Rated Empirical Legal Research: A Primer 10/10
book
Rated Advanced Introduction to Law and Literature 6/10
Edited 51d ago
Rated The Computer's Voice: From Star Trek to Siri 6/10
Rated The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science 6/10
3.5/5 stars. This book presents an interesting overview of two giants of 20th Century Philosophy of Science — Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn — and of the shortcomings in their overarching views of science. Like those two, Strevens subscribes to the idea that science is characterised by a unique method of looking at the world, but roots this method in the "iron rule": the idea that scientific arguments are not settled through the full arsenal of rationality, but only by resorting to empirical claims. This image of science shows it as an irrational practice, since it excludes various sound arguments from consideration and pushes scientists towards ever-more-minute experiments, but explains why modern science has managed to build an incremental body of knowledge and why it did not appear at other historical junctures.<br/><br/>I am not entirely convinced that his account provides entirely robust responses to the various studies on the relevance of non-epistemic values in science. Also, as various other reviews pointed out, the book would have benefitted from engaging with modern examples (beyond the sketches on string theory in the final chapter). Nevertheless, the general contours of the "iron rule" are persuasive, highlighting both the irrationality of scientific practice and the space for democratic, yet value-free scientific practice (on that topic, see Bright's paper on Du Bois and the value-free ideal): scientific research itself is bound by the iron rule, but science-informed public policy is the proper space for democratic debate and value definition. This book is, therefore, a good read for those interested in the philosophy of science after Kuhn, but readers should feel comfortable to skim large sections of it, especially given how some points are frequently repeated.
Wants to read Science Fiction and Cultural Theory: A Reader
Rated Artefacts of Legal Inquiry: The Value of Imagination in Adjudication 8/10
An insightful approach to legal inquiry, drawing from a broad range of sources (such as cognitive sciences, literary theory, and the philosophy of scientific models) toward a surprisingly narrow object (adjudication in common law courts). However, some of its contributions have a broader appeal, such as the critique of the distinction between contexts of discovery and justification that some authors have borrowed from Reichenbach.
Wants to read Elements of Mathematics: From Euclid to Gödel
Rated EU Constitutional Law: An Introduction 6/10
Wants to read All the Pieces Matter: The Inside Story of The Wire
Finished reading Proteção de Dados Pessoais: Comentários à Lei n. 13.709/2018 -LGPD
Wants to read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Rated An Introduction to Indian Philosophy 10/10
An accessible introduction to some of the key issues in classical and medieval Indian philosophy. After a historical and methodological introduction, the author presents the issues along seven chapters: Valor (roughly, ethics and politics) -> Knowledge (the role and limits of knowledge) -> Reasoning (logic and methods for knowledge acquisition, especially inference) -> Word (philosophy of language) -> World (ontology and causation) -> Self -> Ultimates (philosophy of religion). <br/><br/>The book succeeds in what I see as being the two main goals of an introduction of this kind. First, each chapter shows how the problems tackled by authors of the various Indian traditions tackle some philosophical questions, highlighting similarities and differences between their approaches and those followed by European authors facing related problems. Second, it provides references and an initial mapping of the issues, enough for an interested reader to know where to look for further education on the subject. Here, the modular structure of the book is particularly useful, as it allows readers that are not particularly interested in some subjects (in my case, language) to make the most of the overall content.