This collection brings together several essays which have been written between the years 197 5 and 1983. During that period I have been occupied with the attempt to find a satisfactory explicate for the notion of tnithlike ness or verisimilitude. The technical results of this search have partly appeared elsewhere, and I am also working on a systematic presentation of them in a companion volume to this book: Truthlikeness (forthcoming hopefully in 1985). The essays collected in this book are less formal and more philos ophical: they all explore various aspects of the idea that progress in science is associated with an increase in the truthlikeness of its results. Even though they do not exhaust the problem area of scientific change, together they constitute a step in the direction which I find most promising in the defence of critical scientific realism. * Chapter 1 appeared originally in Finnish as the opening article of a new journal Tiede 2000 (no. 1 I 1980) - a Finnish counterpart to journals such as Science and Scientific American. This explains its programmatic character. It tries to give a compact answer to the question 'What is science?', and serves therefore as an introduction to the problem area of the later chapters. Chapter 2 is a revised translation of my inaugural lecture for the chair of Theoretical Philosophy in the University of Helsinki on April 8, 1981. It appeared in Finnish inParnasso 31 (1981), pp.

In this successor to his pioneering Science, Truth, and Democracy, the author revisits the topic explored in his previous work—namely, the challenges of integrating science, the most successful knowledge-generating system of all time, with the problems of democracy. But in this new work, the author goes far beyond that earlier book in studying places at which the practice of science fails to answer social needs. He considers a variety of examples of pressing concern, ranging from climate change to religiously inspired constraints on biomedical research to the neglect of diseases that kill millions of children annually, analyzing the sources of trouble. He shows the fallacies of thinking that democracy always requires public debate of issues most people cannot comprehend, and argues that properly constituted expertise is essential to genuine democracy. No previous book has treated the place of science in democratic society so comprehensively and systematically, with attention to different aspects of science and to pressing problems of our times.

Like fast food, fast science is quickly prepared, not particularly good, and it clogs up the system. Efforts to tackle our most pressing issues have been stymied by conflict within the scientific community and mixed messages symptomatic of a rushed approach. What is more, scientific research is being shaped by the bubbles and crashes associated with economic speculation and the market. A focus on conformism, competitiveness, opportunism and flexibility has made it extremely difficult to present cases of failure to the public, for fear that it will lose confidence in science altogether. In this bold new book, distinguished philosopher Isabelle Stengers shows that research is deeply intertwined with broader social interests, which means that science cannot race ahead in isolation but must learn instead to slow down. Stengers offers a path to an alternative science, arguing that researchers should stop seeing themselves as the 'thinking, rational brain of humanity' and refuse to allow their expertise to be used to shut down the concerns of the public, or to spread the belief that scientific progress is inevitable and will resolve all of society's problems. Rather, science must engage openly and honestly with an intelligent public and be clear about the kind of knowledge it is capable of producing. This timely and accessible book will be of great interest to students, scholars and policymakers in a wide range of fields, as well anyone concerned with the role of science and its future.

The idea of progress from the Enlightenment to postmodernism is still very much with us. In intellectual discourse, journals, popular magazines, and radio and talk shows, the debate between those who are "progressivists" and those who are "declinists" is as spirited as it was in the late seventeenth century. In History of the Idea of Progress, Robert Nisbet traces the idea of progress from its origins in Greek, Roman, and medieval civilizations to modern times. It is a masterful frame of reference for understanding the present world. Nisbet asserts there are two fundamental building blocks necessary to Western doctrines of human advancement: the idea of growth, and the idea of necessity. He sees Christianity as a key element in both secular and spiritual evolution, for it conveys all the ingredients of the modern idea of progress: the advancement of the human race in time, a single time frame for all the peoples and epochs of the past and present, the conception of time as linear, and the envisagement of the future as having a Utopian end. In his new introduction, Nisbet shows why the idea of progress remains of critical importance to studies of social evolution and natural history. He provides a contemporary basis for many disciplines, including sociology, economics, philosophy, religion, politics, and science. History of the Idea of Progress continues to be a major resource for scholars in all these areas.

The modern discussion on the concept of truthlikeness was started in 1960. In his influential Word and Object, W. V. O. Quine argued that Charles Peirce's definition of truth as the limit of inquiry is faulty for the reason that the notion 'nearer than' is only "defined for numbers and not for theories". In his contribution to the 1960 International Congress for Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science at Stan ford, Karl Popper defended the opposite view by defining a compara tive notion of verisimilitude for theories. was originally introduced by the The concept of verisimilitude Ancient sceptics to moderate their radical thesis of the inaccessibility of truth. But soon verisimilitudo, indicating likeness to the truth, was confused with probabilitas, which expresses an opiniotative attitude weaker than full certainty. The idea of truthlikeness fell in disrepute also as a result of the careless, often confused and metaphysically loaded way in which many philosophers used - and still use - such concepts as 'degree of truth', 'approximate truth', 'partial truth', and 'approach to the truth'. Popper's great achievement was his insight that the criticism against truthlikeness - by those who urge that it is meaningless to speak about 'closeness to truth' - is more based on prejudice than argument.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR "My new favorite book of all time." --Bill Gates If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. By the author of the new book, Rationality. Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.