Contemporary Philosophy of Science
Book Review Title: Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues Authors: J. A. Cover and Martin Curd Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Publication Date: March 17, 1998 Length: 1408 pages Type: Paperback, Anthology ISBN: 0393971759 Price: $49.95 Cover and Curd’s Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues is an extensive compendium, separated into 9 chapters, each chapter covering one of the following topics: the Demarcation Problem (distinguishing science from pseudo-science based on the strength of scientific theory and evidence), Values and Objectivity in Science, Under-determination and the Duhem-Quine Thesis, Induction and the Nature of Scientific Explanation, Laws of Nature, Inter-theoretic Reduction, and Scientific Realism. The 49 included readings are written by some of the most important philosophers in the field, writers of both historical/foundational, as well as contemporary interest, including Thomas Kuhn, Karl Popper, Carl Hempel, Imre Lakatos, Larry Laudan, Paul Feyerabend, Pierre Duhem, Willard V.O. Quine, Helen Longino, Philip Kitcher, Ernan McMullin, Bas van Fraassen, Wesley Salomon, and Ian Hacking, among others. The book is well organized. Each chapter includes a short introduction by the editors, four or five essays written by others (the Chapter on Scientific Realism, which is the largest section, contains 9 essays), and an extensive commentary, also supplied by the editors, which sets out to explain each article in the Chapter, as well as the interconnections between them. To my knowledge, there is no other anthology on the subject that provides such extensive editorial material as Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues. In addition to the Chapter Introductions and the detailed and helpful commentaries at the end of each Chapter—which range from 20 pages to more than fifty pages—the book includes a helpful twenty-page glossary of terms, and also supplies extensive bibliographies on each of the subjects covered. The comprehensive commentaries and