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'What is This Thing Called Science? by A. F. Chalmers basically discusses and examines every single known element which most civilizations believe makes up the class of interests and activities we name science. Like, what is a fact, what is an observation, how should an experiment be set up, how theories are derived from facts and vice versa, what is a workable theory, what are the types of theories and the operating rationales behind experiments, etc.

This is an introductory book describing what is the philosophy of science, so no worries, gentle reader. Chalmers is 'belling the cat' called Science, trying to make Science visible by outlining it's physiognomy, so to speak, for the 101 reader.

Is progress actually progress built on past discoveries or are new discoveries that change everything a brand new paradigm and a new starting point that throws all of the past science under a bus? Can we really know anything is real since our wetwork senses come between us and reality? It is a fact our wetwork senses have been wrong in what they perceive. Even scientists have been fooled by what they see, hear, feel, interpret. Experiments can be weirdly affected by a scientist's beliefs.

Chalmers asks the question is this or that element of science valid for science discoveries. Do they even exist outside of the individual mind? What invalidates each of the elements of science? For example, he proves how observations can be wrong since people cannot prove anything they see is:

-repeatable, i.e., do other people see Exactly what you see, for example, the color green is the same green color for all of us observing green color,

-culture, experience, education, age affects what people think they see, for example, x-rays look quite different in importance and meaning to a non-medical observer and an experienced doctor although both are looking at the same x-rays - not all scientists are working on the same stage of education, perception and knowledge,

-in each era technology has made observations of a thing more profoundly accurate which sometimes has had the effect of destroying what people thought they had correctly observed and built theories/science upon it, for example, that planets/stars in the sky were the same size and distance from Earth seen with the eye, but this was proved incorrect with the invention of the telescope, which changed everything people thought they knew, tossing out entire so-called discoveries and upending religions/societies/education/mentalities.

I took a class in philosophy 101, which really was a historical review of philosophy beginning with the ancient Greeks. Philosophy in its early explorations/inventions by ancient Greek polymaths and others who wrote these strange books in later centuries could be followed by ordinary educated people. But when twentieth century academics started refining the work of past philosophers I suspect they cooked their brain cells into burnt cinders and didn't know it. Today, philosophers expend all of their efforts on tweaking ordinary mental perceptions/descriptions of reality into abstractions, and then breaking those abstractions down into parts of an abstraction, and then into parts of the parts of the parts of abstractions, and then on and on down and down into the quarks, bosuns and gluons of a philosophical concept, so-to-speak. The acronyms and multi-syllabic hyphenated names of the ever-growing lists of philosophy-based mental-concept minutia that have been and are being developed in philosophy studies are mind boggling.

If you've ever taken an academic literary theory class and you thought that was totally demented, modern philosophical academics are absolutely lunatics. At least when mathematicians are going into the fourth and fifth dimensions of math where no one else can follow, they have results which can be, mostly, developed into real-world representations. Well, sometimes. Philosophy today (and literary theory) is primarily brain candy for academics and nothing else. If an ordinary person wants to read up on this stuff, I found such books at University bookstores as well as some libraries. It's interesting to peruse if you like twisting your mind into knots and giving yourself a headache for the rest of the day.


Frankly, the field of modern philosophy and those who are engaged in the thought experiments of modern philosophy are generally insane in my humble opinion, but 'What is This Thing Called Science' is written for the beginning student or general reader. It is an excellent introduction to the philosophy called the philosophy of science. I think. I haven't read any others. I haven't read Thomas Kuhn's book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which apparently is what compelled Chalmers to write this book.

The chapters discussing Bayes' theorum and some of those philosophers who are its proponents are out of their minds. Just saying. It is probability maths taken to extremes. Not that I know much of probability maths beyond 101 classes.

The book has Notes, Bibliography and Index sections. Each chapter lists a further reading section at the end of the chapter.