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Title: Nature of Understanding: The Metaphysics and Method of Science by Nicholas Rescher ISBN: 0-19-825085-1 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: April, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $52.00

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)

Rating: 5
Summary: The realities of science; Popperian pragmaticism!!
Comment: The world is as it appears to be through our senses - Every event has an explanation - That explanation is intelligible - There are absolute realities and it is these that science "gets back of". These are some of the assumptions of science. The question of course is how many of them can really be answered apart from specuation.

Nicholas Rescher, in a clearly written, tersly laid out, and cogent book ventures into some of these questions and ventures answers grounded in Peircean (Popperian?) pragmatism. The reason we believe the above presumptions - and presumptions is what they are - is that they enable us to do science at all. Tautology, you say? How can Rescher claim that doing science is why we make these assumptions if these assumptions are (at least partially) necessary to do science? In the tradition of pragmatists Charles S. Peirce and John Dewey, we do science to gain increased control over our environment (even if that control is just more security of knowledge) and it is that end which causes us to make assumptions like these that help us in our pursuit.

Rescher demonstrates, as far as metaphysics will allow, that it is pretty well certain that some of the above assumptions are false. There's no reason, for instance, to suppose that ultimate truths exist; that is to say, that even though we can state facts and seemingly true theories about x, spaitally, x is likely able to divide into smaller units and they into smaller units ad infinitum. Thus, search for scientific knowledge must (will?) be a never ending one. Similarly, scientific realism which asserts that scientific theories describe things as they "really are" is questionable. Our view of the world changes with time; it always has. None of this is to suggest that there is no true reality or that science can get no closer by degrees of describing the world; just that the end goal will always be an end goal.

Rescher's view is of a realistic pragmatism; science is judged by utility. We use our theories because they work, they help us predict, and becasue of this they are the truest we have. Far from the "vulgar pragmatism" of Rorty or Fish which, to a degree, disavows reason as just another way of knowing, Rescher's view of science makes reason that much more important. As fallible, limited beings, it seems the best tool we have.

My only complaint is that for those familiar with these issues, this book may come off as repetitive. Indeed, about half way through, I found myself guessing, rightly, what the author would say next. All in all, a fairly easy, yet very enlighening read. In addition, I would also reccoment Popper's "Conjectures and Refutations" and Susan Haack's "Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate".