Worldviews: An Introduction to the History and Philosophy of Science

Read this back in college (2007) in a history and philosophy of science class. Had to buy it again when I realized I didn’t still have it on my bookshelf.

Excellent book. Prof. DeWitt articulates extremely difficult concepts into language the laity can understand and incorporate. This speaks to his depth of knowledge of the subject and his joy in it. He makes science, philosophy, mathematics, and history exciting and relevant.

Bought this book for a class. I am going to keep it! Easy read and very informative (and mind-blowing!) I recommend for anyone who has an interest in science and/or philosophy.

Amazing introduction to the history and philosophy of science.

Extremely well written and superbly accessible. I had trouble putting it down.

This book is a great introduction to the philosophy and history of science.The first part offers a good overview of the various problems involved in the scientific method, and the next two parts shows the history of science from aristotle all the way to modern science.Throughout the second and third part, you can see the various elements of the scientific method play out in the actual theories taken up throughout the years. This gives you a practical idea of how the scientific method works rather than just a conceptual idea.The best part is that, along the way, you will learn some science. So although this book works as an introduction to philosophy of science, it will also give you a nice understanding of some of the important scientific theories throughout the years.Amazing book. Well worth the read.

The history and philosophy of science are broad and often complicated subjects. Mastery of these fields requires not only an extensive knowledge of the content of the scientific body of knowledge, but of the historical developments not only in scientific discovery but in philosophical discourse. While certainly rewarding, study of these ideas is not always easy. This book serves as a gentle introduction to many of these ideas suitable primarily to the beginning student of the philosophy of science.DeWitt should be applauded for attempting to condense such a broad field of inquiry into a single book. And indeed he's largely successful in doing so, tracing the evolution of the scientific "worldview" (to use the book's terminology) beginning with pre-scientific thinkers like Aristotle and ending with contemporary developments such as relativity and quantum mechanics. Both the scientific and philosophical ideas are introduced gently, giving the reader plenty of opportunity to begin to develop an understanding of often highly-technical information almost regardless of their scientific or philosophical background.The book's strength--introducing these ideas gently to the novice reader--is also its greatest weakness, however. Readers already familiar with the history and/or philosophy of science will seldom find any new information here. That's no sin, as it's meant to be an introductory text. Where it does stumble a bit, though, is in its tendency to raise genuinely interesting points of philosophical controversy without taking the time to supply a deeper analysis. While reading, I often found that the author brought me right up to the point at which I found the material most interesting, but regularly stopped just short of carrying me to the point at which I could really refine my philosophy.I do recommend this book if you're just beginning a study in the philosophy of science, but if you're genuinely interested in these ideas, you'd do well to immediately follow this book with some more advanced texts on the subject.