Philosophy of Science and Its Discontents

The author, whose intellectual/prose style is vigorous and good-naturedly contentious (he is an assistant professor of "science studies" at VPI, and editor of Social epistemology; a journal of knowledge, culture and policy ), argues that the recently dominant "internalist" approach to the history and philosophy of science promotes what is essentially a myth, and that understanding the development and structure of science is properly the business of sociology and psychology. The remarkable table of contents provides what amounts to an abstract of his argument. Provocative. One gains, however, the impression that the author's direct and personal experience of science is distinctly limited, that he has possibly never met a living/working scientist, and that the enduring residue of what he has to say is likely to be slight. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.