Science in the Looking Glass What Do Scientists Really Know [Hardcover]

In this wide-ranging book, Brian Davies discusses the basis for scientists' claims to knowledge about the world. He looks at science historically, emphasizing not only the achievements of scientists from Galileo onwards, but also their mistakes. He rejects the claim that all scientific knowledge is provisional, by citing examples from chemistry, biology and geology. A major feature of the book is its defense of the view that mathematics was invented rather than discovered. A large number of examples are used to illustrate these points, and many of the deep issues in today's world discussed-from psychology and evolution to quantum theory, consciousness and even religious belief. Disentangling knowledge from opinion and aspiration is a hard task, but this book provided a clear guide to the difficulties.

1. Perception and Language
2. Theories of the Mind
3. Arithmetic
4. How Hard can Problems get?
5. Pure Mathematics
6. Mechanics and Astronomy
7. Probability and Quantum Theory
8. Is Evolution a Theory?
9. Against Reductionism
10. Some Final Thoughts

...Science in the Looking Glassis worth reading in your leisure time. --Physics Today

I recommend this book unreservedly as a rich intellectual adventure. The issues Davies addresses may have been grappled with innumerable times in innumerable ways, but I doubt they have ever been put more concisely, clearly, and sanely. -Henry H. Bauer, Journal of Scientific Exploration

E Brian Davies, Tutorial Fellow at St John's College, Oxford in 1970 and one of two editors for the Quarterly Journal of Mathematics, Oxford. Developed the theory of open quantum systems, writing a monograph on the subject, which became the standard text. Appointed to the Chair of Pure Mathematics at King's College, London in 1981 and researched heat kernels and spectral theory. Subsequently became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1995. His monograph on heat kelÄ