The Advancement of Science

<title>Philip Kitcher, The Advancement of Science</title>

<cite><a href="../">The Bactra Review</a></cite>

<h1>The Advancement of Science</h1>

<h2>Science without Legend, Objectivity without Illusions</h2>

<h2><em>by</em> Philip Kitcher</h2>

Oxford University Press, 1993

<hr>

<h4>Scientific Sausage-Making</h4>

This is what Kitcher means by ``Legend'':

Obviously, Kitcher thinks that the Legend is totally bogus.  But I hasten
to add that he also (being sane and well-informed) thinks its characterization
of what science achieves is pretty accurate.  This is a poser.  Objective,
accurate science isn't a puzzle if scientists are objective, disinterested
intellectual beings, reasoning on the basis of impartial data, but it
<em>does</em> require some explaining if we're emotional, biased, deluded,
squabbling, fallible beasties.  Kitcher's problem is to explain how to form
political animals into rational collectives.

<P>It's not just Kitcher's problem, of course: it's at once part of the larger
problems of collective cognition and of relativism.


The book is marred by an extraordinary number of typos, particularly in its
references (see my list below).


<hr>

<em>Errata</em> (in the 1995 paperback printing, and probably not
complete): p. 30 n. 42: for ``his (1983)'' read ``his (1982)'';
	p. 33 n. 48: for ``Kitcher 1985a'' read ``Kitcher 1985b'' and vice-versa;
	p. 36 n. 53: for ``1973b/136'' read ``1973b 136'';
	p. 66: Kahneman, Slovic and Tversky 1982 is missing from the bibliography,
but presumably refers to Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic and Amos Tversky (eds.),
<cite>Judgment under Uncertainity: Heuristics and Biases</cite> (Cambridge
UP, 1982);
	p. 145: sentence beginning ``Contemporary physics texts'' is ungrammatical
--- read ``that'' for ``what''?;
	p. 150 n. 33: for ``from commitments to achievements,'' read ``from
achievements to commitments'';
	p. 156 n. 39: no Brandon 1980 in the bibliography --- perhaps Brandon 1978
is meant?;
	p. 158 n. 42: no Laudan 1989 in the bibliography --- Laudan 1987?;
	p. 160: no Laudan 1988 in the bibliography --- Laudan 1987?;
	p. 177: n. 70 is missing;
	p. 178 n. 2: no Laudan 1978 in the bibliography --- Laudan 1977?;
	p. 228 n. 15: for ``Hacking 1973'', read ``Hacking 1983'';
	p. 249 n. 44: no Laudan 1990 in the bibliography --- Laudan 1991?;
	p. 293 n. 80: no Salmon 1982 in the bibliography --- Salmon 1970?;
	p. 299 n. 87: no Reichenbach 1959 in the bibliography --- or any
Reichenbach at all!  Presumably the reference is to his <cite>The Theory of
Probability: An Inquiry into the Logical and Mathematical Foundations of the
Calculus of Probability,</cite> trans. Ernest H. Hutten and Maria Reichenbach,
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949 (note year);
	p. 346 n. 28: Sayre 1975 and Stent are not in the bibliography;
	p. 395, Dupre (1988): Dupre is editor, not sole author;
	p. 395, Earman (1992): the title is <cite>Bayes or Bust?</cite> (question
mark, no comma);
	p. 396: Galileo, <cite>Dialogue</cite>: the University of California Press
translation was by Stillman Drake, published in 1953 (with a foreword by
Einstein!); the first edition was published in Florence in 1632 (see facsimile
title page in Drake's translation).