The Scientific Method And Its Limitations

The Scientific Method and Its Limitations

Scientific Method

This book shows how science works, fails to work, or pretends to work, by looking at examples from such diverse fields as physics, biomedicine, psychology, and economics. Social science affects our lives every day through the predictions of experts and the rules and regulations they devise. Sciences like economics, sociology and health are subject to more ¿operating limitations¿ than classical fields like physics or chemistry or biology. Yet, their methods and results must also be judged according to the same scientific standards. Every literate citizen should understand these standards and be able to tell the difference between good science and bad. Scientific Method enables readers to develop a critical, informed view of scientific practice by discussing concrete examples of how real scientists have approached the problems of their fields. It is ideal for students and professionals trying to make sense of the role of science in society, and of the meaning, value, and limitations of scientific methodology in the social sciences.

Philosophical Theorizing and its Limits

This book brings together scholars from ethics and philosophy of science in order to identify ways in which insights gleaned from one subfield can shed light on the other. The book focuses on two radical Anti-Theory movements that emerged in the 1970’s and 1980’s, one in philosophy of science and the other in ethics. Both movements challenged attempts to supply general, systematized philosophical theories within their domains and thus invited the reconsideration of what philosophical theorizing can and should offer. Each of these movements was domain-specific – that is, each criticized the aspirations to philosophical theories within its own domain and advanced arguments aimed at philosophers within their own specific subfield. The innovative systematic comparative examination of these movements by scholars from each domain sheds new light on some familiar debates, offers new and exciting paths of research to pursue in each domain, provides insight into the place of science and ethics in contemporary life and culture, and enables a fresh view on the longstanding and alluring philosophical aspiration for a fully general, absolute theory of reality and an ultimate objective foundational theory of knowledge.