Science and Hypothesis

Rating:
Summary: great book---both pop sci & thought-provoking
Review: it is philosophy,precisely it is positivism(with slightly revised)! people who like read Henri Poincare might compare his with Ernst Mach.

Rating:
Summary: great book---both pop sci & thought-provoking
Review: it is philosophy,precisely it is positivism(with slightly revised)! people who like read Henri Poincare might compare his with Ernst Mach.

Rating:
Summary: Personal view from a crucial era
Review: Poincare wrote the essays in this book about a hundred years ago, in 1905. That was the landmark period after Maxwell and before special relativity. I was fascinated to read this snapshot from such an exciting era in scientific thought.

This first-person view is set in the era when the all-encompassing ether was still considered seriously. People had recent memory of debates about whether electrons were real. There was no unification of rays from uranium and radium with cathode rays, x-rays, and ultraviolet.

The intellectual seeds of modern science had been sown, though. Experiments with ultraviolet foretold Einstein's photoelectric effect. Lorentz had already stated some of the invariants that led to relativity. Probability was just entering mainstream scientific thought, preparatory to statistical mechanics, quantum theory, and Heisenberg.

As Poincare covers the science of his day, he does so in the style of his day. He is quite unashamed in describing the British scientific temperament as boldly intuitive, but informal and sometimes spotty. By contrast, he describes the French as rigorous and inclusive, although maybe a bit too staid. Not just the science, but the social attitudes of the day come through in the pleasant little book. If you study the history of science and are partial to primary sources, I recommend this highly.

Rating:
Summary: An essential book in the philosophy of science
Review: While not mathematical, the approach is so informed by a mathematician's way of looking at the world that some may find this wonderful book less exciting than it truly is. This is one of "the important books" in the philosophy of science.