Common threads · 6 books
What makes science scientific, and what do its successes tell us about reality? Read the disagreements as a conversation rather than a march of progress.
Books, curator notes, and what to read next.
Karl Popper
Study falsifiability as a proposal about scientific method. Look for the difference between testing and proving a theory.
Next: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Thomas S. Kuhn
Follow the contrast between normal science and revolutions. Ask how a change of framework changes the questions.
Next: Against Method
Paul K. Feyerabend
Feyerabend uses episodes from science to question universal rules. Separate his historical claims from his prescriptions.
Next: The Scientific Image
Bas C. Van Fraassen
Van Fraassen distinguishes accepting a theory from believing all its claims about unobservable things.
Next: How the Laws of Physics Lie
Nancy Cartwright
Cartwright asks how idealized laws explain a messy world. Compare successful models with literal descriptions.
Next: Science as Social Knowledge
Helen E. Longino
Longino makes criticism within communities central to scientific objectivity. Ask what makes that criticism effective.
Also includes The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Induction, probability, inquiry, and scientific change. Ask why some evidence changes a belief while other evidence changes the whole framework.
Also includes The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Compare the archives, frameworks, and exclusions that make some accounts authoritative. Read criticism of knowledge alongside proposals for improving it.
Also includes Science as Social Knowledge
A study of credibility, silencing, and shared ignorance, moving from individual encounters to institutions that decide whose knowledge counts.
