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Rating: 
Summary: Excellently written and argued
Review: First of all, the congenial title belies it's in-depth content. As another reviewer noted, this book requires a pretty thorough understanding of both philosophical method and matters of science, including a grasp of quantum mechanics(not math-heavy, but having an idea of what a Hamiltonian is, for example).Having said that, I find the book well-written, referenced, and closely argued. The author is up-front and explicitly lays out the three main theses she wishes to convey in the Introduction. These theses, very briefly, are:
1) Empirical success of physics theories argues for their truth but not necessarily their universality.
2) Laws, where they do apply, hold only ceteris paribus.
3) Our most wide-ranging scientific knowledge is the knowledge of the nature of things, not our knowledge of laws. The former being far more generative. Continuing from her previous book, "How the Laws of Physics Lie", the author argues that the 'laws' comprising science are not pieces of a grand unitary hierarchical schema of laws (towards the completion of which science is usually presumed to be headed), but rather that the relationship between laws is tenuous at best (hence, "Dappled" in the title). That the laws of nature are true ceteris paribus, and that their validity relies on "successful repeated operations of a nomological machine" (p. 50). A nomological machine being the selected components, capacities and situations that will repeatedly display the same behavior (the behavior that the resultant laws encode - typically with an implicit universal quantifier in front of them). This is not anti-science or anti-realism or social constructivism. It is, however, explicitly anti-scientific-fundamentalism. The laws of science are not absolute and final, and an ideological belief in that absolutist view is misplaced. Science is a more complicated act than that and it is possible that "reality may well be just a patchwork of laws" (p. 34)
Rating: 
Summary: Incomprehensible
Review: The marketing of this book seems aimed at people interested in science, but seems written for a close group of colleagues who can keep up with the high-end philosophy, which makes the writing incomprehensible to anyone outside of the circle. I'm guessing even if the reader is up on this information, it would be a tough slog reading. I learned almost nothing from this book. If you are up on your Philosophy 401 and also understand theoretical physics and economics, you might understand it.
Rating: 
Summary: Intellectual Playgrounds
Review: This book seems to line up with this analysis , Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) "Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. Philosophy does not result in 'philosophical propositions', but rather in the clarification of propositions. Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to make them clear and give them sharp boundaries." I believe the above fits nicely with Nancy Cartwrights efforts,The Dappled World. I find the words within The Dappled World very washed and ironed,very tidy.
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