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Title: Facing Up: Science and Its Cultural Adversaries by Steven Weinberg ISBN: 0-674-01120-1 Publisher: Harvard University Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.85 (13 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Good collection of essays
Comment: FACING UP brings together a number of talks and papers by Steven Weinberg that have been scattered here and there up until now. For anyone who has followed Weinberg for a while, there is nothing new here except for brief (on the order of a few paragraphs) introductions to each of the pieces; however, the essays are quite good, and well worth a second reading. Weinberg's primary concerns are to defend reductionism and scientific realism (in the senses both that science means to describe the real world, and that science in fact makes progress towards the one true description), and, in at least one brilliant essay, to argue that physics points in the opposite direction as religion. The quality of philosophical thought in the essays is not exceptionally deep, but Weinberg does offer the reader what I think is a healthy dose of common sense.
Rating: 4
Summary: Essays Leading You to Deep Thinking
Comment: The author Steven Weinberg is the Nobel-prize winning theoretical physicist. In this book 23 essays written between 1985 and 2000 are collected. The dust cover of the book has a photo of the statue of the 16th century astronomer Tycho Brahe with a posture of facing up. The author writes in the preface that this is only part of the reason for his choice of "Facing Up" for the title of the book. The other part of the reason is described as follows: Each of the essays in this collection struggles with the necessity of facing up to the scientific discoveries that show the laws of nature are impersonal, with no hint of a divine plan or any special status for human being. Weinberg adds some words about his viewpoints: rationalist, reductionist, and so on. These aptly describe his personal philosophy underlying all the essays in this volume.
In a sense the reductionism or the physics imperialism is considered a defective thought these days. However, Weinberg's reductionism (called "objective reductionism" in chapter 2 and "grand reductionism" in chapter 10) means the notion: "There are arrows of scientific explanation that converge to a common source at the level of the very small." He does not necessarily mean the constituents of the upper level structure by "the very small." Nor does he deny the emergence of new concepts at higher levels of organization to understand the behavior at those levels. Thus I find myself comfortably agreeing with him about defending his reductionism. As for his criticism of social constructivism (chapter 9), I also hold an opinion similar to his.
On the other hand, Weinberg's attack on religions is so scathing (especially in chapters 20 and 22) that I cannot completely agree with him, though I do not believe in any religion. He looks only at the aspect of religions as the adversary of science on the basis of big historical events unhappy to religions. In spite of this disagreement, I find instructive expressions here and there in this book. For example, I like Weinberg's words, "We will need to confirm and strengthen the vision of a rationally understandable world if we are to protect ourselves from the irrational tendencies that still beset humanity (chapter 12)." To sum up, this book gives the reader a lot of knowledge and a chance of deep thinking about the significance of science, religion and philosophy.
Rating: 4
Summary: 'Fessing up
Comment: Echoing 'Dreams of a Final Theory', this collection is perhaps an answer to the critics and a declaration of non-repentance for stubborn reductionism. One wonders, how many string theorists does it take to produce a final theory? With the same question for screwing in a lightbulb and for an eschatological vision of the 'end times of theory'. Ay, there's the rub. We can preach the reductionist religion, but how do we know if the things that don't reduce are better off not being explained by a 'transient state of theory'?
Judging the brouhaha over mere quibbles from the 'science wars', the age of Big Science is not ready for either the Spenglerian 'end of science', Buddhist 'irrationalists', Darwinian heretics, or resurgent Romanticism. In fact, overconfidence reigns: science cannot explain consciousness, has no claim on a science of society, and can't seem to realize the nature of its failure to produce a serious theory of evolution. Time to fess up, reductionism is a great idea, but it has failed its first great test. It may be time to deprive Science of its founder, who was, as a matter of fact, the very type of irrationalist now the object of scorn. Newton was the real founder of the geisteswissenschaften and the age of Big Science doesn't deserve him for a mascot.
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Title: Dreams of a Final Theory : The Scientist's Search for the Ultimate Laws of Nature by STEVEN WEINBERG ISBN: 0679744088 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 01 February, 1994 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: A House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths About Science by Noretta Koertge ISBN: 0195117263 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 2000 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe by Steven Weinberg ISBN: 0465024378 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 1993 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Who Rules in Science: An Opinionated Guide to the Wars by James Robert Brown ISBN: 0674006526 Publisher: Harvard University Press Pub. Date: 01 November, 2001 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science by Alan D. Sokal, Jean Bricmont, Alan Sokal, J. Bricmont ISBN: 0312204078 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 01 October, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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