To see accurate pricing, please choose your delivery country.
 
 
United States
£ GBP
All Shops

British Wildlife

8 issues per year 84 pages per issue Subscription only

British Wildlife is the leading natural history magazine in the UK, providing essential reading for both enthusiast and professional naturalists and wildlife conservationists. Published eight times a year, British Wildlife bridges the gap between popular writing and scientific literature through a combination of long-form articles, regular columns and reports, book reviews and letters.

Subscriptions from £33 per year

Conservation Land Management

4 issues per year 44 pages per issue Subscription only

Conservation Land Management (CLM) is a quarterly magazine that is widely regarded as essential reading for all who are involved in land management for nature conservation, across the British Isles. CLM includes long-form articles, events listings, publication reviews, new product information and updates, reports of conferences and letters.

Subscriptions from £26 per year
Academic & Professional Books  Natural History  General Natural History

Science in the Looking Glass What do scientists really know?

By: E Brian Davies
306 pages, 29 b/w line drawings and 8 b/w halftones
Science in the Looking Glass
Click to have a closer look
Select version
  • Science in the Looking Glass ISBN: 9780198525431 Hardback Aug 2003 Not in stock: Usually dispatched within 2-3 weeks
    £33.49
    #163541
  • Science in the Looking Glass ISBN: 9780199219186 Paperback Jun 2007 Not in stock: Usually dispatched within 6 days
    £35.99
    #164780
Selected version: £33.49
About this book Contents Customer reviews Related titles

About this book

How do scientific conjectures become laws? Why does proof mean different things in different sciences? Do numbers exist, or were they invented? Why do some laws turn out to be wrong?

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 defence of the view that mathematics was invented rather than discovered. While experience has shown that disentangling knowledge from opinion and aspiration is a hard task, this book provides a clear guide to the difficulties.

Contents

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

Customer Reviews

By: E Brian Davies
306 pages, 29 b/w line drawings and 8 b/w halftones
Media reviews

...it is a brilliant work, beautifully written, and brimming with surprising information and stimulating philosophical speculations. Notices of the AMS, December 2005, Volume 52, Number 11. ... the leading mathematician E. Brian Davies is a refreshingly dissident voice ... One of the most impressive aspects of Davies' treatment is its breadth - he covers both the physical and life sciences and touches on philosophy ... those who read the book will find much to set them thinking, especially about the blind worship of mathematics that is often taken for granted in popular science books. The Times Higher Education Supplement ... all professionals are sure to learn something new ... I feel justified in commending this well-written book to the readership of Materials Today ... This will not help the reader to design a spintronic device, improved magnetic memory, or photonic 'crystal', but will reassure that, as a scientist in the 21st century, he or she is heir to an enormously varied and honorable tradition. Looking backwards contentedly leads to looking forward hopefully. materialstoday Science in the Looking Glass is worth reading in your leisure time. It is stimulating even when you disagree with the author. Physics Today Davies writes in an accessible, non-technical style. He favours concrete examples and down-to-earth refutations. He is not interested in engaging in the layers of scholarship and theoretical debates that surround virtually every idea that he examines, preferring instead to carve his own uncluttered path through the issue. This allows him to move swiftly and to cover much terrain ... The result can be fresh and exhilarating. Brian Rotman, Times Literary Supplement Science in the Looking Glass is an original and superbly intelligent attempt by someone who knows and loves the subject, to challenge the misconceptions and transcendental mysteries that cling so beguilingly to mathematics. Brian Rotman, Times Literary Supplement The value of this book for a mathematician lies in a number of mathematical examples that one can use to popularize mathematics ... an interesting and fairly exciting reading. Zentralblatt MATH

Current promotions
New and Forthcoming BooksNHBS Moth TrapBritish Wildlife MagazineBuyers Guides