Overview

The Comprehensibility of the Universe puts forward a radically new conception of science. At present scientific enquiry is shaped by the orthodox view that in accepting or rejecting theories scientists are impartial with respect to evidence and make no permanent assumptions about the world independently of the evidence. Nicholas Maxwell argues that this view is untenable, and that we need a new orthodoxy, which sees science as making a hierarchy of increasingly attenuated metaphysical assumptions about the comprehensibility and knowability of the universe. This new conception has significant implications, as Maxwell explains. One is that it is part of current scientific knowledge that the universe is comprehensible, even physically comprehensible. A second is that metaphysics and philosophy are central to scientific knowledge. A third is that science possesses a rational, though fallible, method of discovery. A fourth is that we need a new understanding of scientific method and rationality. Maxwell points the way towards the solution, within his new conception, of long-standing philosophical problems about science, concerning simplicity, induction, and progress. His goal is the reform not just of the philosophy of science but of science itself, and the healing of the rift between the two.

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9780198237761

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Reviews

This is not a book to read quickly or easily, but I hope that many may make the effort, because it seems to me to be an important contribution to the philosophy of physics. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Maxwell performs a heroic feat in making the physics accessible to the non-physicist ... Philosophically, there is much here to stimulate and provoke ... those who share Maxwell's intuitions about progress, even those uncommitted to theories of everything , will find encouragement here for thinking about how one does justice to such a possibility. Anjan Chakravartty, THES This admirably ambitious book contains more thought-provoking material than can even be mentioned here. Maxwell's treatment of the descriptive problem of simplicity, and his novel proposals about quantum mechanics deserve special note. The Philosophical Review

This is not a book to read quickly or easily, but I hope that many may make the effort, because it seems to me to be an important contribution to the philosophy of physics. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Maxwell performs a heroic feat in making the physics accessible to the non-physicist ... Philosophically, there is much here to stimulate and provoke ... those who share Maxwell's intuitions about progress, even those uncommitted to theories of everything , will find encouragement here for thinking about how one does justice to such a possibility. Anjan Chakravartty, THES This admirably ambitious book contains more thought-provoking material than can even be mentioned here. Maxwell's treatment of the descriptive problem of simplicity, and his novel proposals about quantum mechanics deserve special note. The Philosophical Review

Author Information

Nicholas Maxwell is Emeritus Reader in Philosophy of Science at the University of London.

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