Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction by Samir Okasha
Samir Okasha is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bristol, UK. His specialty is the philosophy of biology, especially evolutionary biology. His best-known book is Evolution and the Levels of Selection (1), which was awarded the 2009 Lakatos Prize, named after the famous Hungarian philosopher of mathematics Imre Lakatos.
Okasha is only the second professional philosopher immersed in biology that I know of, Michael Ruse being the other (2, 3) who often wrote perceptively about the Evolution-Creation controversies.
The philosophical writings in biology I am most familiar with are those of biologists with a profound interest in philosophy, such as Peter Medawar and Ernst Mayr.
I have devoured Medawar’s many highly readable books such as Pluto’s Republic: Incorporating The Art of the Soluble and Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought (4), The Threat and the Glory: Reflections on Science and Scientists (5), his inspiring Memoir of a thinking Radish (6), and above all, Aristotle to Zoos: A Philosophical Dictionary of Biology (with Jean Medawar) (7).
Ernst Mayr’s Toward a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist (8), What Makes Biology Unique?: Considerations on the Autonomy of a Scientific Discipline (9), and The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (10), are more rebellious but also relatively less accessible.
Samir Okasha’s A Very Short Introduction is delightfully accessible and is perfect for the beginning student. Okasha begins, as expected, with ‘What is Science’ and shows playfully why this simple question is hard to answer precisely. I always thought what distinguishes science from non-science is the ‘scientific method’, but I have encountered sharp, though not very convincing, rebuttals—see, for example, Naomi Oreskes’ Why Trust Science (11, 12).
In contrast, Okasha concedes, saying:
“Many people believe that the distinguishing features of science lie in the particular methods scientists use to investigate the world. This suggestion is quite plausible”.
Okasha goes on to list Experiment, Observation, and the Construction of theories as some of the main methods of science and says that
“One of the key problems in philosophy of science is to understand how techniques such as experimentation, observation, and theory-construction have enabled scientists to unravel so many of nature’s secrets”.
Such an approach is bound to make working scientists become interested in what philosophers of science do rather than alienating them as many other philosophers of science do.
Past alienation has led to claims such as:
“The philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.”
attributed variously to Steven Weinberg, Richard Feynman, and others.
But Okasha draws us in and shows why the philosophy of sciences may be useful to working scientists.
Okasha’s book is an excellent teaching tool as he sets up several questions and situations that could be starting points for student discussion and debate. And that would be very useful because when we teach and learn science, we are usually after facts; once the facts are known, there is little room for debate. Philosophical questions are often open-ended and debating them is a good training to treat scientific questions also as being open to debate.
For instance, we are satisfied when we repeat an experiment several times and get the same results. What does satisfied mean? It means that we are confident that if we repeat the experiment again, we will get the same result. But Okasha says:
“This assumption may seem obvious, but as philosophers we want to question it. Why assume that future repetitions of the experiment will yield the same result? How do we know this is true”?
He notes quite correctly that:
“The scientist is unlikely to spend too much time puzzling over these somewhat curious questions: he probably has better things to do….They are quintessentially philosophical questions…So part of the job of philosophy of science is to question assumptions that scientists take for granted”.
Okasha’s modesty is very welcome. He says that:
“…it would be wrong to imply that scientists never discuss philosophical issues themselves. Indeed, historically, many scientists have played an important role in the development of philosophy of science”.
In this manner, Okasha makes the philosophy of science most interesting for scientists.
With delightfully simple examples, Okasha walks us through the distinctions between science and pseudoscience, deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning, and concepts such as explanation, laws, causality, the limits of science, realism and antirealism, positivism, and scientific revolutions. Okasha also discusses some specific philosophical problems in physics, biology, and psychology, such as the absolute versus relationist conception of space, the species problem in biology, and the modularity of the mind. He ends with a very fair discussion of the criticisms of science, scientism, the relations between science and religion, and whether science can be value-free.
As with all books in the ‘A Very Short Introduction’ series, the book can be read in a few hours and used in teaching, even if only one or two classes are devoted to the philosophy of science in any science course.
1. S. Okasha, Evolution and the Levels of Selection (Clarendon Press, 2007).
2. M. Ruse, The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Biology (Oxford University Press, 2010).
3. M. Ruse, Ed., The Cambridge encyclopedia of Darwin and evolutionary thought (Cambridge University Press, 2013).
4. P. Medawar, Pluto’s Republic: Incorporating The Art of the Soluble and Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought (Oxford University Press, 1984).
5. P. Medawar, The Threat and the Glory: Reflections on Science and Scientists (HarperCollins/Oxford University Press, 1990).
6. P. Medawar, Memoir of a Thinking Radish: An Autobiography (Oxford University Press, 1988).
7. P. B. Medawar, J. S. Medawar, Aristotle to Zoos — A Philosophical Dictionary of Biology (Harvard University Press, 1985).
8. E. Mayr, Toward a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist (Harvard University Press, 1989).
9. E. Mayr, What Makes Biology Unique? Considerations on the Autonomy of a Scientific Discipline (Cambridge University Press, 2004).
10. E. Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Harvard University Press, 1982).
11. N. Oreskes, Why Trust Science? (Princeton Universoty Press, 2021).
12. R. Gadagkar, A Review of: “Why Trust Science?” by Naomi Oreskes. Princeton University Press. Current Science 118, 1464–1466 (2020).
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31921.Philosophy_of_Science
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