Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Why believe in the findings of science? John Ziman argues that scientific knowledge is not uniformly reliable, but rather like a map representing a country we cannot visit. He shows how science has many elements, including alongside its experiments and formulae the language and logic, patterns and preconceptions, facts and fantasies used to illustrate and express its findings. These elements are variously combined by scientists in their explanations of the material world as it lies outside our everyday experience. John Ziman's book offers at once a valuably clear account and a radically challenging investigation of the credibility of scientific knowledge, searching widely across a range of disciplines for evidence about the perceptions, paradigms and analogies on which all our understanding depends.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface
• 1 Grounds for an inquiry
• 2 Unambiguous communication
• 3 Common observation
• 4 World maps and pictures
• 5 The stuff of reality
• 6 The world of science
• 7 Social knowledge
• Index

Author notes provided by Syndetics

A British thereotical physicist and philosopher of science, John Ziman was educated in New Zealand and at Balliol College, Oxford University. He has taught at several British universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, the University of Bristol, and the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London (Science Policy Support Group). Throughout his career, Ziman has been involved primarily with the social dimensions of science. He was an early interdisciplinary researcher who not only studied the effects of science on society, but also examined the social aspects of science. While at the University of Bristol, Ziman developed a course on the social relations of science and technology. He was also an early member of a "leftist" group of scientists who established the Society for Social Responsibility in Science. Ziman is well known for a series of lucid books on the nature of science. His An Introduction to Science Studies (1985) is regarded as one of the best overviews and presentations of science/technology/> society studies. This and other works have earned him a reputation as the best British interpreter of science for college students---comparable to Gerald Holton of the United States. An active member of the Council for Science and Society, Ziman remains an influential supporter of the formulation of a social model of science for use by science educators. (Bowker Author Biography)