it out for myself. This book helped immensely. Sadly his work is overlooked by the scientific community.

There are many short, accessible introductions to what current philosophers of science spend their time arguing about; this is one of the best. It wisely doesn’t cover everything, but instead uses Francis Bacon’s crucial break with the authority of Aristotle as a point of entry into current debates on half a dozen core issues such as inductive inference, progress, and realism.