Crowdsourcing question: scientific method book? 8 Sep 2010 I need a recommendation of a short simple book that provides a good, but not simplistic, outline of how it is that scientists reach their conclusions. Failing that, a good paper. Targeted at non-philosophy undergraduate students. I have been looking rather hard and nothing much of worth since the 1930s, with the attendant problems of language, examples and incipient positivism… Education Epistemology General Science Philosophy Science
General Science Scientific bloopers 4 May 2008 On a newsgroup that shall remain Nameless, one of the regulars, Bill Reich, just heard on the History Channel: Smilodon is the ancestor of all the modern big cats. Oy! So this thread is for egregiously* wrong statements made on erstwhile factual television shows. Please state where you heard it,… Read More
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I haven’t really looked in over a decade, but back when, I found the following the least bad (or, at least, somewhat useful): -Chalmers: What is this Thing Called Science (accessible easy intro to phil. sci.; heavy on falsificationism). -I liked Klee for teaching biologists, but might be a slightly too technical for the general undergrad. -Bauer’s filter discussion was useful, but again, not exactly ideal overall (depending on your goal, I guess). And doesn’t the NAS or someone have a little pamphlet on the “scientific method”? I seem to recall having them read that as well.
Chalmers is about discussions about scientific method, not a summary of what scientists actually do. In short, it’s an intro to philosophy of science, not science. I will follow up the other suggestions, thanks.
I see. Klee’s going to be the same story, so skip it as well. Bauer might be helpful, depending, but it’s certainly not about the basic nuts and bolts of practice.
My impression is that Giere’s Understanding Scientific Reasoning is the best of the lot, and that there are not other books in that area to choose from. The edition I’ve used (fourth, not the current fifth) was strongly flavored in a couple places by his version of the Semantic View, but I just wrote alternative versions of those bits (“programs”) for students to consider as alternatives. Conversation with others suggests that this is the book they use, too. I am not sure however, that it would meet your criterion of “not simplistic.” On the other hand, someone like you teaching it can straightforwardly supplement it, both with less simplistic case studies and little bits on reasoning. I’ve used portions of Hacking’s Probability and Inductive Logic to supplement it, for instance.
Of course you can’t find a book. It’s secret. That’s why I have to hide my Wheel of Significant Results in a hidden panel behind my periodic table. I hope nobody reads this blog.
According to philosophy-of-science legends, every introductory science textbook begins with an absurd and easily-ridiculed presentation of “The Scientific Method” thus leading to generations of philosophically naive students and scientists, no? Just look in one of those… 😉
Yes, but they’re 1. Lying to Children (oversimplifications for undergrads) 2. For those who will do science and not those who watch 3. Absurd and easily ridiculed. I want something that ordinary folk can read and come away saying “oh I see.”
Some of that Wikipedia article is my own contribution, incidentally. The second and third paragraph under “Origin” (from “the definition given” to “the authors’ use of it“) is essentially mine. TSOD II chapter 22 obviously doesn’t meet your criteria (particularly wrt target audience), but if it’s been a while since you read it, then do so anyway… 🙂
I would second Chris E. on Giere’s Understanding Scientific Reasoning having helped to translate it into German but I should add that it’s not exactly short. What I would recommend however that is both short and simple and a pleasure to read is George Pólya’s How To Solve It. It only deals with mathematical method but the strategies he outlines are equally applicable to scientific method in general.
“I need a recommendation of a short simple book that provides a good, but not simplistic, outline of how it is that scientists reach their conclusions.” You’ve got it all wrong. The conclusions are where we begin, and it’s the hypotheses we’re trying to reach.
Harry M. Collins and Trevor Pinch, _The Golem: What you should know about Science_. It defines where the edge of science lies by looking at several examples that skated over that edge. Cold fusion is the most recognizable case study, but to me the most memorable one came from a study that happened just before neural science really took off. A researcher thought that memories have the kind of molecular structure such worms that had learned how to get through a (very) simple maze could be ground up, fed to other worms, who might then learn the maze more quickly. The work was published and Collins and Pinch go into what the reaction was, how other studies tried and failed to replicate the initial positive results, the reaction to those failures, et cetera. At the end, the results were never disproven — the community simply lost interest and moved onto other models. It really brought home that science is far less about proof and disproof than persuasion and consensus. Definitely worth a look, and really the only thing I can think of that’s spot-on. Taking a different approach, you might want to use a chapter or two from Motulsky’s _Intuitive Biostatistics: A non-mathematical guide to statistical thinking_. I think it’s the only math book that I’ve ever read cover-to-cover for pleasure. It’s targetted at “consumers of statistics”, an by that the he means people who are reading the peer-reviewed medical literature but not necessarily writing it. Most chapters draw examples from the published literature, and he’s very good at identifying the structure of those papers and features such as statistical significance, what it means, and what you can safely conclude from it.
The scientific method: 1. That’s interesting. 2. Why is that happening? 3. How can I tell? 4. And will it get me tenure/grants? Really, I’m just kidding about the Wheel of Significant Results. But did you ever see the Animaniacs?
In another life, I used Giere’s book when I was teaching an intro level course on scientific reasoning. But given the increasing tendency of students to want lists of memorizable “take home points,” today I’d probably include some of Feyerabend’s pungent put downs of prominent myths of methodology.
Sorry I can’t help you. But maybe you can help me. Do you have a short simple book that provides a good, but not simplistic, outline of how it is that philosophers reach their conclusions? I willing to pay for such a book. I’m especially interested in the methodology that allows different philosophers to reach opposite and conflicting conclusions. I know how this works in science, but I though philosophers had higher standards. 🙂
If such work exists I will gladly appeal to it. But the book need not be every thing to every person; just a simple introduction.
It is not explicit on the point, but I thought that The Beak of the Finch did a very good job in showing how (some) science actually works.