How does science work? Can it tell us what the world is certainly ‘really’ like? Why is it different from different ways of understanding the universe? THEORETICALLY and Actuality, Peter Godfrey-Smith addresses these queries by firmly taking the listener on a grand tour of one hundred years of debate about research. The result is certainly a completely available introduction to the primary themes from the philosophy of technology.

Intended for undergraduates and general audiences with no prior background in philosophy, Theory and Reality addresses logical positivism; the issues of induction and confirmation; Karl Popper’s theory of science; Thomas Kuhn and ‘scientific revolutions’; the sights of Imre Lakatos, Larry Laudan, and Paul Feyerabend; and challenges to the field from sociology of research, feminism, and research studies. The reserve then looks in more detail at some particular problems and theories, including medical realism, the theory-ladeness of observation, technological description, and Bayesianism. Finally, Godfrey-Smith defends a form of philosophical naturalism as the best way to solve the primary problems in the field.