Baised upon the Tarner Lectures given by Braithwaite in 1946, Scientific Explanation aims to examine the logical features common to all the sciences. Scientific advancement is by means of testing the conclusions of proffered hypotheses by observation and experiment. Braithwaite attempts to explain how the implications of this process may throw light upon seemingly mysterious features of scientific procedure and should resolve many of the fundamentals of scientific procedures, including the function of mathematics, probability, and models in science and the (...) nature of theoretical concepts. (shrink)

The primary purpose of this book is to examine the logical features common to all the sciences. Each science proceeds by inventing general principles from which are deduced the consequences to be tested by observation and experiment; the author shows how the implications of this process explain some of its more baffling features and resolves many of the difficulties that philosophers have found in them. His exposition is by way of detailed examples.

In Theory of Games, Braithwaite shows that mathematical theory of games can be used to shed light upon such notions as prudence and justice in situations involving human choices and co-operation between individuals. In his work on the Nature of Religious Belief he argues that just as a moral assertion is an expression of an intention to act in accordance with certain policy, so a religious assertion must be understood as a declaration of adherence to a system of moral principles (...) governing 'inner life' as well as external behaviour. (shrink)