APA Newsletters
Spring 2000
Volume 99, Number 2

Reviewed by Samir Chopra, CUNY Graduate Center

I take it as uncontroversial that any quality introductory text on the philosophy of science must meet the following minimal desiderata:

I am glad to report that, in general, the third edition of Alan Chalmers’s well-known What is This Thing Called Science? does well on these three counts. The book aims to be a "simple, clear and elementary introduction to modern views about the nature of science." Chalmers succeeds in providing just that. Whatever problems there are in presentation and clarity are relatively localized and the book does not suffer any major systematic weaknesses. I would recommend that the book be used as part of a reading list for an introductory undergraduate philosophy of science class or for a related class offered by a Science and Technology studies department. My reasons for not recommending it as the sole text for a class on the philosophy of science should become clear on reading the review below.

I turn first to a minor weakness in the text: issues one would expect in an introductory reader in philosophy of science are not adequately covered in the book. There is, for example, little coverage of either the nature or role of scientific explanation or the attendant debate on whether all explanation is causal; the Duhem-Quine thesis of empirical underdetermination is presented only indirectly (namely, as being the problem of determining which part of a theory has been falsified by a particular experiment), while the extensive discussion that this thesis creates in the realism-antirealism debate is ignored almost entirely. The problems of the philosophy of space-time are also only touched upon briefly. (Perhaps other readers will find other topics missing.) I say that these omissions are minor because easily explainable: the book is not intended to be an omnibus introduction to the philosophy of science.

Let me now concentrate on what the book does well. Most of the book is a discussion both of scientific method and of the problem of justifying scientific knowledge and theory change. Chalmers begins with a clear introduction, and outlines what is to follow. He then presents a "commonsense" view of science, which he uses as a polemical target for the preliminary portion of the critique—the empiricist/positivist view that scientific knowledge is directly derived from the facts. On such a view, "facts" are directly presented to the senses, are prior to and independent of theory, and constitute a firm and reliable foundation for scientific knowledge. Needless to say, this view is quickly dismantled by Chalmers, who then proceeds to a discussion of the theory-ladenness of observations, of observations as practical interventions, and of the role of experiments in scientific inquiry. The latter two points take up separate chapters. I particularly like Chalmers’s pointing out both the difficult, iterative nature of scientific experimentation and the fact that the acceptability of scientific experiments is also theory-dependent.

Having presented difficulties with the "commonsense" view of scientific knowledge, Chalmers attempts to answer the key epistemological question: how is scientific knowledge to be obtained? The answer to this leads fairly naturally into a presentation of the problem of deduction and/or induction from the facts. Chalmers points out the problems with inductivism, and then proceeds to a discussion of Popper’s falsificationism (its weaknesses and strengths vis-a-vis inductivism). He then discusses Lakatos’s views on research programs with inner, hard cores and outer, less defensible portions, and the Kuhnian theory of scientific revolutions and paradigm shifts. Moving steadily onward to the fringes, Chalmers comes to Feyerabend’s anarchistic view of science. New sections (for the third edition) include a discussion of Bayesian views of theory change as based on probability calculus–employing scientists’ subjective degree of belief in the theories they work with; the "new experimentalism," which ascribes (via some implausible arguments, in my opinion) a larger role (vis-a-vis theory) to experiments in science; and brief discussions of scientific laws and the realism-antirealism debate. The chapters on laws and realism focus discussion on ontological issues in a book that is otherwise dominated by issues of epistemology. The lack of an explicit connection between laws and scientific explanation is keenly felt in Chalmers’s discussion of scientific laws and possible characterizations of them as mere regularities or as dispositions. (Given that Chalmers cites Nancy Cartwright’s work as an inspiration, this lack of a connection is puzzling.) In the last section of the book, the forays into different varieties of realism such as unrepresentative realism and structural realism seem unnecessary since the broad outlines of the realist-antirealist debate are all that is needed for someone to understand the issues involved. The rest, so to speak, is merely detail.

The writing style of the book is vigorous and clear. I believe that any reasonably intelligent, half-motivated student will find the book a page turner. There is a clear and logical development in the treatment of scientific method and theory change, and Chalmers’s examples (generally) serve as good illustrations of the pros and cons of the various views that he canvases. His discussions make a good case for each of the theories that he presents. One sign of a good text is that it makes us think about what we are reading even when we are sure we know the material fairly well beforehand. In this regard, Chalmers does well.

Having handed out a few compliments, time for a couple of minor complaints. I am not sure that Chalmers’s examples of scientific experiments, failures, and successes are always presented very clearly for the novice: they often presume some familiarity with scientific facts and language. Perhaps this criticism is unfair, as it is hard to know how much background to assume on the part of one’s readers, and often ridiculous oversimplifications can result if we don’t assume some prior knowledge on their part. Still, philosophy and non-science students might have a hard time with some of Chalmers’s examples. Perhaps some graphic illustrations might prove helpful. (There are only three figures in the entire text.)

Incidentally, I disagree with Chalmers about the inability of scientists to philosophize about scientific method, especially when one considers that some of the best philosophical thinking about the problems of quantum mechanics has been done by physicists (Bell, Bohr, Einstein, Bohm et. al). In fact, it is probably because scientists can often step back and take a look at what they do and tell us what they do, that they can often inform us of what it is that their often seemingly esoteric work entails. It is particularly ironic that Chalmers makes this criticism since he himself worked as a physicist before embarking on a career in philosophy. There is no doubt in my mind that part of his clarity about what scientific activity involves comes from his having spent time in the trenches himself.

Chalmers does well to extract a reasonable middle ground between those who think science is just another kind of religious system and those for whom science is the be-all and end-all. Overall, the book is a clear, generally level-headed introduction to the philosophy of science. But an instructor using the book should probably supplement the book’s bibliography with one of his/her own. Some classic texts are not mentioned in the bibliography. For example, Chalmers does not include Reichenbach, Carnap, or Putnam and includes very few modern authors. It would have been helpful had links been provided to anthologies so that students could track down discussions on central debates. Strangely, there is only an index to names and none to topics. (I found this out the hard way, when I wanted to see where "operationalism" was covered and was unable to do so.) I do like the fact that there is no footnoting whatsoever, as this leads to a direct, non-distracted style of reading that is highly conducive to comprehending the material.