Description:
Does science discover truths or create them? Does dioxin cause cancer or not? Is corporate-sponsored research valid or not? Although these questions reflect the way we're used to thinking, maybe they're not the best way to approach science and its place in our culture. Physicist Herbert J. Bernstein and science historian Mike Fortun, both of the Institute for Science and Interdisciplinary Studies (ISIS), suggest a third way of seeing, beyond taking one side or another, in Muddling Through: Pursuing Science and Truths in the 21st Century. While they deal with weighty issues and encourage us to completely rethink our beliefs about science and truth, they do so with such grace and humor that we follow with ease discussions of toxic-waste disposal, the Human Genome Project, and retooling our language to better fit the way science is actually done. As anyone who has done science knows, the ideal flowchart from observation to hypothesis to experiment to theory--with each step shielded from outside, irrational influences--is at best only vaguely descriptive of the work. Fortun and Bernstein want us not to worry too much about that, to accept science for what it is and what it does, and to move on, to "muddle through," to accept that today's best answer will probably be tomorrow's second-best. That's harder than it looks, as we've got centuries of either/or thinking to undo, but the authors are confident that we can manage our anxieties and learn to cope with less than absolute truth. They might be right. --Rob Lightner
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