- Hardcover: 586 pages
- Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr (Tx) (1988)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0226360504
- ISBN-13: 978-0226360508
- Product Dimensions: 25.7 x 18.3 x 3.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 3,943,858 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Science as a Process
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Product Description
Product Description
"Legend is overdue for replacement, and an adequate replacement must attend to the process of science as carefully as Hull has done. I share his vision of a serious account of the social and intellectual dynamics of science that will avoid both the rosy blur of Legend and the facile charms of relativism. . . . Because of [Hull's] deep concern with the ways in which research is actually done, "Science as a Process" begins an important project in the study of science. It is one of a distinguished series of books, which Hull himself edits".--Philip Kitcher, "Nature"
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THIS BOOK concerns science. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
In an enormous (about 550 pages), ponderous, repetitive and (to me) ultimately quite boring book, David Hull uses in-depth examples from numerical taxonomy and cladistics to show that science evolves, like organisms, by natural selection in a competitive environment.
David Hull says that successful science is done mostly by small groups of collaborators working within a research program and that their reward is prestige or credit (rather than money or power). Inter-group rivalry can be vitriolic but stimulates progress through competition.
Accounts of vitriolic arguments (often for trivial reasons, such as the meaning of a word) occasionally enliven Hull's otherwise turgid compendium. For example, Paul Ehrlich predicted that, by 1970, traditional nomenclature and taxonomy would be replaced by computerized systematics. At a meeting in St Louis, 'when one taxonomist asked indignantly, "You mean to tell me that taxonomists can be replaced by computers?" Ehrlich replied, "No, some of you can be replaced by an abacus." Thereafter, Ehrlich did not consider the give-and-take after a paper truly successful unless he brought at least one taxonomist to the point of tears' (page 121).
David Hull takes the sociology of knowledge seriously (too seriously for me, I admit) and denies that science advances only by 'reason, argument and evidence', but he rejects the extreme view that changes in science are caused entirely by changes to its social conditions. Instead, science advances by argument and evidence as these principles are understood within an academic context; hence scientists often argue about what counts as science or about what constitutes a good argument and accuse one another of irrationality, missing the point and arguing at cross-purposes.
Altogether, David Hull has compiled a valuable set of arguments and examples in support of evolutionary epistemology (very close, in fact, to Karl Popper's epistemological Darwinism) that would have been pleasant to read at half its length.
David Hull says that successful science is done mostly by small groups of collaborators working within a research program and that their reward is prestige or credit (rather than money or power). Inter-group rivalry can be vitriolic but stimulates progress through competition.
Accounts of vitriolic arguments (often for trivial reasons, such as the meaning of a word) occasionally enliven Hull's otherwise turgid compendium. For example, Paul Ehrlich predicted that, by 1970, traditional nomenclature and taxonomy would be replaced by computerized systematics. At a meeting in St Louis, 'when one taxonomist asked indignantly, "You mean to tell me that taxonomists can be replaced by computers?" Ehrlich replied, "No, some of you can be replaced by an abacus." Thereafter, Ehrlich did not consider the give-and-take after a paper truly successful unless he brought at least one taxonomist to the point of tears' (page 121).
David Hull takes the sociology of knowledge seriously (too seriously for me, I admit) and denies that science advances only by 'reason, argument and evidence', but he rejects the extreme view that changes in science are caused entirely by changes to its social conditions. Instead, science advances by argument and evidence as these principles are understood within an academic context; hence scientists often argue about what counts as science or about what constitutes a good argument and accuse one another of irrationality, missing the point and arguing at cross-purposes.
