Philosophy of science reviewed by Ivan Osnaya

Osnaya Ramírez Rodrigo Ivan                                                            English writing

Book review of a non-fiction book

“Philosophy of science” by Samir Okasha

First published in the Oxford University press in 2002.

ISB 0-19-280283-6

Reviewed by Rodrigo Ivan Osnaya Ramirez

8 points in a scale of 10

October 27th 2013.

First of all it´s important to talk a little bit about the author, Samir Okasha is a lecturer in philosophy at the University of New York, he has published numerous articles in philosophy journals in the areas of philosophy of science, philosophy of biology and epistemology. He studied in the UAM in Mexico City and has held a Jacobsen fellowship in philosophy at the University of London. In this book he talks about seven topics that are divided in chapters all of them related with all kind of sciences from mathematics and physics to biology and psychology, one idea that we can observe trough all the book is the debate between science and philosophy. I choose to read this book because I am making science and I consider that is necessary to hear other points of view about this complex topic.

In the first chapter of the book Samir starts given us a brief introduction about what is science obviously in this chapter we can read a lot of names that sounds very familiar to us: Aristoteles, Galileo Galilei, Descartes, Darwin and Newton. The author introduce us to the development of science from the first observations of nature to the molecular biology and the discovery of the two chains of the DNA ,given us at the same the historical aspects of these events which is very interesting for all the readers that are interested in science.

The second chapter was one of the most interesting to me because Okasha talks about scientific reasoning and how this reasoning should be deductive and non inductive, he gave a lot of good examples to clarify his point and also gives  a lot of good reasons to make us think that a great amount of knowledge that we have nowadays came from inductions and not necessary from inductions, this chapter is very interesting and at the same time can cause you a little headache because it makes you think a lot about science and its explanations of the world. This is exactly the topic of the third chapter, the explanations in science.

Is something very common that the explanations in science are made for questions that started with a “why” and normally the answers to these questions are made in the next way: A causes B. The explanations in science are made to explain a phenomenon and at the same time to predict the phenomenon in the future. But a thing that has been very criticized in this type of explanations is that they are unilateral and if A can explain B, B not necessary can explain A so this can be a problem because may be other false explanations to the same phenomenon that fit perfectly. Samir starts to talk about science and how may be can’t explain everything and how in the past science has explained thing that nowadays we know that doesn’t work as the scientists said in the past.

The fourth chapter is very interesting because its about what should science study, the observable or also the unobservable thing and also makes me thing about one phrase that Samir uses in his book: If physics study the atoms and everything is made of atoms; why physics can’t explain everything. This question was brutal for me as a reader and as a scientist and made me think  for days about it, so if you are involve in science it can cause the same reaction in you.

The last three chapters of the book had something similar that makes me join them they talk about some problems and critics in science the 5th chapter is about the scientific revolution and how sometimes it’s seems that the new knowledge is better that the old one, a mistake that most scientist commit when they are looking for data, also Samir talks about how scientists nowadays moves more horizontally than vertically.

In the chapter number six and seven he criticizes the science and explain many points that are not necessarily true, I can imagine that for him those points are true but at the same time I consider that Samir needs to read more about some specific topics in science to understand them sometimes I had the feeling that he was speaking without necessary had the knowledge of the topic (e.g. genetics, phylogeny, ontogeny etc...).

In general the book is very well written and Okasha uses a lot of examples that are very clear even he gave to the readers some drowns and cartoons that make easier the reading. The author uses a language that is very clear maybe is not very easy for all the people but I consider that for high school students can be a good book to read and to be involve in the world of science and philosophy.

Reading this book I Iearned that the scientists community has to be more critic with themselves in order to achieve better researches also I learned that I must be more objective even with my own research  because sometimes the personal interests can be involve and this is never a good thing for your own work. Since I haven’t read another book of philosophy of science I believe that this was a good book to start and even I’m planning in read other books of the same author and of other authors. I strongly recommend this book especially if you are studying science because it can open your eyes to the vision that the philosophers have about the scientists.