Philosophy of Science and Occult

Book Overview

This book both introduces the philosophy of science through examination of the occult and examines the occult rigorously enough to raise central issues in the philosophy of science. Placed in the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0873955722
• ISBN13: 9780873955720
• Release Date: June 1983
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.02 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.0" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Balanced and Useful Reference

I was introduced to this book as part of a university course that was an option for all engineering students at the University of Toronto called the Philosophy of Science. Although it could stand some updating, it was -- and still is -- one of the best references I've found for getting the bigger picture on the topic of the philosophy of science. In this book you will be introduced to: * how to demarcate science from pseudoscience (harder than you may think!) * contrary views on various, popular pseudoscientific theories like astrology, parapsychology, quantum mysticism and more * an overview of the landmark theories and findings along the way (Popper, Gauquelin, Kuhn, Lakatos, etc.) People who enjoyed the movie "What The Bleep Do We Know?" (yours truly included) will find cogent explanations of where the movie makes unwarranted leaps of logic and other fundamental generalizations in the essays on quantum mysticism. What's Missing There is a growing body of knowledge that seems to indicate that we (humans, that is) are very good at seeing what we want to see and are completely blind in many areas to things that are obvious to outside observers. It's important to note that this works both ways. For instance, this filtering mechanism will have a skeptic unable to acknowledge facts that do not already conform to his/her worldview just as readily as have believers unable to acknowledge inconvenient contrary evidence. You can see this mechanism in yourself very easily. Pretend you about to purchase a new car (let's say a new Toyota), don't you start to notice more Toyotas on the road? But if you are noticing Toyotas, are you noticing the new BMWs? Or, let's say you've decided that a person is truly terrible. Don't you fail to notice their acts of kindness and generosity? (Yes, even they are kind from time to time.) This natural mechanism (our brain as an associative machine), in my opinion and experience, is always in operation and can't be turned off. Actually, to be more rigorous, saying that "people see what they want to see" is clumsy because it brings in the notion of volition ("people see what they want to see") when volition may play no part at all. The mechanism is closer to "people see what their hidden context allows them to see." The point is that the context is so hidden that a reasoned logical discussion may never surface it unless an outsider pokes around a bit. As the owner of a business coaching company, we are showing people their hidden contexts (which limit what they perceive) all the time. For example, every business person knows that you can only pick two of the following but you can't have all three: quality, low price or fast time-to-market, right? Really? How is it, then, that disruptive technologies are continually introduced to the market that provide all three features? How else does one explain that some people swear that they can see auras despite our best equipment being unable to detect it? It certainly could be

Solid Review of the Issues

This is a solid review of the issues in demarcating Philosophy of science and the various psuedosciences. The second half of the book is an excursion into philosophy of science, with selections from many of the major names, while the first half is a collection of articles, some funny, some serious, on various pseudosciences. It is extremely useful as a reference.If it has any weaknesses, is that it fails to clearly present a coherent way of demarcating one from the other.Michael Turton