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READINGS IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE: FROM POSITIVISM TO POSTMODERNISM edited by Theodore Schick, Jr. Mountainview, CA: Mayfield Publishing Co., 2000. Pp. viii + 393. $46.95. ISBN 0-7674-02774 (paperback).
This is a textbook in the Philosophy of Science, not radically different from many other anthologies. Therefore, it is a collection of academic articles written for other academics, and thus it is not meant for the general reader. However, Schick does a particularly good job in two respects, making the text more accessible. First, the number and the selection of the problems he addresses, a total of nine, is good. This is not a narrow collection, and he is able to offer contributions in virtually all of the important areas of the natural sciences. The second outstanding aspect of this book is the order of the articles in each selection. In the Preface, Schick worried about losing "a sense of the historical and logical development of the ideas in the discipline" (p. vii) by dividing the reading into sections; however, within each section he does an excellent job of ordering the readings so that one sees the general focus of the book (going from positivism to postmodernism), with each article speaking to the previous one and taking the argument further. Therefore, there is an unusual amount of coherence and dialogue on a subject, which makes this an excellent textbook and even a reference for those outside of philosophy who want to delve into a particular question in the Philosophy of Science.
To those of us who are just as interested in philosophical issues in the social sciences, it is worth pointing out that the title of the book is a misnomer; the anthology deals overwhelmingly with issues in the natural sciences, not science in general. But Schick is following tradition in this regard, and Philosophy of Science courses are almost always concerned with issues in the natural sciences. Perhaps we should be happy that he includes several articles in the social sciences; indeed, the two prominent ones deal with parapsychology, an issue that the book concludes with. I return later to these articles.
The main theme dealt with in the text, the movement from positivism to postmodernism, is fundamental and perhaps explains why Philosophy of Science...