This book is a balanced and up-to-date introduction to the philosophy of science. It covers all the main topics in the area, as well as introducing the student to the moral and social reality of science. The author's style is free from jargon, and although he makes use of scientific examples, these should be intelligible to those without much scientific background. At the same time the questions he raises are not merely abstract, so the book will be of interest and (...) concern to scientists as well as philosophers.The author discusses the growth of knowledge of science, the status of scientific theories and their relationship to observational data, the extent to which scientific theories rest on unprovable paradigms, and the nature of scientific explanations. In later chapters he considers probability, scientific reductionism, the relationship between science and technology, and the relationship between scientific and other values. (shrink)

There is certainly a strong feeling against the use of drugs in sport, even though many sportsmen and women use them and many more undoubtedly would if they thought they could get away with it. In face of what actually goes on in far too many locker rooms, the efforts of sports authorities to stem the use of drugs can seem futile as well as all too often petty and misguided in practice.