Altogether, David Hull has compiled a valuable set of arguments and examples in support of evolutionary epistemology (very close, in fact, to Karl Popper's epistemological Darwinism) that would have been pleasant to read at half its length.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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2 reviews
20 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Frustrating
19 July 2006
Format:Paperback
Although it is a good read, this is one of those books whose sum is less than its parts. Hull presents a very nice account of the various turns in the historical development of evolutionary theory. There is an especially good description of the different schools of taxonomy (how organisms are classified). We also get a blow-by-blow account of the struggle for ascendancy between the pheneticists and the cladists, with lots of juicy, insider detail about the personalities involved, including some well-known figures in evolutionary biology. This is all in the service of an argument in favor of a generalized selectionist account of conceptual change in science, which uses Hull's useful and clarifying terminology of replicators and interactors. (It was especially clarifying for Dawkins.) There is much wise and insightful commentary, and many interesting tidbits, about science and the philosophy of science sprinkled throughout the book.
But in terms of the book's overall argument, it doesn't seem we end up with all that much after 500 pages of text. I found myself a bit worn down and more than a bit frustrated by then. Yes, scientific change can be seen as a selection process with much in common with natural selection in biology. But the questions that conclusion suggests for future research (e.g., "Does science develop more quickly in areas characterized by competing factions than in areas where scientists work largely alone?") don't seem very exciting or novel, nor do they seem to require Hull's selectionist framework. I'm reminded of systems theory, where once you point out that interdependent things can often be viewed as elements of a system, nothing much of interest seems to follow. Similarly, memetics and viral theories of information spread involve an interesting insight, but where is the yield?
Hull spends a lot of time on the details of how articles end up published or rejected by journals, much less on the processes by which research grants are given out. His subjects worked in museums and other environments where outside financial support apparently was not critical; but that is hardly characteristic of most areas of science today, where whole labs float on soft money and the scramble for research dollars is intense. One has to wonder, too, about the extent to which his conclusions based on "small science" would hold for the kind of big-money science done in the pharmaceutical industry or where scientists themselves become entrepreneurs, such as we see today in genomics and the high-payoff areas of molecular biology generally. There is something slightly quaint about his taxonomists sniping at each other over control of their conference agendas.
For a much more succinct account of Hull's selectionist model, I'd recommend his later book, "Science and Selection: Essays on Biological Evolution and the Philosophy of Science" (2001).
But in terms of the book's overall argument, it doesn't seem we end up with all that much after 500 pages of text. I found myself a bit worn down and more than a bit frustrated by then. Yes, scientific change can be seen as a selection process with much in common with natural selection in biology. But the questions that conclusion suggests for future research (e.g., "Does science develop more quickly in areas characterized by competing factions than in areas where scientists work largely alone?") don't seem very exciting or novel, nor do they seem to require Hull's selectionist framework. I'm reminded of systems theory, where once you point out that interdependent things can often be viewed as elements of a system, nothing much of interest seems to follow. Similarly, memetics and viral theories of information spread involve an interesting insight, but where is the yield?
Hull spends a lot of time on the details of how articles end up published or rejected by journals, much less on the processes by which research grants are given out. His subjects worked in museums and other environments where outside financial support apparently was not critical; but that is hardly characteristic of most areas of science today, where whole labs float on soft money and the scramble for research dollars is intense. One has to wonder, too, about the extent to which his conclusions based on "small science" would hold for the kind of big-money science done in the pharmaceutical industry or where scientists themselves become entrepreneurs, such as we see today in genomics and the high-payoff areas of molecular biology generally. There is something slightly quaint about his taxonomists sniping at each other over control of their conference agendas.
For a much more succinct account of Hull's selectionist model, I'd recommend his later book, "Science and Selection: Essays on Biological Evolution and the Philosophy of Science" (2001).
5 of 22 people found the following review helpful
A must-read book for anyone
13 July 1999
Format:Paperback
The people thinks that the science is only for scientist. Nothing's far from that. In this book we can learn how the science involves people and their relationships, personal or not. Some parts of the book are funny, some are amazing. Did you already read "On the origin....", it does not matter, read the Hull's book!, and then any "about-evolution-book" you want, you'll read with other mind.
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