The Nature of Science

Integrating Historical, Philosophical, and Sociological Perspectives

By (author) Fernando Espinoza

Publication date:

09 September 2011

Length of book:

184 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9781442209510

The role of science in society, along with its nature and development, are commonly misunderstood by students in the social sciences and humanities, and even those studying in the field. Fernando Espinoza shines light on these misconceptions to give readers a deeper understanding of science and its effect and influence upon society, through historical, philosophical, and sociological perspectives. This book incorporates the mandates by national organizations such as the National Research Council and National Science Teachers Association and is a useful text for required courses of general education majors and science courses for preservice teachers.

Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Need for Scientific Literacy
Chapter 2: The Origins of Accomplishing Tasks: From Individual to Organized Efforts
Chapter 3: The Earliest Comprehensive and Rationalistic Syntheses
Chapter 4: Knowing, Doing and the Inevitability of Curiosity and Exploration
Chapter 5: From the Transcendent to the Temporal - A Transformative Experience
Chapter 6: From Qualities to Quantities: The Mathematization of Nature
Chapter 7: Internalizing Naturalistic Explanations: Benefit or Threat?
Chapter 8: Dispensing with Philosophy and Entertaining Limits to Human Knowledge
Chapter 9: Scientifically Speaking, We Know a Lot—or Do We?
Chapter 10: The Need for a Context
Chapter 11: The Rightful Place of Science in Society
Chapter 12: Concluding Reflections
Appendices
Notes
Index
About the Author

Espinoza (SUNY College at Old Westbury) has demonstrated expertise in the fields of science and education and has published widely. His goal in this book is to give students and others a context for understanding science from the traditional scholarly standpoint and also from a more general perspective. By definition, science is a body of knowledge that increases at a pace that makes it virtually impossible for anyone to fully master. Nevertheless, it is important for citizens to know how science is used and for what purposes. The author's approach is to see science as a general type of knowledge with distinctive characteristics that it shares with other forms of human knowledge. Students and the general public need a broader sort of background knowledge to comprehend and more importantly, to apply the concepts that constitute such a generalized form of scientific literacy. To accomplish this, it is necessary to consider science's origins and development, as well as its practice. The book first deals with science's historical and philosophical aspects and then addresses the sociological aspects that are the inevitable consequence of its applications. The book's content and writing is of the highest quality, and the organization is superb. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All academic and general audiences.