In this detailed historical and sociological study of the development of scientific ideas, Jonathan Harwood argues that there is no such thing as a unitary scientific method driven by an internal logic. Rather, there are national styles of science that are defined by different values, norms, assumptions, research traditions, and funding patterns. The first book-length treatment of genetics in Germany, Styles of Scientific Thought demonstrates the influence of culture on science by comparing the American with the German scientific traditions. Harwood examines the structure of academic and research institutions, the educational backgrounds of geneticists, and cultural traditions, among many factors, to explain why the American approach was much more narrowly focussed than the German. This tremendously rich book fills a gap between histories of the physical sciences in the Weimar Republic and other works on the humanities and the arts during the intellectually innovative 1920s, and it will interest European historians, as well as sociologists and philosophers of science.

How does science work? Does it tell us what the world is “really” like? What makes it different from other ways of understanding the universe? In Theory and Reality, Peter Godfrey-Smith addresses these questions by taking the reader on a grand tour of more than a hundred years of debate about science. The result is a completely accessible introduction to the main themes of the philosophy of science. Examples and asides engage the beginning student, a glossary of terms explains key concepts, and suggestions for further reading are included at the end of each chapter. Like no other text in this field, Theory and Reality combines a survey of recent history of the philosophy of science with current key debates that any beginning scholar or critical reader can follow. The second edition is thoroughly updated and expanded by the author with a new chapter on truth, simplicity, and models in science.